Book Review: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

Book Review
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

When I first heard that Michael Lewis was writing a book on football titled "The Blind Side", I was immediately interested and looked forward to it. I had hopes it would be somewhat like Moneyball and he would explain some ideas and theories involved in football. The cover of the book shows a typical X's and O's diagram of a football play and it is sub-titled "Evolution of a Game". Well, I guess I didn't learn the lesson of "don't judge a book by it's cover". This book has very little to do with football strategy, thought process or anything related to the game. In fact, this book is biography of the great young offensive left tackle Michael Oher, currently a sophomore at the Univeristy of Mississippi.

In the first half of the book, Lewis weaves back and forth between the life of Oher and the evolution of football and why the left tackle is so much more important to the NFL game than it used to be. Once that introduction is done, he writes little of interest to fans of the game. The rest of the book is all on Oher's life in high school, college and then goes back his life before college. All of that is an interesting read, but not really football related.

So, if you are looking for a book on football strategy and game planning, skip this one. This is nothing like Moneyball. But if you are looking for an interesting biography about a football player, then this is a fine book.