The Legend of Jesse Smoke (40 page)

“I do, actually.”

“Are you a member of the players’ union?” A woman in the back row asked.

“We all are.”

“Did any of your teammates join in the effort to keep you from playing?” asked Roddy now. Leave it to this guy to look for the worm in the apple.

She hesitated. I saw her look a bit back in the crowd. Was she looking for Ambrose, for some sign of what she should do? But then she just said, “No. Everyone on our team was behind me.”

“Did you watch the game against the Bengals?” another woman asked.

“Yes. I was in the owner’s— I was in Mr. Flores’s box.” She glanced at Flores and he raised his hand a little, smiling like a politician.

“You think Ken Spivey did a good job?” Roddy asked.

“Of course. Ken’s a great quarterback.”

“But you’ll be glad to get back on the field?” said another voice from the crowd.

“If that’s what coach wants. I just want to win.”

“But you do want to be number one again.” Roddy was persistent. He leaned forward, his microphone held high.

“Sure I want to play. Of course I do. I haven’t practiced this week, though. I don’t even know what plays we’re going to run …” she stopped. “But, look, we’ll figure it out, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to play.”

Somebody asked then if she’d reunited with her mother. I was surprised that anyone in the press was even aware of their troubles. Liz looked at Jesse, smiling, and for a moment they seemed to really see each other, to understand something the rest of us could scarcely guess at.

“We’re fine,” Jesse said, turning back to the cameras and lights, smiling that broad, freckled smile. “At least my mother never doubted I was a girl.”

Liz had bright tears in her eyes, and the laughter in the room was loud and full of genuine affection. Even reporters, collectively and individually, can be moved to empathy and warmth on occasion, you know? With all their lights and cameras and notepads and recorders, they can still be human beings at times.

Jesse ended the press conference by stepping down off the stage, and we all followed her into the crowd. On the way to the exits some
of the more hardworking reporters wanted to know if I was going to try and get Jesse ready to play in three days. I just said I’d have to see where we were. I really didn’t know if it was realistic for her to play so soon. Sometimes it’s possible for a player to run through the plays we’ve put in, participate in the walk-through, and then manage to get it to work on the field. But Spivey had put in a full week’s work preparing for this game, and I knew our coach.

I was right about what Coach Engram would do that weekend. We had a walk-through on Friday and he let Jesse go through a few things with the first-team offense, but for that week, it was Spivey’s team. Tampa Bay came in as fired up as any team we’d played that year. They
had
to win.

Spivey started and did well enough. He finished with 13 completions in 28 attempts, for 244 yards and 1 touchdown. He threw two interceptions, one of which led to a Tampa Bay field goal. Walter Mickens rushed for 159 yards on 33 carries. We pounded him into the line over and over again, trying to keep Tampa Bay’s offense off the field. But our defense was really incredible. With Orlando Brown sitting it out, Dave Schott played the game of his life. He was always good at stopping the run, but in this game he even pressured the Tampa Bay quarterback and caused a fumble. He didn’t get a sack, but he was in the guy’s face all day. He must have learned something from watching Orlando all year.

We won the game 17 to 13.

The following week we had to travel to San Diego. With a full week to prepare, Coach Engram announced that Jesse would take over the number one spot again, though not without complimenting Ken Spivey on the job he’d done in her absence. Spivey really had come through for us, even learning to control his famous temper. (It didn’t hurt that, with our crack offensive line, he wasn’t getting bumped very often.) Asked how he felt about being demoted for Jesse, he said, “She’s the best player at the position. Look, I want to play, and I’ll be ready. But Jesse’s our number one and I’m behind her. I’ll say it.” I was really beginning to like the guy.

All week in practice, Jesse seemed a bit rusty. Her passes sailed a bit on her—either too high or just a little bit out in front of where they were supposed to be. Darius was fully recovered from his injury, as quick and fast as ever, but we were afraid he’d get hurt leaping for those high throws in practice, so we let him sit out the last day of full-contact drills. Rob Anders also sat out a while, and Jesse got used to throwing to Sean Rice, Jeremy Frank, and Jerome White. Coach Engram said we would have the hottest corps of receivers in the playoffs, if we got that far. Happily, near the end of the week, Jesse started to settle back in and throw more accurately.

Every day after practice, she went through several field goal drills—the same ones she’d been doing when I first discovered she could kick, only this time she had her long snapper and holder on each one. On Friday I stayed out there and watched her. They worked from one side of the field to the other, with the center snapping it from the 7, the 17, the 27, the 37, and even at the end from the 47-yard line. At the 47, it’s 63 yards to the goalposts. She made 7 of 10 from that distance. All of them went right at the opening. Two of her misses bounced off the crossbar, and the last one fell short. While I was out there, Edgar Flores sidled over to me. He was more relaxed, wearing a tan leather jacket and black slacks. I only glanced at him and looked away, afraid he’d notice the expression on my face when I saw him coming.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Just watching, like you.”

“Really?”

“She’s something, isn’t she?” he said, just after Jesse made one of her 63-yarders.

“Never seen anything like her,” I said. “Male
or
female.”

“She’s certainly big enough to be a man. I couldn’t stand to be with such a horsey woman.”

For some reason this really hurt my feelings. I can’t explain it, except to say that I was always very protective of Jesse—not that she needed it—and Flores’s remark was so rank and insulting it infuriated me.

“Come on, she’s a beautiful woman,” I said. “You’re pretty nuts if you can’t see that.”

He didn’t seem to notice my ire. “Is it true that she never dates anybody on the team?”

I looked at him. “Is there something on your mind? I mean, you already asked me that.”

“And she pretty much hangs around …” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“She hangs around the wide receivers and her offensive line,” I said. “If that’s what you’re asking. They’re all pretty close.”

“Well, birds of a feather.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t blame ’em either. They’re better people than most of us.”

He glared at me, but he had nothing more to say.

We were going to have a battle on our hands with the Chargers. They were 11 and 4, just like us, and leading their division. The flight to San Diego was long and bumpy. Jesse slept next to Dan Wilber up in front of the plane with me, Coach Engram, Walter Mickens, Darius Exley, Rob Anders, and Edgar Flores. Before Jesse fell asleep,
all of us went over the game plan again, briefly. The hope was that we could take advantage of San Diego’s rather light defensive line, and their corners, who were a bit shorter than most. It was probably a good thing, I said, talking about how to play them, that Jesse’s passes had been a bit too high during the early part of the week, as it prepared our receivers for leaping and catching balls over the hands of defenders.

“My passes won’t be high in the game,” Jesse said.

“Even so. Wouldn’t hurt if they were,” I said.

She smirked. “If you
want
them high, I’ll throw them high …”

“Just run the plays called, Jesse,” Engram said. “And throw it like you always do.”

I don’t know whether our game plan was wrong or what, but in the first quarter we couldn’t seem to get anything going. We kept stalling on third down and soon fell behind 3 to 0. A dropped pass here, a holding penalty there, several blown assignments and lost yardage at crucial times—all of that kept us scoreless for the entire first quarter. Luckily, early in the second, Jesse managed to tie things up with a 33-yard field goal.

There was no scoring for the remainder of the first half. Jesse drove us downfield on a couple of very long drives, but Mickens fumbled on the San Diego 12-yard line on one of those, and on the other, Jesse tried to hit him in the flat and the ball got knocked into the air by a linebacker and intercepted by the safety. The interesting thing on that play is that Jesse ran the safety down and collared him from behind. Took him down like a damn coatrack. He was really surprised, and the crowd—the San Diego home crowd, mind you—went wild for a while.

At the beginning of the third quarter, San Diego got a drive going. Orlando was sitting out again and they started running to that side. Dave Schott was usually great against the run, but his success the week before rushing the passer made him a little too aggressive that way in the second half. Twice they ran right by him while he was
taking a wide rush to the quarterback. Each time they used that play it was third down and their running back gained enough yardage to keep the ball.

On the sideline during a commercial time-out, Coach Bayne showed Dave a few pictures so he could see what they were doing. They kept running that play by him, showing pass and then running it. Bayne got him to see how they were doing that, and with his help the defense stiffened inside our 30-yard line. With a little less than 3 yards to go, San Diego showed pass again and handed off to their running back, but Dave held his ground and hit him just as he cut toward the line of scrimmage. They had to go for a field goal, which they made.

Now the score was 6 to 3. It almost stayed that way. Their defense was really good, and everything we tried they seemed to have the answer for. Their defensive backs kept knocking balls out of the air and their pass rush forced Jesse to hurry on several plays. She didn’t dance a lot, she stood her ground and got hit plenty of times, but they were on her so fast a lot of the time she was forced to throw it before she was ready. The clock just kept ticking away, and we kept punting back to the Chargers.

On the scoreboard we could see that the Giants had beaten up on the Patriots 38 to 3. They were now 12 and 4. We needed a win to keep pace in the division race.

Early in the fourth quarter, Jesse started clicking on short, quick passes to Gayle Glenn Louis and Walter Mickens. Then she hit Sean Rice on a crossing pattern about 15 yards downfield. He caught the ball, ducked under a tackle, and raced to the San Diego 9-yard line. On the next play, Mickens ran around the left end and scored. Jesse kicked the extra point and we had the lead 10 to 6.

On the next series the Chargers went three and out. We took over on our 26-yard line. I called a trap on the right side with Mickens and he gained 7 yards. On the next play I wanted another run up the gut, but Jesse changed the play at the line, dropped back into the
pocket, drifted a little to her left under the pressure, and threw a perfect pass, 40 yards in the air to Sean Rice racing down the right sideline. He took it the rest of the way for a 67-yard touchdown pass. Jesse kicked the extra point for a 17 to 6 lead, and that’s how it ended. The Chargers never crossed midfield after the third quarter.

I don’t just credit Jesse with this—although she had to be a part of it, because everybody seemed to play harder and pull together so completely after the lawsuit—but for the first time since I got into coaching, I was with a team that was playing together on every level. We were like a college team—full of fight and emotion and true comradeship—only a helluva lot more seasoned. Our defense was every bit as good and dominant as our offense. And we were putting everything together at just the right time of year. This was football as I’d never seen it played before.

After the San Diego game a lot of the Charger players came up to Jesse, wanting to get close to her and pat her on the back. Most of them said, “Great game,” or “Good job, QB,” or something like that. They seemed to want her to know they hadn’t been in favor of what the players’ union had done on their supposed behalf. San Diego’s quarterback, a guy named Jake Pauley, said, “Congratulations, Jesse. We’ll see you guys in the Super Bowl.”

I thought he might be right about that.

We had to fly to Green Bay the following week for a game on Christmas Eve, and then we’d have the Giants at home.

The plane ride back from San Diego was a loud and happy celebration. Our only injury was to Dan Wilber, who got kicked in the shin late in the game and had to limp off the field for a few plays. He had a pretty ugly bruise but said not to worry. He’d be ready the following week.

Green Bay could be tough if the weather was bad, but, at just 7 and 9 they’d been decimated by injuries. Coach Engram announced on the plane that Dave Schott would continue to play in Orlando’s place.
Meanwhile, Talon Jones was knocking people into oblivion at linebacker and Drew Bruckner was now getting good and healthy. Everybody was beginning to believe in us. Even if this
didn’t
turn out to be our year, it was already a season that no one would forget. I couldn’t wait to see Jesse in the playoffs.

Green Bay was easy. The weather was unseasonably warm for that time of year, sunny and in the low 40s, with almost no wind. Jesse had a great day throwing. She completed 18 of 22, for 351 yards and 5 touchdowns. Exley caught two—one from 40 yards and the other from 36. Anders caught one for 81 yards (Jesse put it in the air more than 55 yards before he caught it), and Sean Rice caught two—one from 15 yards and the other a 31-yard pass and run on a short wide receiver screen. Walter Mickens ran for 144 yards on 16 carries, scoring a touchdown. Jesse kicked two field goals, a 28-yarder and another from 34.

As for defense, we held Green Bay to 109 yards of total offense. They didn’t get the ball on our side of the field all day. Damned if we didn’t shut them out. Our defense had eight sacks. The defensive line had four (even Dave Schott got one) and Talon Jones, still playing middle linebacker, had three sacks of his own. Colin Briggs, our right cornerback, had a sack and two interceptions. The final score was 48 to 0.