Post #2, pages 75-130

For this week I read chapters 4 and 5, pages 75-130. These chapters tell us just how unique Michael Oher really is, and how he is a rare physical specimen. Many of the athletic coaches at the Briarcrest Christian School couldn’t believe he was for real. The football coach couldn’t believe that he weighed more than 300 pounds, so they weighed him. When the coach is describing this he says: “That’s when I had them weigh him. One of the coaches took him into the gym and put him on the scale, but he overloaded the scale.”(75) The team doctor then had to take Michael and weigh him on a cattle scale. They found he weighed 344 pounds, small for a cow, but large for a high school sophomore football player. The author then described the frenzy of college coaches who would attend practices just to watch Michael in action. When the coaches saw Michael, they knew that he would someday play in the NFL. Chapter 5 explained how football strategy has evolved since the early days of the NFL. It explained how in the 60s most teams would try to run the ball more than they would throw it because they liked their chances of the ball not being intercepted. But the revolutionary thinking of Bill Walsh changed the game to what it is today. Walsh had the idea of timing the throw to where the receivers were expected to be. Walsh also made it so the throws were shorter and the quarterback would have fewer decisions to make. He would have the quarterback decide which side of the field he would throw to before the play, so the only decision he would have to make is if he should throw to the alternate or outlet. It can be hard for many quarterbacks to focus on throwing when they are worried about getting hit from their blindside. This is why the position of left tackle is so important.