The Blind Side

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11–12

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 9-10 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “Birth of a Star”

After the 49ers’ 1982 Super Bowl win, Walsh used his first draft pick to select Bubba Paris to defend Montana’s blind side. Walsh needed Paris under 300 pounds, but Paris liked to eat. The more he ate, the slower he played. The 49ers lost badly to the Giants in 1985 and again, in 1986. Taylor “wreaked havoc,” and the vaunted 49er offense managed only three points per game and lost Montana to a concussion in the 1986 game (188). By the end of the 1987 season, Walsh had enough of “his promising left tackle” (188). The team amassed a 14-2 regular season record but had weaknesses. Prognosticators expected the 49ers to steamroll their first playoff opponent, the Minnesota Vikings, but the Vikings had an effective young pass rusher, Chris Doleman, who mentally and physically harassed Montana. Walsh’s left tackle could not handle “a speedy pass rusher,” and Montana struggled so much that Walsh pulled him in favor of Steven Young, a left-handed quarterback who could “see Doleman coming” (190). Following the unexpected loss, Walsh left the stadium without addressing his players, causing them to lose respect for him. He only coached one more season.

Steve Wallace, the 49ers’ back-up left tackle in that game, was not Paris’s obvious replacement. He had not played the position before, but he “was a student of the game, willing to pay the steep price to play it” (191). In the playoffs the following year, the 49ers again faced the Vikings, the NFL’s number one defense and led by Doleman, who was headed to his second straight Pro Bowl. Before the game, Walsh replayed footage of Doleman beating Wallace to sack Montana during a regular season game the 49ers had won. Before the team took the field, the 49ers’ director of football operations told Wallace the game’s outcome hinged on his performance. As the passing game evolved to send more receivers into the field, it left fewer players behind to protect the quarterback, elevating the left tackle’s importance.

At a time before steep fighting penalties, Wallace played dirty to cover his inadequacies as a player, but in this game, he vowed to “play within himself” (195). He focused on his technique and on reading Doleman’s body language to predict his moves. Wallace prided himself “on playing offense with the aggressiveness of a defensive player,” but it became “counterproductive” (196). The left tackle position demanded “control—of self, and of the man coming at you” (196). Wallace played his first one-on-one encounter with Doleman perfectly, but no one noticed because all eyes (and cameras) were on Montana’s performance.

Calling the game, John Madden said the 49ers needed three key players to produce: quarterback Joe Montana, wide receiver Jerry Rice, and running back Roger Craig. As an offensive lineman, Wallace didn’t have statistics, in the traditional sense. Yet the 49ers’ high-profile players depended on him. A mistake could lead to “Joe Montana being carried off the field on a stretcher” (198). Doleman recorded no sacks in the game and only one tackle, on a play where Wallace was not assigned to block him. Yet his only chance of being featured on camera was in endless replays of a failed block: “the better he does his job, the more boring to watch he becomes” (191). Only Madden notes his exemplary job of pass protection. That year, the 49ers won the Super Bowl, and Walsh retired, but “his innovation continued to sweep the league in various forms” (201).

While the passing game and quarterback continued to rise in value, the left tackle position was not well compensated. In 1987, the Bengals balked at paying Anthony Muñoz, considered possibly the best lineman in NFL history, $500,000 per year, while quarterbacks were earning $2 million and pass rushers $1 million per year. Yet in 1988, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Ray Perkins, who had been head coach when the Giants drafted Taylor, picked a left tackle with the fourth overall pick in the draft.

After the 1992 season, players and owners “agreed to a new labor deal” that stipulated “salaries would rise with revenues,” and players would be given free agency (202). In the open market, teams could go after any players they needed, but they also had to think about the best way to spend their dollars. The new market opened just after the 1993 Super Bowl. Five years after the Bengals told Muñoz “no offensive lineman on earth was worth half a million dollars a year,” the Denver Broncos hired two linemen for three times that amount (203). The Vikings center went to the Indianapolis Colts for $2 million per year, and the list goes on. Those paying the rapidly-increasing salaries pointed out that the previous season saw 19 of 28 quarterbacks knocked out of the game “by mid-November” (204). In 1995, the 49ers made Wallace the first offensive lineman to receive a $10 million contract. It was the beginning of a “massive reevaluation of the left tackle position” (206). By 2005, only quarterbacks made more than left tackles. Talent evaluators did not fully understand the physical qualities that made a great left tackle until “the money started to fly” (208).

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Egg Bowl”

In 1958, Clennon King, a black teacher, tried to enroll at Ole Miss. State troopers took him to an insane asylum. In 1962, rioting ensued after James Meredith, a black player, enrolled at the school. Ole Miss teams were, and remain, “The Rebels,” a reference to The Confederate Army. As late as 2004, rival SEC coaches told Michael that Ole Miss did not welcome black players. This may well have impacted him, were it not for his own white Ole Miss family. The school’s racist past presented a problem for recruiters and Coach O, who had been hired not for his past coaching experience but for his success recruiting black athletes. He believed the key was starting with one key player who would attract others: Michael, who also had a white family. Players and coaches began watching Michael’s tapes and were impressed by his skill and physique. Offensive line coach George DeLeone was impressed with his “kinesthetic sense,” which cannot be taught (217).

Coach O is high energy, despite inheriting “weak and dispirited players” (220). He coaches defense well but has no experience with offense, and his coaches run plays ill-suited to their players’ talents. In his first, and possibly only, head coaching opportunity, Coach O is desperate as the team prepares to play their cross-state rivals, Mississippi State, in the Egg Bowl (named for its egg-shaped trophy). Mississippi State is a land grant college that Ole Miss holds in contempt for class reasons: “The game served as a proxy for the hoary Mississippi class struggle, between the white folks who wore shirts with collars on them and the white folks who did not” (222). Before the game, Coach O gives a rambling speech alluding to the class rivalry, despite him being a “good old boy” with no pretentions and his players being, like State’s, poor black kids from Mississippi. Ole Miss’ offense is in shambles during the game. Their coaches shun the one effective pass play they run at the start of the game, pulling players in and out of the game at random. They seem to believe everything hinges on their players’ talent, rather than their own coaching strategy. Instead of imaging the best of what is possible, they dwell on what their players are not capable of. Ole Miss loses the game 35-14.

Watching from the stands, Sean knows the game’s outcome will have little effect on Michael’s career. Simply by playing as a freshman, his stock rises, and Leigh Anne informs Coach O that if his offensive coaches return, Michael will not. Coach O fires them the day after the loss, focuses on finding talent, and vows to play Michael at left tackle the following year. Despite the disastrous season, Michael collects accolades. He is the biggest athlete on the field and “freakishly gifted” (234). He picks up the college game “faster than anyone had the right to expect,” and he is highly effective “[w]hen he knew what he was supposed to do” (234). Michael goes into the off season determined to prove people right. He drops from 345 to 320 pounds while increasing his bench press capacity from 225 to 400 pounds.

When Michael occasionally ventures back to his old neighborhood in Memphis, “bad things often happened” (234). On one visit to his mother, Michael finds the police arresting her. When they discover he is her son, they cuff him as well. Sean tells Michael that police officers are unlikely ever to treat black people “graciously or even fairly” and that Michael should be polite and immediately call Sean when coming into contact with authorities (234). Lewis says the “inner-city social risks” Michael left behind “had followed him” to Ole Miss, in the form of his teammates (234). One teammate fails his classes and returns home to sell drugs, with drug sales being the only way the ex-player can see to make money. Three teammates have children. Another has so little knowledge of English and math it is as if he never attended school.

After the season is over, Antonio Turner, a teammate, approaches Michael and calls him a “cracker” (236). Michael shoves him. Turner shoves back, then says something that enrages Michael—according to Lewis, likely something referring to Michael having sex with Leigh Anne and Collins. Michael goes to his room to change his shirt, saying he does not want to get blood on the shirt he is wearing, then hunts Turner down at the tutoring center. Michael picks Turner up and hurls him across the room. A three-year-old boy is hurt in the scuffle. Michael sees the boy bleeding from his head and runs, as it is what Michael has always done when he is scared. Sean speaks to Bobby Spivey, Michael’s caseworker from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. She says his file has been lost, but she remembers Michael. The State took over his care when he was seven years old, and he had run away so often that they stopped looking for him around the time he turned ten.

Chapters 9-10 Analysis

In Chapter Nine, Lewis returns to the world of professional football to consider how football’s evolution impacted left tackles specifically. In the late 1980s, talented pass rusher Doleman burst onto the scene. His inspiration, he said, was Lawrence Taylor, and Doleman’s play disrupted Walsh’s offensive passing attack, as had Taylor’s. Steve Wallace became Walsh’s left tackle, but to excel in his role, he had to learn patience and accept being in the background. When Jerry Rice scored touchdowns, cameras did not linger on the blocker that made his touchdown possible, but when a pass rusher sacked a quarterback, endless replays would feature the left tackle’s failure: left tackles only get noticed when they make mistakes—unless, Lewis notes, they’re fast enough to get into the end zone while the cameras capture the high-profile players celebrating. And while football coaches and talent evaluators realized the growing importance of the left tackle position, it took a few years for salaries to catch up. By 2005, though, the left tackle became the second-highest paid player on the field, after the quarterback.

Lewis also draws implicit parallels between Wallace using observation and experience to learn how to block Doleman and Michael’s “kinesthetic sense” mentioned in Chapter Ten (217). This correlation draws further attention to Michael’s suitability for the position, both in terms of temperament and skills. At various points in the story, Lewis highlights Michael’s patience and determination and his ability to stay out of the spotlight, all qualities that benefit a left tackle. Coaches describe Michael as a “freak of nature,” the same phrase applied to successful NFL tackles (80).

Lewis also touches on both Tennessee and Mississippi’s race and class issues in Chapter Ten. By referring to the rivalry between Ole Miss and Mississippi State, Lewis shows that social division existed among whites in both states. This class rivalry represents another cycle that continues, somewhat nonsensically, in the Ole Miss-Mississippi State rivalry since many players on both teams belong to the same social class. The difficulty of evolving, of breaking out of cycles, is demonstrated through race as well: though segregation laws ended, segregation continued in practice, something Lewis points out both here and early in the book. He mentions Bobby Nix, a white former Ole Miss athlete who tutored current players. Nix took his black students around campus to show them they belonged, despite the noticeable stares they received. Lewis notes the stares may not have been due solely to the color of their skin but to their different ways of dressing and speaking. Whatever the reasons, the result is the same: social division and ostracism.

Sean, too, was realistic about racism in Tennessee. When police arrest Michael simply for being in his mother Dee Dee’s house when she was arrested, Sean gets him out then gives him “a little speech about black people and the police and the unlikelihood of the former being treated graciously or even fairly by the latter” (235). He instructs Michael what to do in any future interactions with police: politely follow instructions and call Sean as soon as possible.

Michael garners experience in both worlds—East and West Memphis. This, in addition to his exceptional play, makes him an ideal recruiting incentive for Coach O, but it also makes him a target of people like teammate Antonio Turner, who reject his assimilation into white Memphis culture. Chapter Ten ends with Michael running away after he throws Antonio against a wall, accidentally injuring a child in the process.