About the Author

Joe Zagorski, a native of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has been a member of the Pro Football Researchers Association since the mid-1980s. He is the author of many pro football articles over the years for their publication, The Coffin Corner. His first book, The NFL in the 1970s: Pro Football's Most Important Decade (McFarland and Company, Inc., publishers) , was rated by the Library Journal as one of the top ten football books in America in 2016. It is a comprehensive, year-by-year account of the great decade of the 1970s in pro football. It has been lauded by the likes of ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, who proclaims that the book weaves "...complex historical narrative into a series of wonderful stories and personality portraits that will forever live in the fabric of American sports."At the same time that his first book was released, Zagorski was also credited as a contributing writer to the book The 1966 Green Bay Packers (also published by McFarland and Company, Inc.) . In that book, Zagorski wrote separate chapters on Herb Adderley, Willie Wood, and Doug Hart.His second book is entitled The Year the Packers Came Back: Green Bay's 1972 Resurgence. It is an in-depth story about the 1972 Packers, as seen through the eyes of several of the players and people who were a part of that interesting and often forgotten team. It is a story of how a group of men, many of whom were new to the team, managed to gel almost immediately to claim a division title...the only division title won by the Packers during the 1970s. But what really made this team unique was how the players were forced to deal with many problematic decisions, which came from their head coach. Published by McFarland and Company, Inc., it was released in November, 2019. According to former Green Bay Super Bowl XXXI Champion head coach Mike Holmgren, "That (1972) Packers team needs to be remembered, and Joe Zagorski's book represents a good first step forward in making sure that they are remembered."Zagorski's third book is entitled America's Trailblazing Middle Linebacker: The Story of NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier (published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020) . It is a long overdue biography of one of the greatest middle linebackers in pro football history, who also happened to be the first African-American middle linebacker in pro football history. The narrative traces Lanier's life from his high school years in Richmond, Virginia, to his college years at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, to his 11 seasons as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, to his post-football life as a business CEO, and finally, to the steps of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Zagorski also edits a Facebook page entitled The NFL in the 1970s, and he has contributed articles to the blog Pro Football Journal. In his spare time, Zagorski volunteers with the Tennessee Chapter of the NFL Alumni Association on a variety of charitable activitie

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