War Without Death: A Year of Extreme Competition in Pro Football's NFC East

(The Penguin Press, 337 pages)

by Mark Maske

The 2006 season in the National Football League's most cut-throat division offered enough intrigue to fill several books.

There was intransigent coach Bill Parcells battling incorrigible receiver Terrell Owens with the Dallas Cowboys a mismatch that led to TO's OD and Parcells' eventual retirement. Second-string quarterback Jeff Garcia enjoyed an unlikely resurgence in Philadelphia after superstar Donovan McNabb's season-ending injury.

Running back Tiki Barber's stunned the New York Giants by leaking word in midseason of his impending retirement. And Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs struggled in vain to right the ship for free-spending owner Daniel Snyder in Washington. Maske, a Washington Post sports columnist with more than two decades of experience, tries to squeeze all those stories and several others into his 337-page chronicle.

The result: a good read with a fine overview of the teams and the division, but not enough detail or insight for those die-hard types who once spent December afternoons in the scary 700 level at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium or donned pig snouts at Washington's RFK Stadium (before the Eagles and the 'Skins moved into spiffy new homes).

Maske covers plenty of familiar ground with the nationally known faces in the NFC East, which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as the NFL's toughest division.

Its four teams are rife with celebrity owners (Snyder, Jerry Jones), prime-time players (Michael Strahan, McNabb, Clinton Portis, Owens) and larger-than-life coaches (Parcells, Gibbs, Andy Reid and Tom Coughlin).

But the format of jumping from team to team prevents Maske from delving too deeply into the smorgasbord of sub-plots available as do forays into the selection process behind choosing Roger Goodell as the new NFL commissioner. The book instead zips through a full year in the division, from the New Year's Day 2006 loss through the offseason, training camp, the regular season and for three NFC East teams the postseason.

War Without Death (an unfortunate title, given the current world climate) is more wild card playoff team than Super Bowl contender.