“They not blocking man!” Repo shouted. “Getting blown off the fuckin’ ball!
“If we block, we win!” Ramsey shouted.
“We need to take that touchdown back!” Mr. Hart shouted.
“Ay, let’s go coach!” Repo shouted. “Let’s pay these bills before they put us out.”
After recovering a fumble, Mo Better had the ball at midfield, but the defense drove them back again. The East Orange defenders were attacking aggressively, anticipating the snap and rushing into the backfield. Needing 18 yards on third down, Esau called “polar.” East Orange jumped offside. Esau called it again, and East Orange jumped offside again. The two penalties, for a total of 10 yards, seemed to rattle the defense, and on the next play Naz connected with Marquis for a 15-yard pass. Esau called for a similar play, and when the defense converged on Marquis, Naz released a long throw to Chaka, who sprinted past the coverage and dove for the ball 30 yards downfield. The Mo Better parents erupted in cheers, slapping hands and grinning until they realized the referee had ruled that the ball hit the ground, the pass incomplete.
“Come on ref, that was a catch, baby!” Mr. Hart shouted. “Come on ref! Jesus!”
Esau tried the play again, but the defense saw it coming and intercepted the throw, and the Mo Better parents went silent.
Back on defense, Isaiah sensed that his teammates were falling into the bad habits that had plagued them the previous season. Their heads were down and their shoulders were slumped. On second down, when the East Orange running back cut up the field and around the corner, they missed tackles and got swallowed up by blockers. It seemed the running back had a clear lane all the way to the end zone, but Isaiah, springing from the other side of the field, chased him down, grabbed him from behind, knocked the ball out of his arm, and whipped him to the ground. Isaiah jumped onto the loose ball. He pounded his chest and held the ball up in the air as his teammates ran over and tapped his helmet, and he kept pounding his chest until he realized the referee had ruled that the runner had stepped out of bounds before fumbling.
Angry shouts rained down from the Mo Better side of the bleachers.
“Come on ref! That’s terrible!”
“You’re costing us the game!”
“You’re killing us!”
East Orange moved the ball effectively now, with outside runs and short passes. With the second quarter winding down, they marched easily toward the end zone, but they ran out of time. They were five yards away when the clock hit zero. Isaiah understood his team had escaped disaster.
“Only six-zip,” he said to his teammates at halftime. “Come on, guys. Relax.”
“We are in a dog fight,” Hart added.
While the boys passed around water bottles, Esau ran through the adjustments for the second half. He had studied the moves of his opponent in real time, tracking formations and tendencies. East Orange was talented, but Esau believed they were winning because they had attacked weak points in his team’s strategy. East Orange’s defense had been bullying through Mo Better’s offensive line, and the runners had no space to move. Mo Better’s old-school power-running attack, which packed the offense tightly around the ball, was getting blown up by defenders blitzing through the middle. Esau shifted around the blocking strategy to protect the inside, and announced that they’d pass the ball more in the second half, to keep the defenders off-balance. On the other side of the ball, East Orange’s offense had found a good rhythm by the end of the first half, as its quarterback learned the holes in Mo Better’s pass coverage. East Orange ran a modern spread offense, with three or four receivers split out, widening the gaps between the defenders. Because Pee Wees rarely passed the ball, Esau’s team hadn’t practiced much pass defense. And because the defenders suddenly had to now think about how to defend the pass, they reacted slower to runs. Esau shifted the defense’s alignment and changed certain players’ assignments. He threw out much of his old game plan and built a new one from scratch.
It didn’t seem to work at first. East Orange glided down the field early in the third quarter. It looked easy for them. Running backs cruised through big holes, receivers found wide-open spaces down the field, linemen drove off the defenders coming at them. But then, with East Orange around 25 yards from the end zone, Mo Better’s defense tightened, stopping the offense for three straight plays, and now it was fourth down with eight yards to go. The Brooklyn parents stood and cheered. The boys on defense pumped themselves up.
“Let’s go!” said Isaiah, his voice cracking into a higher pitch. “One stop! One stop!”
East Orange broke the huddle, and two receivers split out on each side. Isaiah, from his outside linebacker spot, shifted left and back a few yards, positioning himself closer to the inside receiver. His eyes were on the quarterback. On the snap, Isaiah drifted back slowly, as the inside receiver ran straight up the field. Isaiah watched the quarterback scan the field, from right to left, for two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, until their eyes met, and by the time Isaiah realized where the quarterback was throwing the ball it was too late. Isaiah leaped high but the ball flew over his head and into the arms of the inside receiver, who had cut to the sideline. First down. Isaiah cursed and slapped his hands. He stared at the ground. He didn’t want to see his teammates’ faces, but he knew he had to eventually, so he brought his head up, tapped his chest, and said, “My bad,” barely loud enough for any of them to hear. Their shoulders were slumped again, and they wore looks of frustration and disappointment.
On the next play, the East Orange running back went up the middle, broke three lackluster tackle attempts, and scored. 12–0.
Mo Better got the ball back on the 26-yard line. On the first play of the drive, Oomz was tackled six yards behind the line, and then the referee blew the whistle to mark the end of the third quarter. East Orange had held the ball for all but one play. Esau and Andrell looked at each other in shock.
“Quarter just started ref!” Esau shouted.
The Mo Better parents complained too. They accused the ref of running the clock too quickly. They yelled that the ref was terrible, incompetent, a cheat—until the referee, tired of the barrage of insults, said to Esau, “Yo, coach, if you don’t quiet them, you gotta go.” And Esau turned to the parents in the bleachers behind the sidelines and told them to quiet down, and they did. For a minute. And then they turned their anger toward Esau.
“We gotta pay this rent, man!” Repo shouted. “’Cause they about to put us out!”
“This game hanging in the balance right now!” Mr. Hart shouted.
“Winners never lose, Esau!” Repo shouted.
Esau pretended not to hear. Naz jogged over to him to get the play call: going deep to Chaka. “Let it loose,” Esau said. “You’ve made this throw a hundred times. Let it loose and make him go get it.”
It wasn’t a perfect throw. Naz didn’t release it as cleanly as he’d hoped. The defenders had broken through the line, and Naz had to quickly shuffle backward before winding up and letting it loose. The ball came out too high and was underthrown. Chaka had to stop and turn, waiting for the ball to fall. The cornerback was on his hip and the safety had scurried over to help. The three boys stood bunched together looking up at the ball. They all jumped, but Chaka jumped highest and snagged the ball out of the air, shook himself free from the others, and raced down the open field for an 80-yard touchdown.
The Mo Better crowd went wild, stomping the bleachers, shaking cans filled with pennies, whooping and clapping, raising their arms in the air, expressions of euphoria and amazement on their faces.
Esau called time-out. The offense gathered around him. The score was 12–6. This point-after try was significant. If Mo Better could make it 12–7, they would need only a touchdown to win. Esau laid out the plan: After the time-out, the players would jog onto the field and get into a huddle. Then they would break the huddle and walk slowly to their positions. And then, with the defense relaxed, they would run the quick snap a
nd Naz would scoot up the middle for the score.
It was a brilliant call. The defense had been timing Naz’s pre-snap cadence all game, and Naz had fooled them with two polars. The defenders were on edge now, thinking about the cadence and the polars and the touchdown they’d just given up and boom—they’d hit ’em with the quick snap. Esau had saved it for the ideal moment.
They’d practiced this many times. They’d gotten the rhythm down. And it all looked normal and well rehearsed when the offense jogged onto the field. “Get in the huddle,” Esau shouted to them, just as they’d scripted. They began to circle together, calmly, just as they’d scripted, and it was all going according to plan.
But then—
“Huddle!?” Repo shouted from the stands. “Get on the ball! We just came out a time-out!”
All game long, Esau had ignored the second-guessing, the back-seat coaching, the “Throw the ball to Chaka!” and “What kinda defense is this!” and “Too predictable, Esau, too predictable!” All season long, he had ignored the whispers that he was too inexperienced to be coaching the program’s best team, that the coaching at Mo Better wasn’t as good as it used to be, that he was the reason these talented boys had underachieved last season. It had weighed on him and weighed on him, and now the program’s best team was staring down defeat, and if they lost, he knew the blame would fall on him. But if his boys could just get this one point and then get a stop and then score again—
Esau turned around, faced the bleachers, and shouted with all his might: “Yo, shut the fuck up, man! Shut the fuck up! Nobody can’t coach like that! Chill!”
Silence. Everybody went silent. The boys on the field, confused, looked at one another then looked at the sideline. The parents, shocked, looked at one another then looked at the sideline. All eyes were on Esau.
Standing beside him, Andrell said, calmly, almost in a whisper, “Esau, yo, chill.”
The boys lined up on offense. The eyes returned to the field. The ball was snapped and the defense stopped the play.
ESAU GREW UP down the street from Betsy Head Park. On days when he had football practice, he’d look out his window and wait until his teammates had run three laps, then he’d head over and slide in with them for the final lap. He’d pump his arms fast while his legs moved at a walking pace to fool his coaches into thinking he was running hard. His teammates followed his lead. “We knew all the tricks,” he said.
He was short, but he worked hard and was built like a fire hydrant. He was a good hitter, had a sharp intellect, and served as captain on some of Mo Better’s most successful teams. To Chris Legree, Esau was a natural coach. Though he was young, he was mature beyond his years, wise and stoic. Maybe most importantly, as one parent put it, “he knows how to call some motherfuckin’ plays.”
Chris saw Esau as a good role model for his players, a cool young man who knew the streets but had avoided the paths that some of his old friends had taken. One day that summer, one of those old friends showed up at the field and caught up with Esau while the Pee Wees did their laps before practice. After some small talk, Esau asked, “You still doin’ what you been doin’?”
“Yeah,” the friend said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at the ground.
“Do something where they can’t take your freedom away from you,” Esau told him. “All money ain’t good money. Remember that.”
Esau was more like a brother to his players than a father. Boys did not fear Esau as they feared Vick, but they related to him, confided in him, and believed that he understood them, that he remembered what it was like to be their age and face the challenges they faced. He knew all the tricks, after all, and he shared those stories with his players. He sat with them on the back of the bus and gave them advice on their girl problems. He clowned them when they said something absurd. He talked to them like colleagues, like men. “Esau always real with you,” Oomz said. Once, when Naz mentioned that he was getting a ride home from a game with his “step-pop,” Esau corrected him: “Yo, that’s your father,” he said. “Just ’cause another man made you, don’t mean he take care of you. Your father is the father figure in your life.”
Esau was father to two boys, whom he raised with his girlfriend. The older boy, 8-year-old Taquan, was not his biological son, but Esau cared for him as his own. He was 24 years old but, like others in Brownsville, had grown up fast. He’d entered the adult workforce at the peak of the Great Recession and struggled to find a job. A Mo Better parent helped him and Andrell get jobs at a casino in Queens. He scheduled each week’s practices around his work calendar, which meant that Esau and Andrell often spent their Friday nights coaching a bunch of preteens at the park. Coaching took up much of his free time, but he was happy to make the sacrifice. He loved the game, he loved his players, and his players loved him.
But Esau felt he had much to prove. His first year as a head coach had been a disappointment to many parents. And while the Pee Wee season had gotten off to a good start, he received little of the credit. He discovered the coach’s curse of being blessed with a talented team: when they did well, it was because of the players; when they did poorly, it was because of him.
Now, though, his team clearly did not possess more talent than its opponent. East Orange was bigger and more athletic. East Orange had more players. East Orange had more older/lighters. East Orange was the defending league champ, and Mo Better was not about to beat them solely on the strength of their physical abilities. If Mo Better were to win this game, it would be on the strength of their bright young coach.
Esau wanted it badly.
It was 12–6, seven minutes left in the game, the ball back with East Orange at the 50-yard line, first down and 10.
“Let’s get that ball back!” Mr. Hart shouted. “Who want that ball? Who want that ball?”
“You gotta want it, baby!” Ramsey shouted. “You gotta want it! It’s the fourth quarter!”
The ball went to the running back, and a wall of blockers formed in front of him, bulldozing around the corner and up the field. Isaiah, from the opposite side, took off in pursuit, sprinting hard diagonally across the field, angling to catch the runner in time. At the five-yard line, Isaiah dove at the runner’s legs, but the distance had been too great and the runner strode into the end zone. The cheers from the bleachers churning his stomach, Isaiah rolled onto his butt and sat still for a few seconds, looking at the ground between his knees, trying to convince himself that the game was not yet over.
But the game was over. When the clock hit zero, the scoreboard read East Orange: 19, Mo Better: 6.
By the time the Mo Better Pee Wees had composed themselves and gathered their bags from the sideline, the older boys in the next game were warming up on the field. Isaiah, Hart, Oomz, Donnie, Chaka, Naz, Time Out, and the rest of the boys walked across the field toward the parking lot in silence. Several teenage East Orange Junior Midgets laughed when they noticed this downtrodden group.
“Get off our field, Mo Better!” one boy shouted.
“Bye-bye!” said another.
The Brownsville boys pretended not to hear.
16
TO MAKE IT IN THE JUNGLE
Late September 2014
IT WAS ONLY A YOUTH FOOTBALL GAME, ONLY A YOUTH football season. There was no money at stake, no write-up in the newspaper, no legion of fans emotionally invested in the outcome. Coach Vick had had former players get murdered, go to prison, point a gun in his face. His own son was in jail, unable to make bail and awaiting trial. One boy on the Junior Pee Wees was now homeless because his family’s house had burned down. A 12-year-old boy who played for Brooklyn United had gotten shot in the leg over the weekend. Coach James had torn his rotator cuff three weeks ago and was unable to work for the foreseeable future and unsure how he would take care of his family. Two kids, brothers who’d played on Vick’s Mitey Mites last year, had just been sent to foster care after allegations of abuse. Nobody needed to tell Vick that a youth football season was not important in the g
rand scheme of things.
But still, Vick was pissed. He was a competitive, proud man who was not used to losing many football games. Sunday in East Orange had been disheartening. He was angry throughout the 10 a.m. game, as his Mitey Mites put up what he thought was a weak effort. He was angry as he watched the Junior Pee Wees lose by a wide, embarrassing margin in the 11:30 a.m. game. He remained angry though the 1 p.m. main event, as the Pee Wees’ hopes of a dream undefeated season dissolved. He was angry on the bus ride home, which always took too long after a loss, and all Sunday night, as the games replayed in his head, as he reflected on the recent weeks, and as he wondered how things had fallen apart. He was still angry when he strolled, slowly and stiffly, into Betsy Head for the week’s first practice.
He wore a black polo shirt, jeans, and a scowl. He pulled his gray bucket hat low on his brow, then cracked his knuckles. The bandage was still wrapped around his hand.
“It’s gon’ be an ugly practice,” he said. “I’m going back to the old-school. I’ma go all the way back to Jersey to get embarrassed like that—I’ma bring it back to the old-school.”
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