PDF Summary:The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis

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A Changing of the Guards

Lawrence Taylor changed the game of professional football upon his arrival in 1981. He introduced the element of fear in both the players and coaches that created a shift in priorities.

Fear is not a word often used when describing professional football players. By the time a player has reached the NFL, he’s played in enough games and taken enough hits that fear seems like it should be a distant memory. But when the Giants drafted Taylor and subsequently hired defensive coach Bill Parcells the same year, the combination created fear in the hearts of all coaches, offensive linemen, and quarterbacks across the league.

Parcells understood that fear was a beneficial aspect of the game. His goal was not only to stop the offensive line of scrimmage but also mess with the heads of the opposing quarterbacks. He wanted to instill a sense of panic, a lack of confidence, and an equilibrium disruption that would cause the quarterback to make rushed and misguided plays. And he had the perfect player in Taylor to carry out this plan.

Taylor was not your typical left tackle. He was large, tall, and fast, a combination not often seen. He was driven...

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These parameters had served Lemming well. In 1995, 14 of his top-25 picks became number one picks during the NFL draft. Sports broadcasting stations and polling organizations started using Lemming’s lists to guide their own top picks. And in 2000, Lemming was asked to select the inaugural team for the U.S. Army High School All-American game, a task he was given each year following.

The New Recruit

The demand for a certain type of left tackle in the wake of Taylor added a new dimension to Lemming’s standards. Before, a high school lineman who came in at 250 pounds was considered good-sized. But with the rise of massive and fast pass rushers, linemen were now required to be monstrous, and the type of person who could play left tackle was even more defined.

Recruits for left tackle now had to be at least 300 pounds, have long arms and large hands, and be fast like a sprinter and light on their feet like a ballerina. But finding this type of player in the high school ranks was like finding a silver dollar in a heap of quarters.

It was for this reason, and this reason alone, that Lemming took notice when he received a grainy, barely viewable video in Spring 2004. He...

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Michael excelled at track and field but struggled on both the basketball and football teams at first. Part of the issue was his lack of aggression, which made him weak defensively in both sports. Neither coach could figure out why this huge kid was so docile. Most kids who come from traumatic backgrounds have an inherent aggression that gets channeled through sports. Football, especially, provides these kids opportunities to express their rage in a productive way, but Michael never did. He lacked that aggressive fire, and his teams suffered for it.

In track and field, Michael participated in field events, like discus and shot put. Michael had no training in either event when he competed in the first meet, but his strength and ability to mimic others’ physical movement helped him come in first. That was the moment Coach Boggess realized Michael learned by watching movement. He started showing him performance videos of high-quality field athletes, and by the end of Michael’s track career at the school, he broke the West Tennessee sectional record in the discus and almost broke it for the shot put.

His success as a basketball player would come a different way. Skills and...

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Becoming Human

With his growing popularity, Michael started changing. Where once Michael was reserved and afraid of his own shadow, now he was gregarious at school and becoming popular. The more people told him he was special, the more he started to believe it. At home, he was becoming more outspoken, confident, and comfortable asking for things. The first thing he wanted was a driver’s license.

Leigh Anne was willing to get Michael a license, but she didn’t have any documentation for him. He had no birth certificate, social security card, or school ID. On paper, Michael Oher didn’t exist. To start the process of making him official, Leigh Anne collected an ID card and documentation from the school to vouch for his existence. But the man at the social security office said he still couldn’t find anyone named Michael Oher in his system. His hands were tied.

But Leigh Anne wasn’t one to take no for an answer, so she explained the situation to the man. She told him about Michael’s life and them taking him in, and it worked. The man continued looking and discovered something strange. **Michael Jerome Oher didn’t exist, but Michael Jerome Williams did. Leigh Anne was...

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But Hugh Freeze quickly became a liability in Michael’s decision process, as well, when he started interviewing for a job on staff at the University of Tennessee. He wasted no time in trying to impart to Michael all the reasons UT was the right school for him. Leigh Anne also wasn’t shy about her feelings about Michael attending Ole Miss, but she didn’t pressure him. But his tutor, a woman named Sue Mitchell, who’d been working with Michael on his grades five hours a day, six days a week for several months and also an Ole Miss alumna, did. On the day before Michael was leaving to visit the Tennessee campus, Sue told him that she’d heard it on good authority that the FBI conducted decomposition tests on corpses and buried the bodies under the football stadium.

Many people had a vested interest in where Michael decided to attend college, but he took it all in stride. He never committed to one school or another in a serious way and entertained any and all offers to visit campuses in an official or unofficial capacity. The only caveat was that **if he was intending to go to Ole Miss, the Tuohys thought it best to officially adopt him to avoid looking like boosters offering...

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The rivalry game was called the Egg Bowl because of the egg-shaped trophy passed back and forth depending on who won the game. Ole Miss hadn’t lost the game in more than four years, and they didn’t want to start now. It would not only be an embarrassment in front of the rival crowd. It would be national humiliation. And it would also mean death for the offensive coaches, especially DeLeone.

For Michael’s part, he did his best to follow the plays and support his team. He mostly caught on and performed exceedingly well in his new position. But he also struggled and was lost and confused on the field during play. Usually, his good games came after hours of extra practice with Sean, who ran through all the plays with Michael beforehand. Playing in the SEC was a far cry from the three-play offense at Briarcrest, and an error meant more than simply an open player. It was the difference between the quarterback walking off the field or being carried off the field. The pressure was high, and it was intensified for this final game.

The embarrassment started immediately and swiftly. The inability of the Ole Miss offensive coaching squad to come up with a strategy that could harness...

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Michael’s father didn’t stick around long after he was born and ended up back in prison. Dee Dee no longer wanted her child named after that man, so she started referring to him as Michael Oher, her last name. Four years and four more children later, Dee Dee was firmly addicted to crack and using her government checks to support her habit, leaving her 7 boys and 3 girls to fend for themselves. Michael’s earliest memories are of going for days without food, drinking water to get full, and sleeping outdoors.

Despite these hardships, Dee Dee’s children loved her. She wasn’t mean and told them she loved them often, and Michael and his siblings started to worry that they’d get taken away from her and separated from each other. In April 1994, when Michael was almost 8, their worst nightmare came true. Police officers showed up to take Dee Dee’s children. The boys were able to escape, but the girls were taken away. Michael never saw his sisters again.

Foster Care

Several weeks after the girls were taken, the police found Michael and his brother Carlos at school. They were taken to live with Velma Jones, an obese woman who used to sit on them when they were bad. Velma...