The Legend of Jesse Smoke (21 page)

The two guards and the left tackle pull out of the line and run to the left, taking out whoever’s in the way; the center blocks the middle linebacker; the sweep-side wide receiver takes out the linebacker or the cornerback on that side; and the running back looks for “daylight” and does his best to run through it.

We had all of a half a dozen running plays in our game plan that day and the Raiders pretty much knew we were going to run them, but our offensive line was strong and good enough to succeed. Our guys were really fired up, see. Engram saw to that. It is so much better in a game if the other team knows what plays you’re going to run and they still can’t stop it.

Mickens took the ball on the sweep and raced laterally toward the left end, found an opening, and gained 9 yards. (Anders flattened
the Raiders’ right linebacker.) First down on our 40. The crowd roared as though we’d scored a fucking touchdown. I saw Jesse telling everybody in the huddle to settle down and listen. No question, she was in charge out there.

On the third play, I called a center trap—a play where the center pulls out of the line as though he is going to lead a sweep, and our running back, following the fullback, goes through the hole created by the center when he pulls out. If the lineman across from the center goes with him, anticipating a sweep, the fullback hits the middle linebacker, shoves him out of the way, and the ball carrier gains right up the middle. If the lineman stays put, the linebacker usually follows the center and the fullback has to hit the lineman and get him out of the way. The only time the play doesn’t work is if both the lineman
and
the linebacker “stay home” and don’t go for the fake. The play calls for a very quick handoff, which Jesse executed brilliantly. The lineman and the linebacker went with the center, and Mickens gained 11 yards right up the middle. First down on the Raiders 49.

On the next play I wanted an off-tackle run again, but Jesse changed the play at the line, ran the 49 28 Red, which was a sweep to the right. This time Mickens found a huge gap, leaped over a diving safety, and ran for 18 yards. First down at the Raiders 31. Now the crowd really got into it.

And I got ambitious. What happened was all my fault, I admit. But I could see the Raider defense gearing up to stop another run, and I knew what our tendencies were in that situation. I always knew our tendencies, see; that was part of my job: Scout our own offense so I could see what other teams might be guessing about us in certain situations. Another run to one side or the other was precisely the kind of play we might run 95 percent of the time in a driving rain, from inside the opponent’s 40 on first and 10. So I called Double X2, Red22M, Quick Z. It was a play fake and quick pass to one of the wide receivers. All Jesse had to do was fake a handoff to Walter Mickens, then stand up and hit either Darius Exley on the right or
Rob Anders on the left, each running a quick slant to the middle. The receiver was to take the ball, turn up field, and run like hell. With the defense piled in close to the line to stop the run, that kind of play might gain 50 yards or more. The play called for Jesse to drop back only three steps, after she made the fake to Mickens, and then to let the ball fly. Jesse knew it well, had hit it perfectly every time we tried it in practice that week.

I saw her walk confidently up to the line as the offense took their positions. From up in the booth you couldn’t even tell she was a woman. She was just a quarterback, built like most of them, tall and lean. She stood behind center looking over the defense. Both the Raider safeties were right up on top of the linebackers, and both corners crowded our two wide receivers. They had eight men in the box—eight men, that is, within five yards of the line of scrimmage. It was absolutely perfect. They might stop a run, but what we had called, if we could hit it, would gain big yardage.

Jesse took the snap, but just as she was pulling back, Dan Wilber, who was taking his position to pass block, accidentally stepped on her left foot, sending her squirming down in the mud. She got back up as quickly as she could, but she missed the fake to Mickens, who went on by and hit the line, trying to fake a missed handoff. Jesse stood for only a few seconds looking for Exley or Anders downfield, and just as she saw Anders break into the clear about 10 yards behind the line, she got hit in the middle of her back by the Raiders left corner, who had blitzed on the play. Her head snapped back, her helmet flew off, and the ball sailed free. She went down hard on her chest into the mud with the cornerback on top of her, while Delbert Coleman, the Raider defensive end on the right side, picked the ball out of the air and raced 61 yards for a touchdown.

I know everybody in the world has seen that highlight film—it is always called “Delbert’s Revenge”—but I can’t look at it. The sight of her getting hit like that, on our first pass play, still makes me weak in the knees. It was 6–0 Raiders before we’d played 3 minutes, but I
wasn’t thinking about any of that. I didn’t even see Coleman score. I watched the Raider cornerback get up and strut away and then I saw Jesse turn over slowly on the field. She lay there a while, not moving, then Dan Wilber reached down and offered his hand. She reached for it, and I gave a sigh of relief. She was definitely conscious. He pulled her to her feet. She picked up her helmet and trotted to the sideline, staggering a bit as she got there. I thought of those fine bones in her neck and got sick to my stomach.

I picked up the phone and called down to the sideline. Usually either my offensive line coach or Jesse would answer the bench phone, but this time I got Greg Bayne, the defensive coordinator.

“Where’s Jesse?” I said.

“They’re looking at her.”

On the field, the Raiders were lining up at the 33 to kick the extra point, which, to a smattering of boos, made it 7–0. I saw Ken Spivey warming up behind the bench. “Is she hurt bad?” I said into the phone.

“I don’t know. She fell down when she got back here.”

I hadn’t seen that. I told Bayne to put Ken Spivey on the phone so I could go over the plays we would try to run when we got the ball back, but I also needed to talk to Jesse. When Ken got on the phone he said he was ready.

“You think she’s going back in?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Ken. “I can’t tell what’s going on. She’s on the ground, I think.”

The Raiders kicked off and the ball bounced through our end zone for a touchback. We’d be starting on our 20-yard line. There was a long TV time-out, and I watched the field to see what was happening over on the sideline. I saw a crowd around Jesse. The offense trotted on the field and waited in a sort of standing huddle for the end of the time-out. Spivey was at quarterback.

The crowd really started booing.

I heard Spivey’s headset start to crackle.

I called another running play. He put his hands up to the ear holes on his helmet to let me know he’d heard me. The referee blew his whistle, and then Spivey and the offense leaned down in the huddle.

I still couldn’t see through the crowd around Jesse.

They took Jesse to the locker room and X-rayed her back. (Seeing two of our medical staff walking her to the locker room, I felt something cold stab me in the heart; it was real fear for her, and it shocked me.) The X-rays turned out to be just a precaution. The doctor was afraid of broken ribs, but there was no fracture. She’d gotten the wind knocked out of her and she’d have a hell of a bruise, but … she was going to be okay.

After Jesse went out, as you may remember, the game just got away from us. Our defense spent a lot of time slogging in the mud, chasing Raider running backs and wide receivers. They didn’t run it on us much—although they certainly tried that move against Orlando that had been so successful in the Giants game. He got pushed out of the way a couple of times, but he’d learned to stay in his lane and fight for position. The trouble was, the Raiders were throwing short dump-off passes to the running backs in the rain, slicing through us like our defense had their feet planted in the mud. At one point, I was half
afraid Orlando would break a leg, the way he lunged out of the muck to throw himself at those dark, ghostly, little backs speeding by him, just eluding his grasp.

Spivey couldn’t hit a thing. We had the running game going pretty well, but eventually we needed him to hit something. A few times he lost his footing, too. He threw an interception in the second quarter that was a direct result of his front foot slipping out from under him as he was releasing the ball—the kind of thing that can happen to anybody. The ball, sailing too short and high, was, of course, picked off by a linebacker.

By halftime, it was 23 to 0. (The Raiders kicker had slipped in the mud and missed an extra point.) I’d gotten a report from Bayne early in the second quarter that Jesse was going to be all right. When she came back out of the tunnel, the crowd cheered for her, but Engram told me she was done for the day.

We were heading for another loss, though it would be no shame. The Raiders were favored to go all the way that year. And they’d already shown us they could whip us pretty bad in the preseason.

Still, any loss really takes it out of you. And we were losing very badly.

In the middle of the third quarter, the Raiders drove the ball 70 yards and had a first and goal at our 3. They missed a quick pass to the tight end, who was wide open and dropped it. Then they tried to go up the middle on us, but Drew Bruckner and Zack Leedom stuffed it good. No gain. It was third and goal from the 3. They tried to go around Orlando’s end, but he knifed through and dropped their running back for a 6-yard loss. The crowd cheered then, glad for something to cheer about. But the Raiders kicked a field goal, and now it was 26 to 0. Eight minutes to go in the third quarter.

Here’s the thing: If your game plan is to run the ball and you’re down by more than two scores late in the third quarter, you got to adjust. The game plan? That goes out the window. We had to pass, and we had to pass with Spivey.

What we’d practiced all week was short, quick passes to the wide receivers and running backs. We only had one or two long balls in the plan. Spivey could throw it hard and he could be pretty accurate, actually, but with only 6 minutes left in the third quarter and the ball on the Raiders 37-yard line, he got knocked down. He’d completed a 16-yard pass to our tight end to get to the 37, but the same cornerback who had dropped Jesse put Spivey’s face into the mud and he got up swinging. He hadn’t fumbled, but he wanted to kill somebody. Dan Wilber got a hold of him and sort of danced him back toward the huddle, but there was no calming Spivey down once he lost his temper.

On the next play he dropped back and then fired it toward Exley. It hit their left-side linebacker right between the numbers, but he didn’t have the hands to hold on to it. The ball popped into the air and a few people batted it around but it landed on the turf.

I called a draw play, but Spivey changed it at the line. He tried a deep pass to Anders on the left, but it sailed way over his head and out-of-bounds. The crowd was starting to chant, “We want Jesse! We want Jesse!”

Now it was third and 10. I called the same play we’d hit earlier to the tight end, only this time I wanted it run on the other side. The tight end goes in motion and runs the pattern from a yard or two off the line of scrimmage. It looks like it could be a running play to that side and that’s what I hoped the Raiders would be looking for, even if it was third and 10. Everything worked to perfection; the tight end was wide open, but Spivey, his face red as a football, hit him in the ankles.

Now it was fourth and 10 from the Raiders 37. We could try a 54-yard field goal, but our kicker was sitting on the bench with a badly bruised back. So Coach Engram, wanting to spare Jesse, sent in Dever. He missed it short and wide left.

Four minutes left in the third quarter now, and the Raiders had the ball near midfield with us still down 26 to 0.

You could feel something essential sapping out of everybody. Even up in the booth I could feel it. When you get to that point in a game, nothing keeps you playing but pride and heart. It’s not stubbornness. If it was just that, there’d be more violence; nobody would bother to play by the rules. Most of the time players stay out there and do what each play calls them to do, giving every single ounce of energy on each play, even when it’s completely useless. The game is over. What keeps them playing is heart and pride and a refusal to admit defeat even in the certain face of it. That’s what makes football so heroic. Only sometimes, when you’re not playing well and you know you can play better, and the weather’s in your face, and you’re beaten down so far you need to take a deep breath just to regain the energy to take another one, you can get to a place where defeat is in everything you do—the way you walk; the way you carry your head; hell, the way you stand on the sideline.

I could see that was happening to us. Head down, Coach Engram kicked the mud clods at his feet. Normally he paced, but not now. Now he just stood there. And when I said through the mike, “Keep your head up, Coach,” he ignored me.

Bayne was exhorting the defense, standing on the field sometimes, signaling to them. But the Raiders kept the pressure on, moving down the field, eating up the clock with short passes to their running backs, quick strikes over the middle to the tight end. They marched it all the way to our 12-yard line.

And then, something rather extraordinary happened. Orlando Brown intercepted a pass.

They had their tight end wide open again, but Orlando jumped into the air, knocked the ball back, then ran under it and pulled it in. He galloped 88 yards the other way for a touchdown. Nobody could catch him, as he galloped nearly 10 yards with each stride.

Dever kicked the extra point, and suddenly, with all of 1:30 left in the third quarter, we had a little life in us.

We kicked off (short, unfortunately; Dever was still out of his groove from that missed field goal), and the Raiders kick returner
broke through our special teams and ran it out to their 48-yard line. Coach Engram threw his clipboard down in a fit of disgust. Two plays later, our cornerback on the right side, Colin Briggs, fell down, and the Raiders hit a 52-yard pass to their All-Pro wide receiver Jeremiah Stubbs. Briggs had been corralling Stubbs all day; held him to two short receptions, but he slipped in the mud and that was that. Now it was 32 to 7. The third quarter ended after the Raiders kicked the extra point.