by Monte Burke
He also has another issue to worry about: his completely inept red-zone offense.
The discord that has been brewing between Joe and Andrus since the first Vegas game is finally coming to a head. What happened during the second Vegas game, when the offense couldn’t score a touchdown in five trips to the red zone—three of which were within the 5-yard line—is inexcusable, Joe believes. He blames this partly on the fact that Andrus has never installed powerball, the short-yardage and changeup scheme, to his satisfaction.
Andrus doesn’t see the offensive woes as a failure of scheme. He sees it more as a failure to execute, like Orton’s drop of what should have been a sure touchdown. “These players are inconsistent,” he says. “That’s why they are here in the UFL.” If they were consistently good, they’d be in the NFL. If they were consistently bad, they’d be out of football.
Joe understands this, but argues that since Andrus and his staff have known the shortcomings of their players since minicamp, they should have adapted the scheme to the players’ strengths and weaknesses.
“We have to find a way to punch the ball into the end zone from inside the five,” says Joe. “We just have to.” There’ll be a team-wide mutiny if Andrus and his staff don’t figure that out. He once again asks Andrus to install a set of short-yardage plays based on power running. He also asks him to use Clarett and his 230-pound body on the goal line. Through the first four games of the season, Clarett has gotten just five carries on offense, and been relegated to the kickoff coverage teams.
Everyone is edgy. The week has already been incredibly draining. Andrus briefly considers Joe’s propositions, then says, pleadingly: “We’ll do it, Joe. We are trying to give you what you want.”
Joe stares back at him for a silent moment. His electric blue eyes are surrounded by blood red. In those eyes there is a brief flash of the past, those hard concrete streets from his childhood that are still a part of him, those flurries of fists. Andrus shifts his body around in his seat, looking uncomfortable.
“Bart,” he snarls, his voice rising. “I want you to want it. You have to want this. Don’t you want to score from within the five?”
It’s the first time all season that Joe has yelled at anyone on his staff.
At the beginning of the first practice of the week, the players dawdle onto the field without any discernible energy. That lack of enthusiasm in the Kroc has been carried with them. The weather doesn’t help: it is cold and windy, and the sky is leaden. The coaches had hoped that a few changes would help provide a spark for the team. Troy Smith will replace Masoli, whose inaccuracy has put him on the bench. Masoli takes the demotion in stride and without complaint. And Maurice Clarett is made part of the offensive game plan for the first time all season, getting snaps with the first team in practice.
But the practice is wretched from the start. Individual drills are rife with dropped passes and lethargic blocking. The players seem to be just going through the motions, as Olivadotti had feared. The decision to play the last game seems like an impending disaster.
But some sort of transformation takes place on the field during the team drills when Clarett first touches the ball. He runs through his plays with determination and quickness. He crouches low and bursts through the line, as if it was a live game. He is vocal, exhorting his teammates to play harder, patting them on the shoulder pads. Heads turn. “My God, what the hell got into him?” says running backs coach Brock Olivo.
Clarett’s teammates and even the coaches feed off his radiating energy. The practice takes an immediate turn, becoming crisp and full of enthusiasm. The following two practices, the last of the year, are equally sharp. The team is working hard and having fun. The Nighthawks, it appears, will indeed give it their all in this game. And the one player whom Joe had protected against nearly everyone else’s wishes is the catalyst. At last Clarett has been given an important role on the team. He is needed. Clarett has paid Joe back for his loyalty, in kind.
“I learned a lot from this Clarett thing,” Olivo would say later. He’d been one of the doubting coaches. “I learned about the game, about myself, about people.”
“Since minicamp, we’ve said there is more to life than this game. It is only a game, but while we’re playing it we will give it our all. If you leave this season without that in your head, I have absolutely failed,” says Joe. It’s the day of the game, the team’s last in-season meeting.
“I love this team. The defense has played its heart out. The special teams have gotten better and better each week. The offense has had its moments, but it has not had a great season. That is totally my fault. But we have one more game, our last together. Let’s play the game we haven’t yet played. I’m not talking about playing over our heads. I’m talking about playing up to our capabilities. You’ve had a great week of practice. Let’s take that to the field. All I ask is that you do this, for me and for yourselves.”
Then he pauses, stares at the floor, and takes a few steps forward.
“For a lot of guys, including me, this may be our last game. For me, this is my career. People have been cynical about me, about my attempt to get back into coaching. My career could be over. But this is a chance for all of us to end this on a high note, to get more film for the NFL, to win. Let’s make this our best game.”
Just before the pregame meal, Olivadotti takes his defense aside. There is no game planning left to do. He just wants to address them one last time. “This game means absolutely nothing,” he tells them. “But it could be the most important game of your lives. You could quit if you wanted. But remember this: The first time you quit is the hardest. After that, quitting gets easy.”
A few minutes later Olivadotti is sitting at a lunch table, staring into space with his doleful eyes, one leg crossed over the other. He’s chewing his food carefully, slowly, trying to kill those painful hours leading up to kickoff. “This is the first time in my career that I don’t want to win for me. Even when I was with Shula, I wanted to win for me. I’m a selfish guy. But now I want to win for him,” he says, pointing to Joe, who is at a table with a handful of players and interns. “He is a great coach.”
In the locker room, Joe does his hybrid pregame prayer/pep talk.
“Lord, we ask you first to keep every player on our team and theirs from serious injury. Help us maintain our composure. Do not let us be discouraged when there’s a problem. Help us let the problem go, get it solved, and go back out there and give it our best shot. If we are ahead, we’re not going to let up. If we are behind, we’re not going to give up. Help us with that. Lord, we are a group of men who have come together for a common goal. Lord, we are the 2011 Omaha Nighthawks. We have worked hard. Help us to give the very best we’ve got every second we are on the field. Help us be men.”
In front of a crowd of ten thousand on a frigid night, the players stream through a large, black inflatable Nighthawks helmet onto the field. Dvoracek hobbles out, in uniform. Despite the fact that he has sustained even more damage to his knee, he is playing yet again tonight, not able to give it up. Smith confidently skips and points to the crowd, ready for his first game of the season. Schweigert sprints to the far end zone to greet some fans who have hung a banner that reads: “Stu’s Crew.” Clarett jogs on his toes, head down, his eyes never lifting from the turf. Joe runs out last, accompanied by his son, Kevin, who was too young during his father’s previous coaching career to remember it.
Dennis Green’s Mountain Lions are now led by quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson, who began the year as the backup. He’s a rookie who had been in the 49ers camp with Masoli. He goes by “Macbeth” for short, perhaps a fitting moniker for a second-stringer who has overtaken the incumbent in the dog-eat-dog world of professional football. He leads Sacramento on a long drive to start the game. They get a field goal. They get another one a few minutes later when Smith tosses an interception on his second pass of the game. The Nighthawks respond with a Wolfert twenty-five-yard field goal. The game, only in its first
quarter, has the same seesaw feeling as the first one.
Then Macbeth makes a mistake, fluttering a pass down the right sideline that Schweigert, with his uncanny nose for the ball, picks off and runs back to the Sacramento 7. The Nighthawks are in business. But they’re also in that area of the field where time after time they have foundered.
Clarett is in the backfield and gets his first carry since the first game of the year. He powers the ball down to the 2. He gets another carry and is stopped at the 1. He hurts his shoulder on the play and is more or less done for the game, but he had done his part earlier in the week. Smith then throws an incomplete pass.
It’s fourth and goal. Without hesitating, Joe decides to go for it. The game feels like it is on the line with this call, that failure to score would ruin everything. Smith takes the snap and is flushed from the pocket and scrambles to his left. The play looks eerily similar to the Masoli-Orton errant connection from the game before. But Smith throws a chest-high bullet to Andrew Brewer for a touchdown. The Nighthawks rejoice. A demon has been slain. They are up 10–9 deep in the second quarter.
The defense is standing tall, thanks in large part to Dvoracek, who hobbles to the sideline after a defensive stop and gently lowers himself onto the bench. He’s clearly hurting. Joe goes to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Dusty, don’t go back out there if you can’t do it,” he says.
Dvoracek slowly lifts his head. “Coach, I want to.”
On the field, Smith has found his passing groove. On the Nighthawks’ next possession, he hits Chad Lucas deep for an eighty-one-yard touchdown. Finally the offense is working as it was supposed to all season. At halftime, Omaha is ahead, 17–9.
There is one half of the game left, one last chance to leave on a good note. “Let’s finish this,” Joe says in the locker room.
But worry and uncertainty resurface on Omaha’s first drive of the second half. They get down into scoring position and Wolfert comes on for a forty-one-yard field goal attempt. He pushes the ball badly to the right. He is a golfer with the yips. Sacramento drives for another field goal. It’s 17–12, Omaha.
The defense pins Sacramento deep in its own territory. Omaha’s Sam Aiken, a rangy wide receiver, blocks the Mountain Lions punt. The Nighthawks’ special teams, with the recent exception of Wolfert, have become an elite unit. The ball bounds for the end zone. Several Nighthawks chase it, but it ends up out of the back of the end zone for a safety.
“Damn it,” Joe yells. A safety is nice, but a touchdown might have clinched the game.
The Nighthawks’ next drive ends at the Sacramento 34. Wolfert is sent out again to try to put the Nighthawks up by 10 with just four minutes to play. But his fifty-two-yard attempt is well short. He has now missed four of his last five field goal attempts. It would appear that his NFL dreams are over.
Macbeth calmly leads Sacramento down the field for the tying score with just 2:39 left on the clock. Omaha goes three and out. Macbeth leads Sacramento into field goal range with three seconds left. But, incredibly, the Nighthawks block the kick.
The game goes into overtime. Both teams will get a possession before sudden death. The teams take turns punting it to each other. The players on both teams are weary, strung out from the physical game as well as the emotional swings of the UFL’s troubled third season. Smith hurts his ankle on a sack. Masoli comes back in with a chance to redeem his season with a game-winning drive. Instead, he goes three and out.
Macbeth leads Sacramento down the field, a methodical drive. They reach the Omaha 23-yard line with 1:30 left in overtime. It is 10:30p.m. A cold prairie wind whips through the stadium. Cody Ross, a diminutive back who’s been overlooked by the NFL, bursts through the line and runs, untouched, to the end zone.
The game—and the season—are over.
As Joe walks slowly off the field, Kevin runs up to him, whispers something into his ear, then puts an arm around him. From a distance, it looks like the son is holding his father up.
This game was a gamble for Joe. He rolled the dice because he felt he really didn’t have any other option if he wanted to get back into coaching. He absolutely knew what the stakes were, knew that the possibility of failure was there.
He’d believed that 1-3 was a bad record for him to carry forward. He fought hard to play the last game. He went for it, for something that would look and feel better.
He didn’t get it. 1-4.
“It’s a difficult thing to explain,” Rik Bonness, the former Raiders linebacker and friend of Joe’s, had said when he stopped by to watch a Nighthawks practice in August, back when all of this was just beginning. “But he can win here without winning.”
And he did, in some important ways. Joe showed Hambrecht and Huyghue how to run a professional football franchise. He restored the Nighthawks’ credibility in the community by not taking his salary until all 2010 bills were paid. He halved their loss of $11 million and established what Hambrecht called “the league’s best business practices.”
Having inherited the UFL’s worst team, Joe improved it, at least statistically. Omaha led the league in passing, sacks, and tackles for a loss, and had by far the best special teams, averaging a blocked kick per game. In Schweigert the Nighthawks also boasted the UFL’s defensive player of the year.
But more than that, and more to Bonness’s point, Joe won over the players. On losing teams, the players are almost expected to be miserable and mutinous. But the Nighthawks weren’t. “He never lost the team,” says Dvoracek. “Never. We’d run through a brick wall for the guy.”
Joe’s willingness to remain loyal to players like Crouch and Clarett was noticed. Little things—like the “Life after Football” sessions, and having the team pay for the players’ trips home—endeared him to them. He’d established a bond.
And even the “Be a Man” drumbeat worked. Joe’s central message is probably better suited for the college game, where the kids have had neither the time nor the experience to become jaded, where “be a man” is about transformation, not rediscovery. But what seemed like something more relevant to college students—all of that emphasis on what appeared to be non-football matters—did actually work with these pros. By and large, they bought into the “Be a Man” concept. It helped that Joe repeated it often and that he did so with such conviction. His success in business carried weight, too. He lived up to his own mantra. It was fatherly. With its masculine simplicity, it resonated.
Joe had the coaches, too. “Joe could coach in the NFL if he wanted. He’s as good as anyone I’ve seen,” says Olivadotti. “He’s particularly great at handling people, at communicating with his players.”
This may sound like a friend sticking up for another friend. And perhaps it is. But, surprisingly, Andrus very much felt the same way about Joe, despite the tension between the two. “I think he’s a really good coach,” says Andrus. “I would work for him again for sure.”
Andrus’s only complaint was that Joe didn’t spend enough time with the offense, wasn’t present enough to make sure he got what he wanted.
And time may have been at the root of the problem. Eight weeks was all Joe had, including training camp. Eight weeks to turn around a franchise with a totally new staff and mostly new players. Five games to prove he could coach. That was it.
Hambrecht says that the UFL got a two-for-one hire with Joe—they got a coach, but they also got a superb businessman. Joe never said no to Hambrecht and Huyghue when they called and asked him for advice. He was the only coach in the league on those conference calls where the fate of the league hung in the balance. Joe wouldn’t have had it any other way, since he wanted the season to be played. But that time away from the team took a toll. It robbed him of time as a coach, time which was especially precious for someone who’d been away from the game for so long. In his business career, Joe had always, somehow, been successful at pulling the rabbit out of the hat, as his brother Johnny put it. But this time there was no rabbit.
There w
ere no excuses, though. “I just didn’t get it done, plain and simple,” Joe says. “At the end of the day, in my one shot, I had a losing season. Regardless of any factors, I’m 100 percent responsible for that.”
“I want to tell you guys how much I appreciate your effort out there tonight and during this entire season,” Joe tells the team in the locker room after the game. “We talked about this before. We said we were never going to give up. I believe we gave it all we had out there. That’s the only thing I asked of you all year long. I asked you to do it one more time tonight and you did it. And from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for that.”
Tears begin to form in his eyes. “We’ve talked about being a man, standing on your own two feet and accepting responsibility for your own actions. I want you to know this. We might have lost, but I’ve never met a better group of winners and a better group of men. And in life, it’s all about being men. I am proud to be associated with you. You can count on me down the road for anything. This loss hurts, but let’s keep our heads high. I love you guys.”
Then, from around the room, players seated at their lockers, in grass-and-dirt-stained uniforms, say: “We love you, too, Coach.” It becomes a chorus.
As Joe starts the Lord’s Prayer, he is openly, nakedly, weeping.
Football is an unbearably cruel game. The line between winning and losing is ultrathin. A difficult-but-not-impossible catch in the end zone. A made field goal. A blocked punt that’s recovered in the end zone instead of rolling right through it. Any one of these plays might have made a difference for Joe, might have made for a more palatable 2-3 or even 3-2 record. Then again, any one of them might not have.