The Legend of Jesse Smoke (3 page)

The truth is, in spite of the All-Pro talent at starter, and the almost prissy cockiness of our bench, we were considered pretty weak at quarterback.

I got back from my vacation on a Thursday, but I didn’t go to Redskins Park right away. I had another few days to relax before I had to get back, and I wanted to do a little scouting.

This was a joke I kept up for myself: that I was actually scouting Jesse Smoke. The truth is, I wanted to see her in a real football situation, so I got on the Internet and looked up the Washington Divas. Turned out, they played an eight-game season, and though they were located out in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in Ruby Park, they played their games at Spellman High School in D.C. Tickets were all of five dollars. Their first game was three weeks away, on April 1, a Friday night.

So, they were a professional team, I guess, but three weeks to get ready for a season wasn’t a lot of time.

I went to the “tryouts.”

I saw Jesse zipping a few balls here and there and a lot of long, lanky women dropping most of what she threw. I saw her lighten up a bit, take it more softly, and gently lay the ball out there. After a while, she looked like our third stringer, Kelso, and the girls were catching it now. It was clear Jesse was going to make the team. The coach—a big burly-looking fellow who wore horn-rimmed glasses, hollered in a very high-pitched voice, and used his whistle way too much—kept her in for almost every drill. When one of the other Diva wannabes tried her hand at it, he would soon have Jesse talking to her, showing her where she needed to improve.

I was kind of sorry to see that she had to soften her throws, though. I really was. Seemed a shame to take somebody down from such a great height. See, the ability to throw a football forty to fifty miles an hour, it’s the equivalent of a ninety-nine mile an hour fastball.

The thing I noticed about Jesse’s play, though, wasn’t so much her arm. The coach had her holding back on that talent pretty quickly. No, what I noticed was her footwork. Only five quarterbacks in history, maybe, had perfect footwork: Bob Griese, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Tom Brady, and Jonathon Engram. Don’t get me wrong—there have been truly great quarterbacks who just didn’t happen to have very good footwork. Johnny Unitas always looked like he was trying to get his feet out of horseshit when he dropped back to pass. Sonny Jurgensen skipped in a little backpedaling semicircle, like a boxer retreating from an especially capable and damaging left jab. Brett Favre seemed to shimmy back, as though his pants were full of ice cubes. Joe Montana crossed his legs like a ballet dancer, not a quarterback, and sometimes he planted both feet and seemed to hop a little before he made up his mind where he was going with the ball. Peyton Manning backed up or retreated sideways like a man trying to keep his feet dry by dodging an oncoming wave on a beach. A lot of great quarterbacks just couldn’t master the footwork. Somehow each of those guys managed to overcome bad form, and perhaps that is why they were such memorable players—for all they managed to do in spite of their poor footwork. But Griese? He set the standard. The rest of those guys—Namath, Marino, Brady, and Engram, too—perfect footwork. I can’t describe it exactly, but I know it when I see it. And Jesse had it. When she dropped back to pass it was like watching a cartoon of perfection; like some instructional video from on high on the art of quarterbacking.

She also had an unbelievably quick release. Once she made up her mind to throw it, the ball left her hand nearly instantaneously.

When the tryouts ended, after Jesse had put her equipment in a big bag that Nate hoisted on his shoulder, I walked over and made my presence known to her.

The coach knew exactly who I was, and told me he was honored to meet me.

“I just thought I’d come out,” I said. “You know, see what’s going on here.”

He laughed. Then he told me he’d played for the University of Pittsburgh. “I was a guard.” He smiled. “Andy Swilling. I was pretty good, but I didn’t get drafted by any of the NFL teams. I couldn’t even draw their interest as an undrafted free agent. Too small.”

He’d made up some ground on his size, I saw, though not necessarily the right kind, so I didn’t say anything. Jesse motioned for Nate to put down the equipment bag. When he recognized me, he came over and took my hand. “How you doing? Come to see Jesse play?”

The coach looked at me. “You know Jesse?”

“She can throw a football,” I said.

“I know. I think we’re going to have a pretty good team this year.”

I asked him how long he’d been coaching the Divas.

“Since our first year.”

I waited.

“Six years ago.”

“It’s a whole league and everything,” Nate said.

“Who won last year’s championship?” I asked.

Nate looked over to Andy who answered for him. “The Philadelphia Fillies. They’re pretty tough.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. They’ve won it every year since they came into the league. Before that it was the Cleveland Bombers.”

“So the Fillies new to the league?”

Andy shrugged. “There’s a few women’s professional football leagues, believe it or not. The Fillies came from the WFA—the Women’s Football Association.”

“And your league?”

“We’re the IWFL. The Independent …”

“
Women’s
Football League.” I finished for him and he looked a little embarrassed.

“Right.”

“Strange, I don’t understand why I never heard of—” I stopped. “Anyway, it’s news to me. Isn’t that something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Women’s professional football.”

“There’s also the WPFL, the Women’s Professional Football League, and the—”

“No, I get it,” I said.

Jesse, who had not said a word up to this point, now moved a little closer to me. “What are you doing here?” she said, looking into my eyes.

“I wanted to see you throw a ball to somebody, you know, with folks chasing after you.”

“Why?”

“I told you.”

“You were serious?”

“You think I wasn’t?”

She looked away.

“I’d hoped you’d call me.” I tried to keep it easy, cheerful. “Thought we had a deal.”

“Seven hundred,” she said.

“Sure, why not?”

“Seven hundred for what?” Andy said.

“This fellow wants to use me for some sort of practical joke,” she said. Then she turned back to me. “I was going to call you.”

“It’s not a practical joke exactly,” I said.

She smirked, stepped back a little, then still looking at me said, “Let’s get going, Nate.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I’ll pay you.”

“Hey,” Andy said. “What
is
this?”

I looked at him.

“What’s going on? Are you trying to … What’s going on?”

“Nothing complicated. Really. I just want her to come down to Redskins Park when we have our second minicamp.”

“You want her to try out or something?” He said this with a half smile.

“Right,” I said. “Because that makes a hell of a lot of sense.”

“Well what do you want her for, then?”

“I guess I’d like some of our more complacent players to see her throw a football.”

“I’m sorry. But she’s not going to be able to do any of that until the end of our season.”

“Fine. The hell with minicamp. She can come to our first real camp, in July. Your season ends the first week in June. I looked it up.”

He looked at Jesse. Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “It would sure be something to see Jesse throw the ball to Darius Exley.”

That did the trick. “Okay, then. You get me in to watch her there,” Andy said, “and I’ll help arrange it.”

“I’d be glad to.”

“Nobody needs to help arrange anything,” Jesse said.

Andy reddened slightly. “No, I just meant I won’t stand in the
way
.”

“That would be great,” I said, feeling good about where we were leaving it.

As I was turning to leave, Andy touched my arm. “And maybe tickets? If you could spare a couple of tickets every now and then?”

“Sure,” I said. I had an allotment every year, and no family to speak of. I could always give away a few tickets if I needed to.

Coach Engram was in his office as usual when I finally reported back to Redskins Park, but I didn’t want to let him in on my little joke yet. I was pretty confident I could arrange the thing as long as I didn’t get into gender. He was on the phone when I stepped into the room, but he motioned for me to sit down. I glanced at the sports page a while, trying not to overhear the conversation, in case it was private, but then I realized he was talking to the Minnesota Vikings general manager about “upgrades” at various positions, including quarterback, but none of it seemed to go anywhere. When he was done, he hung up the phone and smiled. “Enjoy your vacation?”

I told him I’d had a great time.

“You go with anybody this time?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” he said, again with a smile. “So what’s with the shit-eating grin? What’s on your mind?”

“I found a quarterback.”

“Really.”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me.” He sat back and relaxed in the big black leather chair he almost never used. He looked just then like an owner, not a coach. He had put on weight since he quit playing—not enough that you’d call him fat, but he was definitely pushing the limits of his belt back then, and wasn’t near so lean as he is now. He had dark brown hair, slicked straight back off his forehead, and a wide, jutting jaw edged in short gray stubble. From the neck up he looked like a cross between Vince Lombardi and Don Shula. An imposing kind of thing sitting across from him, I gotta tell ya.

“This particular player has no college experience.”

“Where’d you see him?”

Now I was about to cross into the realm of fiction. I had to lie a little, see, and leave out gender, but I told myself it was innocent enough—just a small lie of omission. “In Belize, first, on the beach.”

He looked at me as though something had erupted from my forehead. Stumbling on a player when you’re not actively scouting and going through the considerable work and vigilance of the scouting department tends not to inspire a lot of confidence.

“Trust me, Jon. This player throws the ball as well as you ever did. I’ve seen scrimmages with—I saw this player in action against others, okay? I saw the footwork, the mechanics. Mechanically, she’s perfect.” I felt my blood turn up in the creases of my neck as I let out that word. But he didn’t seem to notice.

“You’ve talked to the kid?”

“I did. And I extended an invitation to camp this summer.”

“Why not get him in here in the spring? Or hell, next week?”

“I was lucky to get a commitment for this summer.”

“You believe in this guy?”

“Absolutely. You got to see for yourself.”

He shrugged. “All right. Go talk to Charley and get what you need from him. If it’s not going to break the bank to bring the kid in, I don’t see why not.”

I got up to leave. “You won’t regret it, Coach,” I said.

“What’s the kid’s name?”

“Jesse,” I said. “Jesse Smoke.”

He said nothing, but the name had to have gotten stuck in there under his scalp. It’s a pretty hard name to forget, ain’t it?

So I went to Charley Duncan, our general manager. Charley doesn’t like to spend a lot of time talking to assistants until after draft day, but once he confirmed with Engram, he told me to go ahead. I could sign Jesse Smoke for the minimum NFL salary, which was over a half a million dollars a year back then. Charley even told me I could give the kid a signing bonus if I wanted. “No more than sixty-five or seventy K,” he said.

“Absolutely.”

“And I’ll pray your boy can throw the ball better than Corey Ambrose.”

“Just has to throw it as well, right? Then we won’t worry if Ambrose gets a run in his hosiery or breaks a fingernail.”

“Very funny.”

He didn’t know how funny it was. Come to think of it, I didn’t either, until I was out the door.

You might think I should have been a little worried about folks not taking my idea too kindly; I mean, I really did half believe it was only a pretty elaborate joke. I was famous for that kind of thing anyway. But once I had permission to actually sign somebody? I started believing it.
Why not?
I found myself thinking. Why can’t we do the unthinkable and sign the first woman to an NFL team? I knew folks would say it was against the rules, but I couldn’t remember seeing anything about that one.

Well you know, I started doing a little research into the rules, and like everything else that is written down, the rules are subject to interpretation. They really are.

Case in point: The first forward pass was thrown not by somebody who knew the rules, just by a man who thought it might work. And when nobody could find anything in the original rule book preventing it, they simply added a few rules to govern it.

Legend has it that Knute Rockne of Notre Dame was the first to try it when he was a player there, but that’s not really true. It was Pop Warner, coaching in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who started using it pretty regularly and was beating people with it in 1907, long before Rockne helped beat Army with it in 1913. The Carlisle team was made up of American Indians—among them, Jim Thorpe—and they perfected it, the forward pass. Eventually college football changed the rules to make it more acceptable as a strategy in a game. All of this was before pro football even got off the ground, so the forward pass did begin in the college game. Before Pop Warner used it, only a few teams tried one or two of them in a game every now and then, but it was considered a “sissy” move by just about everybody. Then Pop Warner started killing other teams with it.

The new rules the leagues originally put in were pretty strict and forbidding. If you tried a forward pass and it fell incomplete, it was a fifteen-yard penalty. Also, one of your players had to touch the thing when you tried it. If you threw the ball over his head and he didn’t touch it, the defense could recover it and take it back the other way. Finally, you had to throw it over the middle only—a ten-yard space in the center—or you were penalized. For a long time that was all the rules said about it.