Patrick McCaskey's Pillars of the NFL Covers the Greatest Coaches in NFL History

Pillars of the NFL

Pillars of the NFL: Coaches Who Have Won Three or More Championships is an ambitious book that examines the football lives of the ten greatest coaches in NFL history.  It looks at each coach's early life, their careers, and the teams they coached.  A final contribution to the game feature and a highlights feature closes each coach's coverage out.  Championship lists provide an appendix and a generous table of contents makes the book easier to use.  Bill Potter illustrations of each coach give readers a visual at the beginning of each chapter. 

Certainly some people will want to read the book from cover to cover, but most will likely start at least with their favorite coaches and teams and move around quite a bit.  Eventually, the author and publisher sincerely hope our book will reside on good spot on reader's favorite book shelf.  We hope commuters will bring the book with them on airplanes and trains--you can't do work every minute and Pillars can give you something fun to help break the time.  These day, a "great airplane ride" book is one of the highest of compliments. 

McCaskey's Pillars coaches were not selected by himself or a special task force, rather they are the ten coaches who have won the most NFL championships.  NFL championships in the pre Super Bowl days were decided in various ways. Initially, the records of the teams were reviewed and a champion selected in the annual league meeting. Rules were created to help make that decision more objective and eventually the league was broken up into two divisions and a championship game was created.  Today's Super Bowl Champion holds the NFL championship today.  

Perhaps what will make Pillars most interesting is reading about the different approaches the coaches' took to the top of the NFL peak.  Readers will see such a variety of approaches from the extremely well-organized Paul Brown to the ferocious perfection-seeker and motivator, Vince Lombardi.  They can read about Joe Gibbs who learned under one of the most innovative passing coach in history, Don Coryell, but quickly adjusted to a power running game based on his team's talent. 

Man's man and exemplary leader Chuck Noll builds one of the finest toughest football teams of the 20th Century and the superbly patient and practical Weeb Ewbank, works with two superstar quarterbacks who could not have been more different.  George Halas who lived like a Spartan warrior and was every bit the equal of men half his age carried on for six decades leading both the Bears and the NFL to unimaginable success.  Belichick, the son of a great football man, was brought up from the crib to become one of the best football minds in the history of the game.  No one in his camp has been spared criticism and every small defect is addressed in a program where responsibility is faced by everyone, every minute of the day.  

Lambeau was an exceptional athlete and a larger-than-life personality in the  small city of Green Bay.  He was able to not only will the survival of Packers, but turn them into champions and top challengers most every year of his long career. Perhaps the most difficult coach to understand was Bill Walsh--the one they called genius. Walsh was able to outplan and prepare most any coach of his era, but doubted his own powers when criticized.  Perhaps it was those doubts that led him to such heights.  

And then there was Guy Chamberlin, a man from the earliest days of the NFL who won his championships in the first decade of the league in the 1920s.  Chamberlin returned to the farm after his playing-coaching career because he did not believe pro football coaching could provide a long-term job.  In fact he did not believe pro football would last at all.  Chamberlin has become an obscure figure, but he had one of the greatest weapons in the early days--himself.  Chamberlin played offensive and defensive end and was as tough as the guns he taught his soldiers how to fire in his duty in World War I.  As a defensive end, Chamberlin was known to bring chaos into the opposing team's backfield.  When his team had the ball, he was frequently called to run an end around and if his speed wasn't too much for the opposition, his legs that moved like pistons were nearly impossible to stop.  

Pillars of the NFL was written to give football fans a birds-eye view of the NFL and the greatest coaches in the game.