Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football
*Starred Review* Dawidoff, author of a fine biography of baseball catcher and international spy Moe Berg (The Catcher Was a Spy, 1994), here turns to the 2011 New York Jets, who gave him apparently unfettered access to virtually every aspect of the team’s day-to-day operations, from the February scouting “combine” of collegiate talent, through the May draft of college players, the torturous preseason of practices and games, and, finally, to the entire 16-game, regular season schedule and subsequent coaches’ postmortem. Head coach Rex Ryan and his staff receive the primary focus, and it’s hard not to be impressed by the all-consuming effort they put into coaxing superhuman performances out of their gifted but often mercurial players and also by how narrow the differences are that divide winners from losers in the unsparing, ferociously competitive NFL. The Jets, who’d come just one win shy of reaching the Super Bowl in both 2009 and 2010, lost their magic in 2011, falling to 8–8 and out of playoff contention, Dawidoff recording every excruciating moment of the team’s slide from inside the Jets’ facility. This is a superlative insider’s portrait of one NFL team (reminiscent of John Feinstein’s similar Next Man Up: A Year behind the Lines, 2005, about the Baltimore Ravens), and it’s accessible to casual fans and irresistible to NFL geeks. --Alan Moores