by Monte Burke
That U-turn may have saved his life and the lives of several others. He’d been on his way to that man’s house.
He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. “Contrary to popular belief, prison does not give you street cred. Anyone who glorifies it is an idiot,” he says. “It only lets your dumb ass know that you got caught doing something wrong.”
But prison turned out to be a good thing for Clarett. It was where the fog finally started to lift. “I cleared my head, away from the drugs and drinking,” he says. “Suffering causes you to mature.” He became a voracious reader, knocking out 150 books in prison, including the works of Tolstoy, Twain, and Confucius. He became particularly interested in finance and subscribed to Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal, teaching himself about the stock market. He read everything he could about his new hero, Warren Buffett. He started a blog, The Mind of Maurice Clarett, filled with aphorisms that he read over the prison phone to his girlfriend, who posted them. He was released from prison early for good behavior, to a halfway house. He tried out for the Nighthawks in 2010 and made the team, playing sparingly while struggling mightily to get back into shape.
Clarett ends his introduction by talking about his long road to redemption, the joy he finds in simple freedoms like watching his five-year-old daughter run around the house. He talks about the positive example he wants to set for people, to help them avoid the trouble he’d found in his life.
“I don’t want people to say ‘Don’t be like Maurice Clarett,’” he says. “In fact, I want the opposite. I want people to see me now and say they want to be like me. And I’m working every day to earn that.”
As Clarett wraps up, there are audible gasps and a few whispered “holy shit”s in the room. Some of the coaches stare at Clarett with stunned, almost fearful looks on their faces. There is a brief silent pause as Clarett sits down. Then the players and coaches slowly disperse.
When Joe gets up to speak, the last to do so after two weeks of introductions, he tells the team about his coaching and business background. But he mainly focuses on his childhood. It was by no stretch of the imagination as rough as what some of his players went through. But Joe’s childhood was no piece of cake. He can relate to their experience. He had the same toughness, the same powerful motivation to get out. And just as football saved many of these players from wasted lives, to a large degree it had done the same for Joe. “Here’s the bottom line,” he says. “If you came from a privileged background, then you owe it to yourself to do well in life. If you came from a background that was bad and you made it out, that’s a competitive advantage.” Around the room, there are more nods now. The business-speak is starting to make more sense.
Joe’s idea for doing these introductions was to allow the team members to get to know each other better, to help them find people with similar interests, even to encourage them to network for future jobs. But what these introductions end up doing is creating a strong emotional bond, something approaching love.
Chapter Seven
Game On
Since there are no preseason games in the UFL, the Nighthawks are forced to hold two intrasquad scrimmages. They are announced via the team’s website and Twitter account, and through the Omaha World-Herald, which is the only press outlet that’s covering the team. (The beat writer is a bearded man named Steven Pivovar, who, deep in Cornhusker territory, wears a University of Texas hat. “I like to swim upstream,” he says.)
Joe is sure that Virginia, the first opponent the Nighthawks will be facing once the season begins, will have scouts at both scrimmages, even though it’s technically against league rules. But Joe sees this circumstance as a chance for a bit of subterfuge. In the press and on blogs and websites, the Nighthawks’ new offense has mostly been characterized—wrongly—as a true option offense, akin to the old Wishbone attack, where the quarterback runs and either keeps the ball or pitches it to a back running parallel to him. Joe wants to play up that perception so that Virginia might use up valuable practice time preparing for it. He draws up two plays for the scrimmages, “UFL Option Pitch,” in which the quarterback will pitch the ball to the running back, and “UFL Option Keep,” in which he will keep it and run. “Let the defense know when either play is called,” says Joe. “We want the runners to gain some serious yards before they are tackled.”
Olivadotti, who wants to remain the alpha dog of his defense and not call a soft play, says, with a serious laugh: “You tell the defense and you make that call for them, Joe.”
On the day of the first scrimmage, which is held at the Kroc, it’s ninety-five degrees outside. The blustery prairie wind offers no relief and instead feels like the breath of a dragon. A smattering of fans gathers, draping their arms over the fence that encloses the field, like railbirds watching the racehorses. Four of them are wearing overalls, looking like they just stepped off the tractor. Joe calls the first play, “UFL Option Keep.”
Masoli, who has just returned to the team after being cut by the 49ers, receives the ball in the shotgun formation and rolls to his right. He fakes a pitch to the running back, Shaud Williams, then turns upfield, no doubt expecting to gain an easy fifteen yards before being gently taken to the ground.
But there’s a problem. A new guy had come in late the night before, a rookie safety named Mike O’Connell. He’s a bit undersized for the position, but he is known for his ferocious hits and total lack of regard for his own body (he had once perforated his bowel while blocking a kick in high school). Someone forgot to tell O’Connell about the special plays.
So instead of a leisurely run through the defense, Masoli is met at the line of scrimmage and violently popped into his back by 200 pounds of eager white safety.
O’Connell jumps to his feet and pumps his fist, turning to what he believes are the welcoming arms of his new defensive mates. But his teammates are actually throwing their arms up in the air. “What the hell is wrong with you, kid?”
Later on in the scrimmage, during a kickoff, O’Connell—on the coverage team—makes a classic tackle on the returner, wrapping him in his arms, picking him up off his feet, and driving him into the turf. This time his teammates return his backslaps. Joe turns to Olivadotti and raises his eyebrows. “I like that kid,” he says.
Otherwise, the scrimmage is putrid. The special teams are completely disorganized. The offense is worse, committing four turnovers that the defense returns for touchdowns. And the stifling heat turns what Joe envisioned as a crisp, energetic scrimmage into more of a slow-walking death march. Joe gathers the team at midfield after the final whistle. “This does not cut it!”
Later, at the coaches’ meeting, Joe first addresses Andrus and his offensive staff. “We are focusing on too much stuff that doesn’t matter. I’m starting to get worried about time. We have one more week of camp, then it’s game week. There really is no time. I would rather run one play, and run it really well, than run fifteen crappy plays.”
Then he turns his gaze on Kent, the special teams coach. But before he can get a word out, Kent speaks. “I’m sorry, Coach. That was chaotic out there. I’m really embarrassed.”
Joe’s message to him is similar to the one he had for Andrus. “Don’t be embarrassed, but let’s fix this. Don’t do too much yourself, or you’ll just keep spinning your wheels. Be phenomenal at the things you have to do, cut back, or ask for help.”
In the week leading up to the second and final scrimmage, Mueller springs some surprising news on the coaching staff. He has signed Troy Smith, the 2006 Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback who started six games for the 49ers in 2010, and was named the NFL’s offensive player of the week after one of those starts. The 49ers had not re-signed Smith. He had nowhere else to go. Joe tells the coaches that Smith will be the third-string quarterback, at least until he learns the offense. Some coaches and players express concerns that Smith, who is known for being willful and vocal in the locker room, will not accept that diminished a role on the team. But Joe has spoken to h
im at length on the phone. “I told him if he’s trouble, we’ll cut him,” says Joe. With Smith the Nighthawks now have two former Heisman-winning quarterbacks. He will be making the UFL-mandated salary for a third-string quarterback: $2,000 a game.
The three Nighthawks quarterbacks are a study in contrasts. Crouch is clean-shaven with a boyish shock of brown hair, the All-American kid. He wears a white towel around his neck at nearly all times, giving the impression of a boxer who has just finished a training session. Masoli has big, curly, unkempt hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He has a body more like a running back’s: short and squat, with calves shaped like bowling pins. He’s nearly a dead ringer for the Vincent Chase character on the former HBO show Entourage. (To perfect the resemblance, Vince would need to stand in front of one of those funhouse mirrors that make you look shorter and wider.) Smith, the only one with NFL experience, has a neatly trimmed Afro and Fu Manchu, and he wears diamond studs in his ears. The other two may run a bit better, but Smith throws the best deep ball of the trio, by far. But he has weeks to go before he will completely grasp the playbook. And anyway, despite his credentials, he’d have a tough time cracking the starting lineup right away. Joe has a virtue that can sometimes become a fault: he is intensely loyal. Crouch and Masoli have been with the team for most of the season, starting in minicamp. They have proven their loyalty to Joe and the team. Joe, in return, will reciprocate. If Joe and the team lose because of that loyalty, then so be it.
The second scrimmage, to be played in the Nighthawks’ home stadium, TD Ameritrade Park, will be a true dress rehearsal. (The park got its naming rights in 2009, after Joe left TD Ameritrade, and before he joined the Nighthawks.) Joe wants the team to do exactly what they will do on game day, from wearing their actual jerseys, to performing the pregame warm-ups, to going into the locker room at halftime. The day before the scrimmage, he even has the team practice standing for the National Anthem. These details may seem trivial, inessential. But they do matter. John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, used to have his players practice putting on their socks. “Details create success,” Wooden once said.
The details matter for Joe personally, too. As much as he wants his team to go through the motions, he also wants to simulate the experience for himself so that he will be more comfortable on game day, so it will all be less of an unknown. After all, he hasn’t actually been responsible for leading a team on the field for nearly thirty years.
The scrimmage will also be the last act before final cuts. The roster of 70 will need to be trimmed to 51 (the NFL has rosters of 53; the UFL slices off two from that total, presumably to save some money).
Joe is still worried about the offense. He does a spreadsheet. By his count, a redshirt freshman college quarterback will have taken 6,440 snaps in a particular system before he starts in his junior year. Crouch and Masoli will each have taken 659 snaps by the end of camp. And Andrus still hasn’t fully installed the powerball portion of the offensive scheme. “I think I’ve put an unfair burden on the offense,” says Joe. “It’s haunting me.”
He’s not terribly worried about the defense even though, with the offense’s struggles, it’s hard to know just how good the unit is. Olivadotti will miss the second scrimmage. His mother has died and her funeral is on the same day. Her death caps off a very tough year for Olivadotti, who has also lost his father and stepfather (the latter to a suicide) and learned that his four year-old granddaughter has leukemia. (On the night of the scrimmage, Olivadotti will go to a beach in New Jersey to fulfill his mother’s last wish to have her remains spread in the surf. But when he tosses the ashes, his Super Bowl ring comes loose and is flung into the ocean. It has escaped the “safe” that is his finger. The next morning, knowing that it was a long shot, he went back to the beach to look for it. He didn’t find it, but he did meet a rotund, mustachioed man with a metal detector who was walking the beach. He offered the man $1,000 if he found and returned the ring, which is about $9,000 less than it takes to replace it. The guy actually did find it. He sent it back to Olivadotti along with a few pictures of him and his friends—Giants fans, it turned out—posing with the ring on.)
Marvin Sanders, the secondary coach, and Pete Kuharchek, the linebackers coach, will fill in for Olivadotti. Football teams essentially become large, overnight families, where wins and losses—personal and on the field—are shared, and responsibility is picked up when needed.
Just before the scrimmage the Nighthawks get a few more players back from NFL camps, most important among them George Foster, a Brinks-truck-bodied left tackle who was with the Saints until their final cuts; and Greg Orton, a wide receiver who’d been in camp with the Broncos and whom Joe calls “cross-country” because of his spindly lower legs. Greg Ryan, an offensive lineman from Western Kentucky, is signed on the day of his wedding. He and his new bride leave their reception and drive overnight to camp. “Let’s give them the honeymoon suite at the hotel,” says personnel man Matt Boockmeier.
In the second scrimmage, the offense finally shows some signs of life. Crouch and Masoli take the majority of the snaps, and they each toss a touchdown pass. Smith gets in for the last ten minutes, and looks confident at the line of scrimmage. Maybe 1,000 fans show up for the free intrasquad game. Joe gets a microphone at the end of the scrimmage and thanks them for coming. He has his players sign autographs in the stands for half an hour after the game.
Then it’s cut day, which is always brutal, but perhaps more so in the UFL. This is pretty much the end of the line (the CFL and the indoor leagues being alternatives that few of these men would accept). The UFL is a cruel twist on the Liza Minnelli/Frank Sinatra song: If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. The former NFL players all have horrible stories from cut days, of players openly weeping or falling to their knees and begging to stay. One cut player was found at a pawnshop attempting to purchase a gun. There really is no right way to go about telling players that they didn’t make the team. But there are some wrong ways to do it—namely, out in public, in front of everyone else. Noble, the defensive line coach and former NFL player, remembers one cut day with the Dallas Cowboys when the personnel guys walked around practice as the players were stretching and tapped guys on the shoulder for the ride to the airport. The person who delivers the news to a cut player goes by a few different names. One is “the reaper.” The other is “the Turk,” a name derived from the Ottoman Empire, which at one time apparently led the world league in beheadings.
The unspoken truth in professional football is that the players are, ultimately, commodities. Once vigorously pursued and wooed, if they don’t deliver on expectations they are dumped. This is the part of the pro game that Joe hates. It’s something he wouldn’t have had to face in the college game. But he has to play the part now.
Shockley and Clark are let go to make room for Smith. Shockley is a tough cut because he is very well liked and respected by his teammates. Clark takes to Twitter to voice his displeasure, charging the Nighthawks front office with leading him on. Linebacker proves to be a difficult position to trim down. In the end, Matt Wenger, a solid rookie—but still a rookie—goes while Steve Octavien, who has the name of a Roman Caesar and the body of a gladiator, stays. O’Connell makes the team, pretty much based on his two hits in the first scrimmage. Punter Tom Mante from Yale—the only Ivy Leaguer in the UFL—is kept.
The only real conflict comes with Clarett. The offensive coaches believe he’s had a terrible camp. He hasn’t run with any burst, and he’s had trouble catching the ball out of the backfield, an essential skill for a running back in Andrus’s offense. There is also a sense that he’s been a bit of a malcontent.
But there is something else in the coaches’ voices as they talk about Clarett, something that sounds a bit like fear, as if they are wary of him, the way one would be around a stray pit bull. That he could snap at any moment. They tell Joe they want to cut him.
Joe dances around the issue for a few minutes, asking if
they are sure, if there’s really no room for a power back (the team has no other running back as big as Clarett). But they say they don’t want him.
But Joe knows something they don’t. What Clarett had left out of his introduction speech was his relationship with his new coach. After the 2010 season with the Nighthawks, Clarett wasn’t sure he wanted to keep playing football. But when Joe was hired to coach the team in early 2011, they talked on the phone multiple times. Clarett told him his story. “I told him I wanted to turn my life around,” he says. Something about Clarett hit Joe right where it counted. He saw a man looking for help, something he thought he could provide. He asked Clarett to try out for the 2011 team, promising to help him during and after the season.
Late that spring, before minicamp, Joe remembered Clarett’s interest in finance and his reading about a certain famous Omahan. He got an idea.
“Want to meet Warren Buffett?” Joe asked Clarett.
On a Saturday afternoon, Clarett walked in the doors of Berkshire Hathaway and there stood Buffett, paper come to life, and a man whose circumstances could not have been more different from his own. “It was overwhelming at first. I had no idea what we were going to talk about,” Clarett says, looking back on that day. “I’m young and black. I don’t get many opportunities to get access to a man like that.” But the two men got along splendidly. Buffett says they talked about “life and chasing your dreams.”
Joe had tried to help Clarett even further, calling Father Steven Boes at Omaha’s Boys Town, hoping to secure a job or internship or anything for Clarett after the season. “I’m really sorry, Joe, but we can’t take convicted felons,” Father Boes had told him.