The Legend of Jesse Smoke (44 page)

She hit Sean Rice for 15 yards and a first down at midfield. Then she ran a quick draw play with Mickens. He got 7. She ran him again off tackle for 13. She faked it to him and hit Darius for 22 yards. Then she hit Gayle Glenn Louis at the 2. Not one Raider laid a hand on her.

On first and goal she dropped back a second, faked a throw to the right, then took off up the middle untouched and scored a touchdown. The fans erupted. It was positively deafening. Even the Raider fans cheered for her. Could they, too, have sensed this might be Jesse’s last game?

She kicked the extra point just as the second quarter ended: 13–7 Raiders. When Jesse came off the field, blood was all around her mouth, running from her nose. She took a wet towel and wiped it off. She sat on the bench with her head back until the halftime whistle sounded. Then she trotted with the rest of us into the locker room.

Coach Engram tried only briefly to get Jesse to sit for the second half. I looked at her point-blank and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I got a bloody nose,” she said.

“Jesse.”

The other players gathered around her. I couldn’t stop them. It was so close in that room. I’ll never forget the feeling of oneness—a powerful sensation of being a whole person, all of us, with one aspiration, one will, one hope. All eyes focused on her, and she turned her baby blues away for a moment, caught up perhaps for the first time with true awareness of a shared soul. She was not a woman then, and we were not men. We were simply human, a collective of one. I put my arm around her and said, “We love you, Jess.”

The men cheered.

She wiped her whole face with a white towel. When she put it on the bench next to her, the image of her face captured in blood and sweat, it looked like the Shroud of Turin.

Coach Engram surveyed his team quietly a moment, and then said, “Let’s go out and finish this thing.”

But for all of the team’s renewed sense of purpose, and true game day fury, they left that locker room in silence, as if headed for an execution.

The Raiders took the opening kick of the second half and started down the field, playing with confidence and pride. They had no idea what they were in for. Our defense settled in after they let the Raiders complete a 12-yard pass for a first down. Then, like some sort of iron trap, the defense clamped down hard. When they tackled McCauley for a 10-yard loss, they didn’t make any demonstrations or do any dances. When, on the next play Colin Briggs, our right cornerback, flipped Isaac Crow head over heels and caused him to drop the ball, they did not jump for joy. On third and 20, when McCauley completed a short 6-yard pass over the middle and Talon Jones leveled the receiver before he could gain a single yard more, the defense trotted silently off the field. They were all business and the Raiders had to punt.

Jesse took over on our 22-yard line and handed off to Mickens four times in a row, with the offensive line pushing everybody out of the way. Mickens gained 8, 13, 11, and 22 yards. Then Jesse faked a handoff to Mickens, dropped back, and hit Rob Anders on a shallow post for a 24-yard touchdown. She kicked the extra point and we were suddenly ahead 14–13.

We kicked off and the Raiders kick returner cut through a break in our special teams and ran it back for a touchdown to make it 20–14.

After that, it was like watching something staged; something rehearsed. The defense just would not let that vaunted Raider offense stay on the field. Orlando played in a quiet fury. Drew Bruckner stopped the run, and Talon Jones broke up passes to running backs.
Zack Leedom and Nick Rack, Elbert James, Mack Grundy—it didn’t matter who was in there—they played as if they knew in advance everything the Raiders were going to do.

Near the end of the third quarter, Jesse led the offense on a long march down the field, managing that team like a cardsharp. She’d walk to the line, look at the defense, then run the play with absolute precision. Short drops and dump-off passes. Handoffs to Mickens or Slater up the middle. Exact passes to the wide receivers just before they stepped out-of-bounds, or just as they turned on the post or on a buttonhook pattern. The Raiders tried to get to her, to knock her down, but they were almost helpless.

Twice she broke the huddle and walked to the line with blood on her chin. The players all noticed it. She’d spit through her face mask, and it, too, dripped blood. At the end of that long drive we were on the Raiders 16-yard line, first and 10. They still held on at 20–14. Jesse threw a quick slant to Gayle Glenn Louis and he caught it, charging toward the goal line, but he dropped the ball. The Raiders recovered inside their 5-yard line. Jesse came back to the sideline and grabbed another towel. I looked into her eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

Gayle Glenn Louis came over now and said, “I’m sorry, Jess.”

She was coughing blood into that towel. When she could talk, she said, “We’ll get it next time. You caught three balls to get down there.”

When he saw the towel he turned to me. “That’s a lot of blood, Coach.”

“Jess,” I said. “We got to sit you down.”

She wouldn’t look at me.

Our defense stopped the Raiders again near their 31-yard line and they had to punt. The third quarter ended and they still led 20–14.

Coach Engram called for Spivey to go in at the beginning of the fourth quarter, but Jesse ran out anyway. She went fast, as if she knew we were going to try and stop her.

“Goddamn it,” Engram said. “Spivey get out there.” But he was already moving out onto the edge of the field. A referee came over to Engram.

“Coach,” he said. “Your quarterback’s bleeding, did you know that?”

“Yeah, we know it.”

Jesse was already in the huddle with the offense. I yelled into my headset. “Jesse, get back here.”

Now only part of the story as presented in the movie is true. We
did
do everything we could to get Jesse off that field. Coach Engram called a time-out, and then we went out onto the field—Engram, me, even Coach Bayne. In the movie they play up the power of Jesse’s defiance, and they’ve got her ordering us off the field. Don’t get me wrong—she was a commanding presence most of the time, and I won’t say that if she
had
ordered us to leave her out there, we wouldn’t have done so. Certainly makes a better story. But Jesse was not defiant, right then. She was sad and her voice was less commanding, than, I don’t know … full of longing. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Okay? Just—please, don’t do this.”

“We’ll take care of her, Coach,” Dan Wilber said.

“I may never play another game,” she said. There were tears in her eyes—only the third or fourth time I’d seen that. But these were big, glistening tears.

Engram started to reach for her, then thought better of it.

“Let me do this. Just this one time,” Jesse said. “I know I can do it.” Blood dripped out of her nose.

Engram turned and started back for the sideline. Bayne and I followed. I didn’t look back at Jesse.

Bringing the offense to the line at the beginning of the quarter, Jesse started another one of those long drives down the field: Short crossing patterns to Exley and Anders; a beautiful 15-yard pass to Gayle Glenn Louis on third and 12. She got them down to the Raider 9-yard line before the Raiders stopped us, knocking down a quick
corner route to Exley. Mickens dropped a certain touchdown inside the 1-yard line. On third down, with nobody open Jesse had to throw the pass out of the end zone to avoid being sacked for a loss.

She kicked a field goal to make the score 20–17, but we still trailed by 3.

The Raiders got the ball out to their 32 with the kick return. Now it was really up to our defense, though the crowd kept chanting Jesse’s name. There were about 12 minutes left in the game.

Jesse stayed away from us when she came to the sideline, but she didn’t hide among the offensive players, like they had her doing in the movie. We knew where she was, and we knew what she was up to, too—sitting with them, talking strategy. The whole time she had that towel, and she was wiping her face with it.

Our defense once again stopped the Raiders on three plays and they punted to our 18-yard line.

Jesse ran back onto the field with the offense and put on one of those displays people still rave about. I know in the movie they have her driving us down the field and scoring the winning touchdown at the last minute, and it’s awfully dramatic that way, no question. But anyone who actually saw that game knows the truth of it.

Jesse completed eight straight passes as we marched down the field. Mickens caught one for 28 yards up the middle and was tackled at the Raiders 2-yard line. On the next play, Jesse faked it to Mickens then ran it around the right end herself for a touchdown. Eight straight pass plays. One run. When she faked that handoff, everyone in the stadium thought Mickens had the ball, until they registered Jesse herself waltzing around the end for that touchdown. We had the lead now, 24–20.

Just as they had been doing for the entire second half, the defense forced the Raiders to punt, this time to our 19-yard line.

Before Jesse trotted onto the field, she said, “You want to get in on this, Coach?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you and coach Engram call the plays.” It was so sweet. She was grateful that we left her in, and she was thinking of us, of what the game meant, and how we’d feel if we were more involved. I could hear laughter in her voice. She was so happy—enjoying herself so much—I was suddenly elated that we hadn’t taken her out of the game, no matter how sensible that would have been.

I called two running plays. Mickens up the middle for 8 yards, then the Green Bay Sweep around the left end for 12 more. We were on our 39-yard line. Jesse called time out and came to the sideline. I asked her what the hell she was doing wasting a time-out.

“Excuse me, Coach,” she said. Then she spat a huge gobbet of blood at her feet. “I didn’t want to do that on the field.”

“Jesus, Jesse.”

“Just keep calling the plays,” she said.

“I’ll let Coach Engram do that,” I said.

Coach Engram glanced over and half smiled, hearing me say that. He might even have winked at me, for all I can remember. “Leave it to Jesse,” he said. He meant it. She gave a bloody grin, waved at him and ran back out onto the field. That’s what happened. There was no argument on the sideline as depicted in that movie. Coach Engram didn’t yell at her to let him call the plays. She did call her own plays but that was exactly what Coach Engram and I wanted.

“It’s your game, Jess,” I said into the transmitter. “Go get ’em.”

She called a shallow slant to Anders that gained 8 yards. Then she hit Exley on a crossing pattern for 14 more. The noise of the crowd at this point was unbelievable. Absolutely thunderous. Now we were on the Raiders 39. I was like anybody else in that stadium, cheering as loud as my voice allowed, wondering what the hell she would do next. We weren’t coaches anymore, any of us. We were just fans, watching Jesse work her magic.

Jesse called a quick pitchout to Mickens and he gained 17 yards around the right end. On the next play, she faked a handoff to Mickens and hit Gayle Glenn Louis for a 22-yard touchdown. This
time he held on to the ball, holding it up over his head in triumph as he ran into the end zone.

Jesse kicked the extra point, putting us ahead now 31–20.

Champions to the last, the Raiders took the ensuing kickoff and tried to make a game of it. I know the final score is misleading, and it was good of the filmmakers to make the ending more dramatic. The Raiders did drive all the way down the field, used the clock as well as they could, and made it all the way to our 5-yard line. They did make four tries to get the ball into the end zone, and that stop by our defense was accurate. The only problem is, the game was almost over by then, and even if they
had
scored it wouldn’t have changed much but the final score. What the film left out was what happened when we took over at our 5-yard line with 3 minutes left. Jesse engineered another drive, this one 95 yards in seven plays. She hit Anders for 31 yards on the first play from scrimmage at our own 5. Then she ran a fake draw play with Mickens going up the middle and hit Gayle Glenn Louis for 28 yards down the middle. She was like a magician out there. Nobody knew where the ball was once she got it in her hands. When she faked the draw play to Mickens, all of us watched him thinking he had the ball.

On second down, at the Raiders 36-yard line, Jesse hit Darius Exley with a perfect pass up the right sideline and he took it in for another touchdown.

I know it makes a better story if Jesse is in agony, bleeding out of her nose and barely able to remain upright as she struggles onto the field and rescues us at the last minute, but it just isn’t what happened. For one thing, it’s pretty hard to convince anybody that when you beat a team 38 to 20, you’ve been saved by some late miracle.

For the day Jesse completed 19 of 23 passes, for 336 yards—and of the four she missed three were dropped balls. She threw three touchdown passes and ran for two more. Only Doug Williams of the Redskins, years before, ever had that kind of Super Bowl. The rest of the team was at peak performance as well. Mickens ran for
167 yards on 16 carries. Our fullback, Jack Slater, rushed for 72 yards on 12 carries.

We were Super Bowl champions, and Jesse was named Most Valuable Player.

My god, what a year that was. I still get tears in my eyes remembering it.

So there it is. The legend of Jesse Smoke. Except it’s no legend. It is the true story of Jesse Smoke’s first year in the NFL as it actually happened. In her rookie year that young woman took us to the Super Bowl and led us to victory. She did call her own plays in the fourth quarter of that last game, and those men played for her as if she were Joan of Arc herself.

In a way, she
was
a saint. She showed all of us a thing or two about being a person; about forgetting just a little bit, our notions about gender; we were all stronger, both as individuals and as a team, for knowing Jesse and playing with her. The men on that team came away from their time with her more determined, courageous, and willing to change and learn. Her one sin—the lie she told to the Alouettes and, indirectly, to me—is completely forgivable when you consider what she was up against, what she wanted for herself. And isn’t it what all of us want for ourselves—to make use of our talents? Jesse wanted to earn her bread doing something
she loved. And she believed she could earn it, if people would just give her the chance.