First in a three-part series of excerpts
By Barry Alvarez with Mike Lucas
“I loved coaching in Old Coal Miner’s games: Two teams standing toe-to-toe and slugging it out. Very little passing. Both defenses are pounding each other pretty good. Nobody is moving the ball very much. And everything is played between the tackles.
It’s a conservative, hard-nosed, physical brand of football. It’s about solid fundamentals and toughness. And it goes back to how I first learned to play the game in Pennsylvania, where the lifestyle, work ethic and tradition dictated how you played in the ’50s and ’60s.”