Pigskin Books
@pigskinbooks.bsky.social
A website dedicated to football books (link below). Join the discussion. 🏈📚
https://pigskinbooks.com
https://pigskinbooks.com
The $300 playbook.
Bill Walsh’s Finding the Winning Edge regularly sells for three figures. Dense, diagram-heavy and utterly obsessed with detail. It’s a cult object as much as a book at this point. Is it in your collection?
Full review: pigskinbooks.com/2018/10/17/...
Bill Walsh’s Finding the Winning Edge regularly sells for three figures. Dense, diagram-heavy and utterly obsessed with detail. It’s a cult object as much as a book at this point. Is it in your collection?
Full review: pigskinbooks.com/2018/10/17/...
December 19, 2025 at 5:04 PM
The $300 playbook.
Bill Walsh’s Finding the Winning Edge regularly sells for three figures. Dense, diagram-heavy and utterly obsessed with detail. It’s a cult object as much as a book at this point. Is it in your collection?
Full review: pigskinbooks.com/2018/10/17/...
Bill Walsh’s Finding the Winning Edge regularly sells for three figures. Dense, diagram-heavy and utterly obsessed with detail. It’s a cult object as much as a book at this point. Is it in your collection?
Full review: pigskinbooks.com/2018/10/17/...
The final section is All-22 before All-22 existed.
Overhead photos, illustrated formations, protections, coverages, scraping LBs. This was 1976. Fans had never seen football like this.
If you were handed this as a fan today, would it still teach you something? I think yes.
Overhead photos, illustrated formations, protections, coverages, scraping LBs. This was 1976. Fans had never seen football like this.
If you were handed this as a fan today, would it still teach you something? I think yes.
December 18, 2025 at 3:03 PM
The final section is All-22 before All-22 existed.
Overhead photos, illustrated formations, protections, coverages, scraping LBs. This was 1976. Fans had never seen football like this.
If you were handed this as a fan today, would it still teach you something? I think yes.
Overhead photos, illustrated formations, protections, coverages, scraping LBs. This was 1976. Fans had never seen football like this.
If you were handed this as a fan today, would it still teach you something? I think yes.
Written by Tom Bennett, managing editor of the NFL’s creative services, The Pro Style was billed as a “strategy book for the fan”.
The league wanted to teach people how football actually works.
And it did.
The league wanted to teach people how football actually works.
And it did.
December 18, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Written by Tom Bennett, managing editor of the NFL’s creative services, The Pro Style was billed as a “strategy book for the fan”.
The league wanted to teach people how football actually works.
And it did.
The league wanted to teach people how football actually works.
And it did.
🧵 Overlooked Gem: The Pro Style (1976)
Before All-22 was online and coaches broke down plays on TikTok.
The NFL published a full-colour strategy manual for fans.
This is The Pro Style: still one of the smartest football books ever published. 👇
#NFLBooks #FootballStrategy
Before All-22 was online and coaches broke down plays on TikTok.
The NFL published a full-colour strategy manual for fans.
This is The Pro Style: still one of the smartest football books ever published. 👇
#NFLBooks #FootballStrategy
December 18, 2025 at 3:03 PM
🧵 Overlooked Gem: The Pro Style (1976)
Before All-22 was online and coaches broke down plays on TikTok.
The NFL published a full-colour strategy manual for fans.
This is The Pro Style: still one of the smartest football books ever published. 👇
#NFLBooks #FootballStrategy
Before All-22 was online and coaches broke down plays on TikTok.
The NFL published a full-colour strategy manual for fans.
This is The Pro Style: still one of the smartest football books ever published. 👇
#NFLBooks #FootballStrategy
“Coach Shula was the leader, the boss, the screamer, while Coach Arnsparger was very calm. I always remember one day when Shula yelled at Arnsparger, and Bill just walked over, handed him the clipboard and said: ‘Here you are. You coach the defense.’”
(Any Given Sunday by Matthew Sherry)
(Any Given Sunday by Matthew Sherry)
September 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM
“Coach Shula was the leader, the boss, the screamer, while Coach Arnsparger was very calm. I always remember one day when Shula yelled at Arnsparger, and Bill just walked over, handed him the clipboard and said: ‘Here you are. You coach the defense.’”
(Any Given Sunday by Matthew Sherry)
(Any Given Sunday by Matthew Sherry)
(Side note: you can tell my paperback isn't 20 years old because Belichick is wearing a Nike Fuelband! Hands up who remembers those? And, with true Belichickian thoroughness, he seems to be wearing a second fitness tracking band too: the Jawbone Up. Anyway...)
September 22, 2025 at 3:01 PM
(Side note: you can tell my paperback isn't 20 years old because Belichick is wearing a Nike Fuelband! Hands up who remembers those? And, with true Belichickian thoroughness, he seems to be wearing a second fitness tracking band too: the Jawbone Up. Anyway...)
📘 “The closest anyone has come to being schooled in Belichick’s view of the game.”
David Halberstam’s The Education of a Coach was published 20 years ago.
Two decades on, it remains the most revealing portrait of Bill Belichick's rise to greatness.
🧵👇 #NFL #FootballBooks
David Halberstam’s The Education of a Coach was published 20 years ago.
Two decades on, it remains the most revealing portrait of Bill Belichick's rise to greatness.
🧵👇 #NFL #FootballBooks
September 22, 2025 at 3:01 PM
📘 “The closest anyone has come to being schooled in Belichick’s view of the game.”
David Halberstam’s The Education of a Coach was published 20 years ago.
Two decades on, it remains the most revealing portrait of Bill Belichick's rise to greatness.
🧵👇 #NFL #FootballBooks
David Halberstam’s The Education of a Coach was published 20 years ago.
Two decades on, it remains the most revealing portrait of Bill Belichick's rise to greatness.
🧵👇 #NFL #FootballBooks
🏈 Most football books stick to “war” or “chess” metaphors.
But Roy Blount Jr. saw the 1973 Steelers differently.
In Three Bricks Shy of a Load, he turned football into art.
Theater. Sculpture. Jazz. Poetry.
Here’s how, and why it still resonates. 👇
🧵
But Roy Blount Jr. saw the 1973 Steelers differently.
In Three Bricks Shy of a Load, he turned football into art.
Theater. Sculpture. Jazz. Poetry.
Here’s how, and why it still resonates. 👇
🧵
September 18, 2025 at 2:02 PM
🏈 Most football books stick to “war” or “chess” metaphors.
But Roy Blount Jr. saw the 1973 Steelers differently.
In Three Bricks Shy of a Load, he turned football into art.
Theater. Sculpture. Jazz. Poetry.
Here’s how, and why it still resonates. 👇
🧵
But Roy Blount Jr. saw the 1973 Steelers differently.
In Three Bricks Shy of a Load, he turned football into art.
Theater. Sculpture. Jazz. Poetry.
Here’s how, and why it still resonates. 👇
🧵
Another new football title for the autumn: Tom Danyluk reaches the 90s with his decade-by-decade review of football. Out on Amazon this weekend.
#NFLBooks #FootballBooks
#NFLBooks #FootballBooks
September 17, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Another new football title for the autumn: Tom Danyluk reaches the 90s with his decade-by-decade review of football. Out on Amazon this weekend.
#NFLBooks #FootballBooks
#NFLBooks #FootballBooks
Before Kaepernick, there was Dave Meggyesy.
🏈✊ In 1970, the linebacker blew the whistle on racism, corruption & brutality in pro football.
🧵👇
🏈✊ In 1970, the linebacker blew the whistle on racism, corruption & brutality in pro football.
🧵👇
September 11, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Before Kaepernick, there was Dave Meggyesy.
🏈✊ In 1970, the linebacker blew the whistle on racism, corruption & brutality in pro football.
🧵👇
🏈✊ In 1970, the linebacker blew the whistle on racism, corruption & brutality in pro football.
🧵👇
Over 40 years ago, one of the best books ever written about the NFL Draft was published.
Sleepers, Busts and Franchise-Makers (1983) isn’t as expensive as Finding the Winning Edge, but it’s almost impossible to find. Here’s why 🧵
Sleepers, Busts and Franchise-Makers (1983) isn’t as expensive as Finding the Winning Edge, but it’s almost impossible to find. Here’s why 🧵
September 10, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Over 40 years ago, one of the best books ever written about the NFL Draft was published.
Sleepers, Busts and Franchise-Makers (1983) isn’t as expensive as Finding the Winning Edge, but it’s almost impossible to find. Here’s why 🧵
Sleepers, Busts and Franchise-Makers (1983) isn’t as expensive as Finding the Winning Edge, but it’s almost impossible to find. Here’s why 🧵
🧵 How much violence is too much for football?
That question runs through Sanctioned Savagery, a powerful new book by Michael Oriard, former NFL player and now one of the game’s sharpest historians.
Let’s break it down. ⬇️
#FootballBooks #CTE #NFL
That question runs through Sanctioned Savagery, a powerful new book by Michael Oriard, former NFL player and now one of the game’s sharpest historians.
Let’s break it down. ⬇️
#FootballBooks #CTE #NFL
September 6, 2025 at 3:14 PM
🧵 How much violence is too much for football?
That question runs through Sanctioned Savagery, a powerful new book by Michael Oriard, former NFL player and now one of the game’s sharpest historians.
Let’s break it down. ⬇️
#FootballBooks #CTE #NFL
That question runs through Sanctioned Savagery, a powerful new book by Michael Oriard, former NFL player and now one of the game’s sharpest historians.
Let’s break it down. ⬇️
#FootballBooks #CTE #NFL
"The importance of being able to throw the ball 70 yards in the air is overrated, especially in today’s passing game where timing and precision are so much more critical. As long as you’re smart about execution, everything will fall into place.”
Joe Montana, in The Art and Magic of Quarterbacking
Joe Montana, in The Art and Magic of Quarterbacking
September 3, 2025 at 5:27 PM
"The importance of being able to throw the ball 70 yards in the air is overrated, especially in today’s passing game where timing and precision are so much more critical. As long as you’re smart about execution, everything will fall into place.”
Joe Montana, in The Art and Magic of Quarterbacking
Joe Montana, in The Art and Magic of Quarterbacking
Is now a good time to mention that Bill Belichick has a book out called The Art of Winning?
His team may have been humbled last night but the greatest NFL coach of all time still deserves attention.
So what does the book really say about leadership?
👇
His team may have been humbled last night but the greatest NFL coach of all time still deserves attention.
So what does the book really say about leadership?
👇
September 2, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Is now a good time to mention that Bill Belichick has a book out called The Art of Winning?
His team may have been humbled last night but the greatest NFL coach of all time still deserves attention.
So what does the book really say about leadership?
👇
His team may have been humbled last night but the greatest NFL coach of all time still deserves attention.
So what does the book really say about leadership?
👇
🏈✊ Before Kaepernick took a knee, linebacker Dave Meggyesy took a stand.
In Out of Their League (1970), he exposed racism, violence & dehumanization in pro football, and paid the price.
A radical, unforgettable book that still hits hard.
🧵👇
In Out of Their League (1970), he exposed racism, violence & dehumanization in pro football, and paid the price.
A radical, unforgettable book that still hits hard.
🧵👇
September 1, 2025 at 4:22 PM
🏈✊ Before Kaepernick took a knee, linebacker Dave Meggyesy took a stand.
In Out of Their League (1970), he exposed racism, violence & dehumanization in pro football, and paid the price.
A radical, unforgettable book that still hits hard.
🧵👇
In Out of Their League (1970), he exposed racism, violence & dehumanization in pro football, and paid the price.
A radical, unforgettable book that still hits hard.
🧵👇
The smartest play-calling tips you’ll read this week were written in 1946.
Shaughnessy, Jones & Halas ended The Modern T Formation with Man-in-Motion with a ruthless DOs & DON’Ts list, some evergreen, some hilarious.
Shaughnessy, Jones & Halas ended The Modern T Formation with Man-in-Motion with a ruthless DOs & DON’Ts list, some evergreen, some hilarious.
August 31, 2025 at 12:02 PM
The smartest play-calling tips you’ll read this week were written in 1946.
Shaughnessy, Jones & Halas ended The Modern T Formation with Man-in-Motion with a ruthless DOs & DON’Ts list, some evergreen, some hilarious.
Shaughnessy, Jones & Halas ended The Modern T Formation with Man-in-Motion with a ruthless DOs & DON’Ts list, some evergreen, some hilarious.
College football kicks off this weekend and the NFL next.
Before you fire off a bold prediction, read the funniest cautionary tale in football: FREEZING COLD TAKES.
Before you fire off a bold prediction, read the funniest cautionary tale in football: FREEZING COLD TAKES.
August 30, 2025 at 4:52 PM
College football kicks off this weekend and the NFL next.
Before you fire off a bold prediction, read the funniest cautionary tale in football: FREEZING COLD TAKES.
Before you fire off a bold prediction, read the funniest cautionary tale in football: FREEZING COLD TAKES.
Bill Belichick is a coaching genius but he got his edge through obsessive preparation.
In 4th and Goal Everyday Phil Savage (@PhilSavage) explains the film lesson he never forgot.
In 4th and Goal Everyday Phil Savage (@PhilSavage) explains the film lesson he never forgot.
August 29, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Bill Belichick is a coaching genius but he got his edge through obsessive preparation.
In 4th and Goal Everyday Phil Savage (@PhilSavage) explains the film lesson he never forgot.
In 4th and Goal Everyday Phil Savage (@PhilSavage) explains the film lesson he never forgot.
Are you a ‘Steel Curtain’ kind of reader or more ‘Air Raid Offense’?
Whichever way you roll, Pigskin Books has got the perfect football book for you.
🔗 pigskinbooks.com
#FootballBooks #NFLBooks
Whichever way you roll, Pigskin Books has got the perfect football book for you.
🔗 pigskinbooks.com
#FootballBooks #NFLBooks
August 28, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Are you a ‘Steel Curtain’ kind of reader or more ‘Air Raid Offense’?
Whichever way you roll, Pigskin Books has got the perfect football book for you.
🔗 pigskinbooks.com
#FootballBooks #NFLBooks
Whichever way you roll, Pigskin Books has got the perfect football book for you.
🔗 pigskinbooks.com
#FootballBooks #NFLBooks
In 1946, four Black players integrated pro football, one year before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color bar.
Their story rarely gets the spotlight. Lost Champions tells how the color line fell, and why it was forgotten. Here’s what fans will learn…
Their story rarely gets the spotlight. Lost Champions tells how the color line fell, and why it was forgotten. Here’s what fans will learn…
August 26, 2025 at 12:56 PM
In 1946, four Black players integrated pro football, one year before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color bar.
Their story rarely gets the spotlight. Lost Champions tells how the color line fell, and why it was forgotten. Here’s what fans will learn…
Their story rarely gets the spotlight. Lost Champions tells how the color line fell, and why it was forgotten. Here’s what fans will learn…
📖 All of this comes from Gillman’s section in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982).
I’ll drop the original page below so you can read it in full 👇
#FootballBooks #CoachingPhilosophy
I’ll drop the original page below so you can read it in full 👇
#FootballBooks #CoachingPhilosophy
August 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM
📖 All of this comes from Gillman’s section in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982).
I’ll drop the original page below so you can read it in full 👇
#FootballBooks #CoachingPhilosophy
I’ll drop the original page below so you can read it in full 👇
#FootballBooks #CoachingPhilosophy
🧵 “There is no magic about a game plan.” – Sid Gillman
The Hall of Fame coach changed the passing game forever but he maintained that his game plans were straightforward.
Here’s how Gillman explained it in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982) 👇
#NFL #FootballIQ
The Hall of Fame coach changed the passing game forever but he maintained that his game plans were straightforward.
Here’s how Gillman explained it in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982) 👇
#NFL #FootballIQ
August 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM
🧵 “There is no magic about a game plan.” – Sid Gillman
The Hall of Fame coach changed the passing game forever but he maintained that his game plans were straightforward.
Here’s how Gillman explained it in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982) 👇
#NFL #FootballIQ
The Hall of Fame coach changed the passing game forever but he maintained that his game plans were straightforward.
Here’s how Gillman explained it in The Illustrated NFL Playbook (1982) 👇
#NFL #FootballIQ
🕰️ My copy is battered (65 years will do that), but it still has the original slipcase featuring one of Riger’s drawings.
Secondhand editions are easy to find — and usually in better shape than mine!
Secondhand editions are easy to find — and usually in better shape than mine!
August 23, 2025 at 1:01 PM
🕰️ My copy is battered (65 years will do that), but it still has the original slipcase featuring one of Riger’s drawings.
Secondhand editions are easy to find — and usually in better shape than mine!
Secondhand editions are easy to find — and usually in better shape than mine!
📖 It also captures key moments in NFL history.
The 1958 Championship Game, often called “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, gets detailed treatment here, helping cement its legendary status.
The 1958 Championship Game, often called “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, gets detailed treatment here, helping cement its legendary status.
August 23, 2025 at 1:01 PM
📖 It also captures key moments in NFL history.
The 1958 Championship Game, often called “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, gets detailed treatment here, helping cement its legendary status.
The 1958 Championship Game, often called “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, gets detailed treatment here, helping cement its legendary status.