by Nick Eatman
Jackson then tied the game for the Redskins with a 28-yard catch, but once again, with forty-four seconds left to play, there was enough time for the Cowboys.
“Go win the game, Lucky!” Romo said to rookie return man, Lucky Whitehead, as he trotted back for the ensuing kickoff.
Whitehead didn’t win it there, but his 46-yard return gave the Cowboys a chance. Cassel then hooked up with Bryant for two passes before Bailey drilled his fourth field goal, this one from fifty-four yards out to give the Cowboys a 19–16 victory.
For the first time all season, the Cowboys had earned a victory without Romo in uniform.
The players’ celebration didn’t reflect a four-win squad. Then again, this 4–8 team was only one game back from its three rivals in the NFC East, who were all at 5–7. Better yet, the Cowboys were 3–2 in division play, giving them a tiebreaker edge if they could pull even in the standings.
After a few minutes of jubilation in the locker room, a stone-faced Garrett interrupted the commotion to address the team.
“Guys, it wasn’t perfect on offense. It wasn’t perfect on defense. It wasn’t perfect in the kicking game. But what was all over that, what was all over that for sixty minutes was fight. At different times in the game, there was an opportunity to look for an escape hatch. Over and over again, an opportunity to say, ‘pretty good fight, but it’s their night tonight.’ We didn’t do that.
“Don’t ever lose sight on what happened tonight. We’re going to build on this. When you have courage enough to put it all out there, and take advantage of an opportunity, you get another opportunity. And it’s waiting for us Sunday in Green Bay.”
Somehow, the Cowboys were still alive. And heading back to the place where their season died just eleven months earlier.
Chapter 16
WINTER WONDERLAND
Friday
The phone calls started about 8 a.m. on most mornings. There were sporadic calls throughout the afternoon, and then they picked up again in the evenings.
This was the household of Brandon Stephens, one of the best running backs in the state of Texas, who had just finished his senior season, wrapping up a four-year career at the varsity level. If it wasn’t recruiting coordinators or college coaches calling to get a piece of him, it was the countless number of reporters from recruiting websites trying to get the latest scoop on the eighteen-year-old and where he intended to play football at the next level.
Stephens had heard stories about the intense recruitment of other players, and even some teammates, but wasn’t expecting anything like this. And to think, what if he wasn’t already committed to Stanford? Had Stephens not committed to the Pac-12 school back in September, he knew the calls and text messages would’ve been over the top, probably something he couldn’t have handled.
“It was pretty crazy after the season,” Stephens said. “I thought it would die down, and it did a little, but there were a lot of schools that just kept calling.”
There was one particular university in Texas, an institution Stephens chose not to reveal, who went a little too far.
“I really had no interest at all in their school,” Stephens said. “But they never stopped calling and messaging. Finally, I had to just be upfront with them and tell this guy to chill out. There wasn’t any interest in that school. At times, I really got tired of the whole thing.”
As of mid-December, Stephens was holding strong with his commitment to Stanford, which finished its college season on a high note, winning the Pac-12 championship thanks to the legs of do-it-all running back, Christian McCaffrey. Whether it was running the ball, catching passes, or returning kicks, McCaffrey quickly took the college football world by storm. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting behind Alabama’s Derrick Henry, but did win National Player of the Year honors as voted on by the Associated Press.
While Stephens would get asked by friends if he still felt strongly about Stanford, especially considering McCaffrey’s presence, the Plano senior always had the same answer.
“No, I loved watching him play,” Stephens said. “Playing with Christian was an exciting part of going there. But I never really looked at the guys on the team like that. It wasn’t about the players. It was more about the school being a good fit for me.”
As Stephens headed into the Christmas break, Stanford indeed seemed the right fit.
Meanwhile, Darion Foster was still deciding on his college of choice. He had applied to Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, mainly for its prestigious criminal justice program.
Foster had always had an interest in Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls as well. Living with his uncle and aunt, he had been to several MSU sporting events, considering both Chris and Janna were graduates of the school. The two-hour distance from Plano was also appealing, giving him enough space and freedom to be on his own, but also close enough to get back home for holidays, birthdays, and maybe just to get his laundry done on the weekend.
But before he could focus on his next career move, Foster was focused on his wrestling moves, which were improving with each tournament.
At a tri-state meet at Lake Highlands High School in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas, Foster advanced to the final round and was not only ahead on points, but had also been controlling the entire match. Unfortunately, just a couple of minutes away from winning his first meet, Foster, exhausted and still a bit raw with his technique, got caught off balance and was pinned, finishing second.
In the stands, his uncle couldn’t contain his disappointment. After the match and before Foster got back on the team bus, he chatted with his aunt and uncle, and while Fisher didn’t say much, Foster knew “he was pissed off. I could feel it.”
Had Fisher been told a few weeks earlier that Foster would place second in any tournament, he would’ve been ecstatic and shocked. But watching him control a match and find a way to lose was hard for him to take.
At home, it was Janna who had to remind her husband that Foster did finish second, and that he shouldn’t overlook that accomplishment.
A few weeks later in Arlington, Foster finally got his victory, winning three matches over a two-day span in the 220-pound weight class, to claim his first-ever tournament medal. Immediately after the match, Foster found his phone and texted the news to Fisher, who wasn’t able to make the meet. Needless to say, it was one of the best text messages Fisher had ever received.
If that text was among Fisher’s favorites, the phone call he received the Friday before Christmas will also go down as an all-timer. At home watching the Class 4A state championship game between La Vega and Argyle, he got a call from Amarillo’s 806 area code, which is common considering the dozens of his family members who live there.
But this wasn’t someone from his family. Instead, Amarillo ISD Athletic Director Brad Thiessen was on the line to inform the coach that he had been selected as one of five final candidates for the head-coaching position at his alma mater, Palo Duro High School. The two had a quick chat, and Fisher agreed to be up there for a January 4 interview when he would meet with several school and district officials.
Now, this call to interview for a spot as a head coach was one he had received before, but never at a place that meant so much to him and his family. This wasn’t just any job. It was the one that inspired him to get into coaching. He knew when he interviewed for the position that his passion and desire would be evident for the simple reason that this job was different.
And now, Fisher could only hope the outcome of the upcoming interview would be different as well.
Saturday
In college football, there are two easy ways to determine a team’s success each year: either it played in a bowl game or did not.
Sure, there are different levels of expectations for all programs. Some are eyeing a national championship and nothing short of that is acce
ptable, while there are others that are ecstatic about just reaching a bowl game, giving their players and fans one last chance to celebrate a hopeful victory.
Art Briles is somewhat greedy. He wants both feelings to continue at his school. Yes, he wants a program ranked at the top each year, knowing the prestige of being considered one of the best in the nation will also bring in the best in the nation in terms of recruits.
But he always wants his players, coaches, and most certainly the fan base to remember where this program was not long ago. There was a time when the only reference to the postseason in Waco was the high school playoff games played at Baylor’s old Floyd Casey Stadium.
Now, the Bears were considered mainstays in the bowl picture—only this year was still a letdown. The failed chance to make the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans stuck with the team for a few days, but Briles did his best to quickly change the attitude and mindset.
Baylor accepted the invitation from the Russell Athletic Bowl to face North Carolina on December 29 in Orlando. And even though the payout for this bowl game was in the range of $2.2 million, a steep plunge from the expected $4 million the Bears would’ve received if they had gone to the Sugar Bowl, Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw said he was “honored” to have his team play in the game.
Considering North Carolina had recently lost to Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game, keeping the Tar Heels out of the four-team national playoff, Baylor had the chance to face a quality squad, which would hopefully appease some of the critics who had blasted Baylor’s non-conference schedule for its lack of high-caliber opponents.
Unbeknownst to many, at the end of the 2014 season, Baylor had agreed on a two-year contract with the University of Tennessee, where both teams would get one home game in the series. But the Southeastern Conference office stepped in and denied the game for unspecified reasons. Baylor was scheduled to buy out SMU from its 2015 opener in order to play the Volunteers before the game was overruled.
Whether as part of their regular-season schedule or in a bowl game, the country seemingly wanted the Bears to face better competition, especially after they finished 11–1 the last two years, only to lose to Central Florida in the Fiesta Bowl and then to Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl.
After falling to the Longhorns the previous Saturday, Briles sat and watched the UNC-Clemson game from his couch that night, knowing the Tar Heels would likely be his opponent if they lost as well. Right away, he saw a good team that he knew would be a tough opponent, even more so considering the uncertainty that surrounded his offense.
But the feeling of inspiration he felt after the Texas loss was starting to grow inside of Briles and rub off on his coaching staff.
“I think we felt like what we did, just drawing up plays at halftime, showed us that it could really be effective,” Briles said. “We knew if we had a couple of weeks of good practice with the offense, we might have something to work with.”
Those were intra-office conversations not meant for the public or media. While the national perception was that either Jarrett Stidham would be healthy in time for the bowl game and/or Chris Johnson would recover from his concussion and return to the starting lineup to play quarterback, the Bears were actually planning on running the “Wildcat” offense, or as they conveniently renamed it, the “WildBear.”
During the two extra practice weeks, Baylor worked extensively on the timing of this new offense, which called for the center to snap the ball directly to a running back, receiver, or whoever lined up back there.
“You guys aren’t quarterbacks out here,” offensive coordinator Kendal Briles said during a practice huddle one cool, but sunny December day. “You guys are snap-catchers. You never know who is going to get the snap.”
And hopefully North Carolina wouldn’t either. So all along, Baylor announced Johnson as the starter because, in truth, he would play and catch most of the snaps. But they were also prepared to use tailbacks Johnny Jefferson, Devin Chafin, and Terence Williams, and run motion plays often for receivers Lynx Hawthorne and KD Cannon to swing around on reverses.
One player missing from the equation was Corey Coleman, the nation’s leader in touchdown catches with twenty. Since the Oklahoma game four weeks earlier, when he suffered an injury during practice while playing defense in an attempt to surprise the Sooners by putting the ultra-quick receiver against OU’s Sterling Shepherd on occasional snaps, Coleman had been nursing a groin issue that was only getting worse.
Surprisingly enough, the twenty scores occurred in the first eight games as Coleman didn’t find the end zone once in the last four weeks. Some of that was due to the fact that Baylor was losing quarterbacks, some of it was the weather, and some of it was Coleman just not being his explosive self.
Art Briles is notorious for giving everyone around him a nickname or three. Players, coaches, support staff, media, friends, daughters—everyone he cares about seems to have a nickname from the coach. For Coleman, he was showing exactly why Briles had called him “Pretty Tough” for the last couple of years.
The double meaning referred to Coleman’s always-fashionable attire, his charming smile, and his all-around efforts to keep up with his appearance. Football players are supposed to be rough and rugged, but Coleman’s teammates have always called him “pretty.” Yet, when it was time to work and get dirty, Coleman had never had a problem putting in the effort, evident by his chiseled physique that looked nothing like the scrawny freshman receiver who arrived in Waco in 2012.
And Coleman’s ability to grind through a nagging groin injury that had developed into a sports hernia showed a toughness that few outside the Baylor organization knew he possessed.
While Coleman was leaning toward sitting out the bowl game to undergo surgery, he held off until after he got back from Atlanta, the site of the College Football Awards show where Coleman was one of three finalists for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the country’s best wide receiver in honor of NFL Hall of Famer Fred Biletnikoff.
He had already earned All-America and All–Big 12 honors, but this one was different for Coleman. This represented not only him, but also those at Baylor before him who helped create “Wide Receiver U,” the self-proclaimed nickname the school used to promote the successful pass-catchers who have transitioned to the NFL: players such as Kendall Wright, Terrance Williams, and even Josh Gordon, who starred at Baylor before drug issues ended his time in Waco. Sadly, failed drug tests in the NFL had also likely prevented Gordon from being one of the league’s most dominating receivers.
Still, the wideouts at Baylor are a fraternity as well as a family. So when Coleman heard his name called as the winner, beating out TCU’s Josh Doctson and Ole Miss standout Laquan Treadwell, he immediately thought of his “big brothers” who showed him the ropes. Coleman credited Williams and Wright, but also guys like Antwan Goodley, Tevin Reese, and Levi Norwood.
“Words can’t really describe how I feel right now,” Coleman said. “This is for the guys like ‘T-Dub,’ Kendall, and all the guys with Wide Receiver U. It goes for all the receivers that helped me get it and accomplish this. I’m just blessed to win the award.”
With Art Briles, Kendal Briles, and offensive line coach, Randy Clements, among those on hand in Atlanta, they thought they might get two awards during the evening’s festivities. But All-America left tackle Spencer Drango, one of three finalists for the Outland Trophy as the nation’s best lineman, came up short to Stanford’s Joshua Garnett.
While Drango still had one more chance to show off his blocking ability, the award show proved to be the final event for Coleman, who decided to undergo surgery for the sports hernia and miss the bowl game. Top running back Shock Linwood needed surgery as well for a fractured foot; Stidham was never cleared to practice because of his foot injury; and, obviously, Seth Russell had been out with a neck injury since October.
The top two quarter
backs, the leading rusher, and the nation’s best receiver were all planning to miss Baylor’s bowl game against North Carolina. Still, when the Bears boarded their charter plane on December 23 for Orlando, there was plenty of reason for excitement and hope.
Unlike other road trips, the entire coaching staff was allowed to bring their families on the trip. While New Orleans might have provided a more prestigious bowl game for the team, there wasn’t a better location for the families than Orlando, which features Disney World and Universal Studios. All four of Briles’ grandchildren, who ranged in age from one to six, were on the trip, and he expected them to have plenty of memorable moments throughout their seven-day stay.
But his focus on the task at hand never wavered. Sure, there were team functions that saw the players visit local hospitals, something the head coach called “humbling and inspiring,” and there was even a kickoff luncheon in a giant ballroom that welcomed players from both teams.
At one point during the event, which primarily honors many of the executives of the bowl game’s numerous sponsors, one of the prize giveaways called for both quarterbacks to stand up and throw a football to a random table of sponsors. North Carolina’s Marquise Williams drew a rather close table and tossed the ball a few yards to a man in a suit.
But Johnson wasn’t so lucky. He was asked to throw the ball some forty yards to table 72 in the back corner of the room. Trying not to break any dishes along the way, he heaved the ball, which fell incomplete to a sea of hands trying to either catch it or protect themselves from this rifling football that was hard to see in the middle of a dimly lit ballroom.
Most of the audience chuckled, mainly at the sight of a football hurtling through the crowd. To the Baylor coaches, it was more ironic than humorous.
Because for what they had planned for Monday night’s game, that very well could’ve been the longest pass Johnson would attempt all week.