Blind side: family and adopted child achievements

Lawrence Taylor is a tackle in the football team, the Giants. He is a fierce player who scares many quarterbacks, a quality not known to appear on quarterbacks until Taylor arrived. He ended many quarterbacks’ careers and injured others by his aggressive play. However, he made his team become one of the best teams in the NFL after becoming one of the weakest. During one game, Taylor broke the tibia and fibula of Joe Theismann, one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL from the Redskins team. He brutally broke them to the point that people heard the sound of breaking from the sidelines and the bones were seen out of his flesh with blood gushing out. Unfortunately, Theismann’s career ended after this accident.

The novel then talks about Tom Lemmings, a man who decided to create a new career: finding good American football players from all over America in the different high schools. He would see their tapes, choose some of them, interview them in person, and choose the best of them. His choices were usually included in different magazines and newspapers. Interestingly, most of the players he chose as the best truly became all-star players later on in their football career. Lemming finds a tape of an interesting boy called Micheal Oher, but he doesn’t find any trace of him. After a long search, he was finally able to meet him in person. Oddly enough, Oher didn’t speak a word, and refused to fill the form that would include him in the NFL.

Big Tony is a man whose mother just died. Her wish was for Tony to put his son, Steven in a Christian school in the east. However, Big Tony wasn’t just responsible for one boy, another homeless boy who Tony never knew where he came from decided to stay with him. This boy turned out to be Michael Oher, and everyone called him ‘ Big Mike’. He never spoke to anyone, and his grades were extremely bad. He didn’t put any effort and failed too much to the point that the schools he went to faked his grades just to make him move on.

Big Tony went to a school called Briarcrest Christian school, and it was a school of religious and high-achieving students. Mike wasn’t one of them. Oddly enough, he was accepted because of his big size and how it would help the basketball team. However, the principal told him that he will not join the team until he shows them that he can study and get good grades. Many teachers complained that he did not even try to solve a test. Worse enough, he did not know basic information about the subjects he is taking.

Sean was a rich man who saw Mike and decided to know his story. Mike didn’t cooperate as usual. However, Sean’s wife, Leigh, was able to help Mike by buying him clothes and other things and driving him home. She was able to get from him some answers about his life.

Lemming meets Michael, and he gets nothing out of him. However, Lemming saw something in Michael, and decided to tell colleges about him. Michael joined the basketball team after starting to get D’s in his school. His coach also realised that Michael had a talent: to learn something, sports specifically, by just looking. Michael simply looked at the coach or his teammates and was able to fully grasp the game and its rules. Many college coaches starting visiting Briarcrest just to see Michael play, wanting him to join their football team.

Bill Walsh is a football coach who tried many strategies to defeat Lawrence Taylor. Michael got scholarships from numerous universities.

Michael decided to get his driver’s license, and in order to get that, he need a birth certificate, which was with his mother. Leigh urges him to go and meet his mother, in which he follows and gets it. Michael’s mother is a drunk, broke woman who left Michael at a young age after she divorced from Michael’s father. Michael’s true name turns out to be Michael Jerome Williams Junior, not Michael Oher.

Leigh and her children receive many questions and criticisms as of their ability to live with a large black high school boy. She kept explaining that she treats him and feels like he is her child, and her children have an excellent relationship with Michael.

Michael got better at his school, with his classmates, and with his communication with everyone. He started getting better grades and had more friends. He got closer to his family. He decided to go to Ole Miss for college as a university. He faces a problem: his GPA is not enough for him to go. So Sean tries to get him an excuse of having a learning disability. However, Michael turned out to be the opposite. He has excellent visual memory, but he doesn’t get information that is simply read to him or explained without visual demonstrations.

Michael graduates from Briarcrest and will go to Ole Miss as a football player. He becomes more fit and healthy. He gets into a serious fight with one of his colleagues, Antonio. After the fight, Michael is no where to be seen. After several days, Michael calls Sean, who manages to find a way for Michael out of jail if he has to go.

The story then shifts to Michael’s past, and how his mother had bore many children from different fathers. How Michael and his family were very poor because of his mother’s excessive drinking. How he started living in the streets with no money, trying to survive. Then living with Big Tony and finally meeting his coach and future father, Sean.