The boy was in many ways unlikely. He had never thought of himself as a football player, and didn’t have the first idea what the fuss was all about. The event was a shift in football strategy that raised, dramatically, the value of the one role on the football field the boy was uniquely suited to play. Of course, any kid in America in 2004 thought to have a shot at a professional football career was going to get his share of attention. But if Michael Oher had been just any ordinary offensive lineman he wouldn’t have been viewed as a future NFL player. It was the existence of the new prototype—or, more accurately, the stereotype—of the NFL left tackle that made him so interesting to football coaches. They took one look at him and knew exactly what he was born to do. The market for football players had reshaped the offensive line and, in effect, broken out this one position and treated it as almost a separate occupation: What caused that?The answer lay buried in the history of football strategy.
