Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Next Man Up A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL by John Feinstein ISBN 13: 9780316013284. Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL. Feinstein, John. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. An up-close look inside an NFL powerhouse, from the onlywriter in America who players and coaches would trust with theirsecrets. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. John Feinstein writes for the Washington Post and Golf magazine and is a regular commentator on NPR and CBS. He lives in Maryland and New York. From Booklist : *Starred Review* Through 16 books in his genre-defining, year-in-the-life style, Feinstein avoided tackling pro football, feeling that the legendary lack of access granted the media by the NFL's powerful owners and general managers made his approach impossible. That changed when fortysomething Steve Bisciotti bought the Baltimore Ravens, and Feinstein was able to convince him, as well as Ravens coach Brian Billick and general manager Ossie Newsome, to do the unthinkable: allow a writer complete access to the team and its management throughout an entire season. The 2004 NFL season looked to be a good one for the Ravens, who had won the Super Bowl in 2001 and seemed primed to return to the top. It didn't turn out that way, which gives Feinstein's account an extra dimension of tension, on top of the fly-on-the-wall fascination of sitting in on coaches' strategy meetings and listening as decisions are made on who to start and who to cut. To most fans, who mainly see football players encased in helmets and pads, it's hard even to project the human side of their lives; Feinstein offers us this opportunity, showing the day-to-day rigors of the marginal player, hoping only to avoid being cut. The specter of injuries, an ominous inevitability in football, gets a human face, too, as the Ravens suffer debilitating blow after blow. Football has never seemed as personal as it does here, in one of Feinstein's most involving books. Best-sellerdom is a foregone conclusion. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved. Stress Management. In the tense minutes before the Baltimore Ravens go out to do battle on the field, a kind of lunacy grips their locker room as players holler out their rage and anxiety. In the midst of one of these shouting sessions last year, defensive end Terrell Suggs suddenly confronted All-Pro linebacker Ray Lewis and yelled, "Ray, what does pressure do?" "All I know," Lewis shouted, "is that it breaks a pipe. So imagine what it does to a human being!" John Feinstein did not set out to write a book about stress. For years he has embedded himself in one sporting culture after another--tennis, baseball, golf, college football, college basketball--and produced books on the intense, intimate dramas that take place over the course of a season. But none of his previous adventures prepared him for what he calls the "constant tension" in the NFL. Next Man Up, Feinstein's chronicle of the Ravens' 2004 season, doesn't quite rise to the high standard of his classics, A Good Walk Spoiled and A Season on the Brink, but it is nonetheless one of the most compelling portraits of NFL life ever written. The NFL, Feinstein writes bluntly, "is the most insecure world there is in professional sports." The 16-game schedule (which makes nearly every game meaningful and any mistake potentially disastrous), the relentless aggression, the frequent injuries and the ever-present pain all help make pro football a stress factory. But Feinstein suggests that what may cause players the most anxiety is the lack of guaranteed contracts. When a baseball or basketball player signs a contract, both he and management are usually bound to honor it, barring extraordinary circumstances. But in football the only money most players can be certain of getting is their signing bonus. Players frequently go "from starting to cut in one year," writes Feinstein, or are presented with a grim choice about their pay: "Take a cut or be cut." No one need feel sorry for football players, of course; they are more than adequately compensated for the stress they endure. But Feinstein makes a persuasive case that it's impossible to understand today's NFL without knowing something about the emotional lives of the players. Ravens coach Brian Billick apparently agrees. Feinstein found that Billick periodically makes detailed handwritten notes about how his coaches and various players are feeling. For instance: "[Quarterback] Kyle Boller is starting to feel pressure because of all the criticism. [Special teams coach] Gary Zauner's feelings are hurt because I yelled at him twice last night." The good news is that coaches and players have come a long way toward understanding their emotions. At the same time, old-school fans who worry that players might be getting soft will be reassured by Feinstein's revealing stories about what passes for sensitivity in the NFL. For example, during last year's opening day coin toss, Ravens tackle Orlando Brown, acting as offensive captain, repeatedly called his Cleveland Browns counterpart, Andra Davis, a motherf-----. Davis replied sharply in kind, and the two players nearly came to blows. Afterward Davis learned that Brown's mother had died the day before the game, and he sent an apology to Brown through team officials. "He didn't do anything wrong," Brown said, moved. "It was all me. That motherf-----'s got nothing to be sorry for." The Decline and Fall of Romo. ROMO: MY LIFE ON THE EDGE. by Bill Romanowski, William Morrow, 314 pages, $24.95. BY NOW nearly everyone knows the unpleasant story of Romo. A veteran of 16 NFL seasons, Bill Romanowski was widely detested for his dirty play--once, he recounts, New York Giants receiver Ed McCaffrey was lying on the turf after a play, and Romanowski pressed his cleats into McCaffrey's testicles "pretty hard" and called him a "wussy." Romanowski has also admitted using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Indeed, Romanowski reckons that over the course of his career, he spent about $1 million on various nostrums and training regimens designed to give him an edge. Nonetheless, he considers himself to be an inspiring leader whose primary flaw was not "settling for mediocrity." He expects that readers, too, will believe this, because . well, as it turns out, Romanowski is as gullible as he'd like us to be. For instance, even now he sees no reason to doubt the bodybuilder who told him that he once hung 100-pound dumbbells from his scrotum. Romanowski was so impressed by this tale that he eagerly took whatever pills the bodybuilder handed him. And later, when someone else told Romanowski that injections of "live cells" from a sheep's pancreas (and a dozen other types of sheep cells) would help prevent inflammation, Romanowski paid a whopping $38,000 for the treatment. Ultimately, Romanowski writes, he was forced to leave football because "my brain failed me. Or maybe I failed my brain." For once--and once only--Romanowski is absolutely right. Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL. Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Covering a year in the life of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens, this book does a great job of putting the reader into a world most of us can never be a part of, that is pro football. From preseason to postseason, Feinstein shows not only what the stars are like, but also the players one never hears. ( ) Next Man Up is a fascinating insight into the NFL. It takes a year in the life of the Baltimore Ravens franchise and exposes it from top to bottom. Everything about the team, the players, the management, and events like the NFL draft are brought to light. The personalities behind the facemasks are detailed, and the struggles that each of them faces to continue to thrive in the cutthroat world of the NFL are laid bare. For anyone who wants to peek behind the gridiron curtain, this book will be fascinating. Any fan of American football will rightly be interested in this tale. However, it is by no means the best book on its subject matter and it's almost certainly because of the repetitive and somewhat bland writing style. The book comes across as very bitter when discussing the admittedly objectionable Washington Redskins leadership. The worst flaw in the book is surely the continued and un-interesting references to TV networks and their impact - the media obsession is not one I share with Feinstein. The second key flaw is that Feinstein just doesn't seem to love the game. The account pales compared to the passion of You're Okay, It's Just A Bruise which is the stand-out book in the genre. In many ways this book is like the written media that Feinstein is so self-referencingly a part of, it's fascinating and full of facts and insights you will not find elsewhere but it's not gripping and just doesn't feel passionate in any way. ( ) Book Review: "Next Man Up: A Year Behind The Lines In Today's NFL" "Next Man Up" is an inside look at a year behind the scenes of a National Football League team. John Feinstein, a well-regarded sports writer, spent the 2004 season with the Baltimore Ravens. It is a well-written account of what it's like for the players, coaches, and owners to go through an NFL season—and, in this case, a disappointing one, as the Ravens did not make the playoffs. The pressure on coaches and players is tremendous and the physical toll of the game on players palpable. While there is nothing that is going to shock or be particularly new to NFL fans here, it nevertheless is very interesting. The Ravens in 2004 were a team with high hopes that failed to make the playoffs. There was tension on the team between offensive and defensive coaches because the defense was great and the offense pedestrian at best. Interestingly, that tension didn't seem to seep in among the players. We also get a look at Steve Bisciotti, the new Ravens owner, and his style of leadership and what he expects of his players and coaches. Additionally, there are interesting insights into players like Ray Lewis, kicker Matt Stover, malcontent Chris McCallister, Neon Deon Sanders, and others. Terrell Owens and the fiasco of the Ravens trying to trade for him also makes a cameo appearance. Then-coach Brian Billick also is explored. Finally, there are certainly themes to this team, such as the role of religion, the development (or lack thereof) of young quarterback Kyle Boller, the firing of Matt Cavanaugh (offensive coordinator) at the end of the season, and even insights into Dan Snyder, the brash owner of the Redskins, through the eyes of Mike Nolan, who used to coach for him. And the overriding theme of the book is the intense pressure on players and coaches to win. Overall, this was a worthwhile and interesting book for NFL fans, but not that insightful for someone who spent a year with a team, from the draft and workouts to being at each game and several coaches' meetings. Also, at times, Feinstein makes unnecessary, petulant commentary on things unrelated to the book (like taking swipes at Al Michaels), which I found somewhat childish and detracting. Win Some, Lose Some. NEARLY 20 years ago, John Feinstein, then a young sportswriter for The Washington Post, wrote a genuinely great book, "A Season on the Brink: A Year With Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers." It was a searing, fearless account of the basketball team's 1985-86 season. It was also one of the first "inside a season" sports books. Although Feinstein clearly admired Indiana University's legendary coach, he did not shy away from his duty to tell the truth. The book vividly recounts Knight's foul language, temper tantrums and incessant bullying of his players. In his long fall from grace at Indiana -- he was finally pushed out in 2000 -- "A Season on the Brink" wound up being an important marker. Feinstein's 18th book, "Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL," is not great. It is not even particularly good. It uses the same "inside a season" technique to chronicle the 2004 Baltimore Ravens, but by now this genre has deteriorated into a hackneyed staple of sports journalism. The Ravens, a team that has been in decline since winning the Super Bowl in January 2001, missed the playoffs the year they decided to give Feinstein access, ending up 9-7, a fairly boring record that is indicative of the team itself (this season they are worse than boring). But Feinstein's choice of team to chronicle is just one problem. At 500 pages, "Next Man Up" is excessively long. Mechanical in its structure, it's repetitive in the way that hastily written books often are. Its accounts of the games themselves rarely transcend boilerplate. ("The offense picked up where it had left off at the end of the first half, marching 85 yards after the kickoff," etc.) Like the Ravens' season itself, the book is more to be endured than to be enjoyed. Which is not to say that "Next Man Up" isn't instructive. It is -- though about Feinstein, not about football. Without meaning to, he has written a book that tells us volumes about what's happened to him over the past two decades. "Next Man Up" isn't really about the Baltimore Ravens' 2004 season. It's mainly about what took place with the Ravens' coaching staff and in the front office last year. Its central character isn't Ray Lewis, the linebacker who has been the team's heart and soul since the late 1990's; it's the head coach, Brian Billick. Feinstein's profiles of the Ravens' owner, Steve Bisciotti, and general manager, Ozzie Newsome, are far richer than his portraits of Pro Bowl players like Jamal Lewis and Jonathan Ogden. We learn far more about how, say, Newsome approaches each year's draft than about what makes an offensive lineman tick. Indeed, the book's moment of highest drama comes when Billick, under pressure from Bisciotti, decides he has no choice but to fire Matt Cavanaugh, the offensive coordinator. Naturally, Feinstein depicts this as an example of three good, admirable men doing what they have to do. For the coaches and members of the front office, the author simply oozes empathy. Feinstein's willingness to see things the way management does may be inevitable. As we grow older, we tend to identify with our peers, and Feinstein's peers nowadays are the people running teams rather than the ones playing for them. This is not that different from the evolution of another well-known Washington Post writer, Bob Woodward, who began his career knocking on the doors of secretaries and now talks directly to presidents and cabinet officials -- and conveys their version of events (empathetically, of course). Feinstein's approach, though, is bound to leave football fans cold. Yes, issues like managing the salary cap and putting together a draft are important, but ultimately the game is played by the players on the field, and that is still what most people want to know about. A behind-the-scenes look at a football team in which the athletes play second banana to the coach is bound to be less than satisfying. Far worse, though, is this: As Feinstein starts using the same prism as his newfound friends on the Ravens' coaching staff, he becomes less willing to raise difficult issues, the way he did so bravely in "A Season on the Brink." The book's title, for instance, refers to one of the harsher realities of pro football: lots of players get hurt, many of them badly, and when that happens, the staff has to cast them aside in favor of the "next man up." Feinstein acknowledges this brutal reality, but he doesn't dwell on it. On the contrary. Late in the season, with the Ravens desperately trying to make the playoffs, one of the team's best players, cornerback Chris McAlister, tells an assistant coach shortly before a critical game against the New England Patriots that he thinks his shoulder hurts too much for him to play. The coach, Feinstein writes, "wasn't about to push an injured player to play, but he also knew that playing two weeks after a stinger, even a bad one, was not risky even though a good hit could be painful." But in fact, that is exactly what the coach -- along with Feinstein's hero, Billick - - does. They persuade McAlister he should play the game, and try to tackle using his good shoulder. Which the player does, "reluctantly." In passing, Feinstein adds that like many players, McAlister takes a weekly shot to dull the pain in his body. There's one final difference between "Next Man Up" and "A Season on the Brink." In the pages and pages of acknowledgments in this new book, Feinstein thanks just about everybody he came into contact with during his year with the Ravens, including security guards, the team chaplain and assistants to assistants. But he doesn't thank a single player. I went back and checked the acknowledgments for "A Season on the Brink." Indiana's players, he wrote back then, the ones who had endured not only Bobby Knight's tirades but John Feinstein's questions, "were as good a group of people as one could hope to find." But that was a very long time ago. ONLINE: KNOW THE SCORE. 20 other noteworthy sports books reviewed in the past year: nytimes.com/books. 'Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL,' by John Feinstein Joseph Nocera is a business columnist for The Times.