That year I met Jesse Smoke, we ended up with three quarterbacks on the team, not one a rookie. We had a promising draft of other position players two months after I went on vacation, and Coach Engram said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the coming year. “It will be tough, though,” he said. “I’m going to have to be tough on everybody. These men will be ready to play.”
One of the top draft picks you may remember was a defensive end named Orlando Brown. That’s right, the great Orlando. He was a rookie that year, a little heavy for a defensive end—315 pounds—but at six feet eleven inches tall, he looked lean as a racehorse. And he could run almost as fast. He’d played wide receiver in high school, so he could catch a ball if you wanted him to, though all anyone wanted to see was him on the defensive line, charging a quarterback or rooting through offensive linemen to find a runner. He was definitely a kind of freak, and that became a theme for us because, hell, we had a few on the team.
We had a guy named Daniel Wilber, a center, who was only five feet eleven inches tall and weighed 342 pounds. He looked like one of those old minivans in his uniform, but there was not an ounce of fat on his body and he was probably the best center in all of football. You couldn’t budge him, and if he wanted you out of a play, you were gone. He made All-Pro in his second season and would continue to make it every year he played after that. What the guy did in his spare time was—are you ready for this?—he taught yoga classes. I’m not kidding. It was really funny watching him doing some of those stretches, pointing his toes like a goddamn ballet dancer.
Drew Bruckner played middle linebacker. He was an artist, you know, a painter, with a canvas and a palette and brushes. He could produce the most beautiful pictures of birds and foxes; mountains and lakes. Didn’t do many people. He said he thought folks were mostly either ugly or too pretty to be interesting. As for football, he played like a man who wanted to end it all. At six feet and 250 pounds, he wasn’t as big as your average middle linebacker, but he was twice as mean on the field. Didn’t care who he ran over, or what kind of collision he caused, he just went after it. That’s what he called it too, “going after it.”
You remember Darius Exley, our tall, lithe, unbelievably fast wide receiver. Guy could leap as high as a pole-vaulter and snatch the ball out of the air almost from any angle around his body. If you got the ball near him, he would get it. He collected action figure dolls. Like hundreds of them, with all their various weapons. He was proud of that collection. Guys on other teams would tease him about his “toys,” but he said nothing, quiet as a stopped clock, like he couldn’t care less what anyone called him. He could move so swiftly, he’d catch eleven balls and score four touchdowns and have nothing whatever to say about it. Nothing excited him, it seemed, but that doll collection.
Lined up on the other side of the line was our so-called possession receiver, Rob Anders. Rob was gay, one of the first players to admit it while still playing the game. He was only five feet eleven inches tall, and weighed barely more than 170 pounds—pretty slight for a wide receiver—but he was a great roll blocker. He could put a bigger man on his belly so quick you’d think somebody blew off the guy’s legs. He never put anybody on his back, but if a defender was running forward, coming up to tackle a runner on Anders’s side, it was really something to see how fast Anders would make him disappear. From the opposite side it looked like the guy fell into a ditch or something. Anders could also catch anything near him, sometimes with one hand. He scored so many touchdowns leaping parallel to the ground and grabbing a ball just before it hit the ground with the palm of one hand, and flipping over on his side before he landed—he could roll in the air like a fish in water—that after a while, folks stopped calling him anything other than “Porpoise.”
At running back, of course, was Walter Mickens, from Georgia. He was six feet, weighed around 220, and could run as fast as anybody in the league except maybe Darius Exley. He could also move diagonally, or sideways, and even jump backward and come down still moving; he hit the ground full speed from any angle. He was hard to bring down, too. He had a little twist he’d make with his hips and if you had your hands there trying to drag him down, he’d throw you off like water from a bucket. The fans called him “Mighty Mickens.” He was a religious fanatic. Had one cross tattooed on his neck and one on each arm. He believed god was a football fan and kept a little shrine to Christ in his locker.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go over the whole roster—that would take too long, and to tell the truth, not all of them are that interesting. (There’s a roster in the back of this book that you can consult if you need to, along with a schedule and some other things.) Just the superfreaks, most of whom, by this point, were fully established players you knew would make the team. And the rookie, Orlando Brown, was a shoe-in. Unless he turned out to be weak in the knees, literally—because at his height just about everybody who tried to block him would be at his knees—he would definitely be what Coach Engram and everybody else called an “impact player.” If we could only get these guys to play together—to work together and become one beast—it seemed like nobody would be able to whip them.
The truth was, I looked forward to the year. I knew Engram was probably a little worried about his job because it had started to look like we were slipping, and the owner—well, I don’t want to get into talking about him yet. He’s not really as cold-blooded as everybody thinks—I mean he’s got his loyalties and attachments just like anybody else, but he’s not the kind of man who can tolerate a downward trend in anything. Coach Engram never spoke to me about it, except to mention that things were going to be tough this year, but I had the feeling he’d been given the impression that our owner was getting impatient.
See, for the past two years or so our one real problem was, as you might have guessed, at quarterback.
Now, we had a great player there. Corey Ambrose had proven himself over and over to be a winner. He could throw the ball reasonably well—accurate from forty or fifty if you gave him time to throw—and the other players liked playing for him. He had what the receivers call a “soft ball.” It came in spinning just right, and without too much steam on it, usually out in front of them, easy enough to snatch out of the air. In tight situations, he could stand up to the pressure as well as anyone, and he almost never threw the ball so that his receivers had to stretch out and reach for it in traffic—what players call being “hung out to dry.” You could get a few smashed ribs that way, and both Exley and Anders, and the other men who were responsible for catching what Ambrose put up for them, appreciated his accuracy.
But he was always getting hurt. The kind of small nagging injuries that weren’t so bad for somebody who plays linebacker or center, but ones that cripple a quarterback. The year before, he sat out five games because of a broken middle finger on his throwing hand. Do you know how many times a guy in any other position breaks his finger in a given year? How many men play with multiple broken fingers? Nobody talks about it, but believe me, most of the lineman have broken fingers at least once or twice in the course of a season; some, in the course of a game. The year before that, Ambrose developed a severe case of laryngitis; couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper. It hung on for two weeks and just to be safe, the doctor ordered another week of silence after that. He missed three games because he couldn’t call the signals. None of that would have been so bad, but he always acted like some kind of dispossessed royalty. The guy was good and he knew it. So he would damn well stay on his ass until he was good and healed, never once fearing for his job. He knew it was his. (And let me tell you, I hate that kind of certainty.)
The guy we had playing behind him was another freak. A tall, lanky kid from Oklahoma named Ken Spivey who could whip the ball far enough and, when he was on his game, throw pretty accurately, too. Only he was erratic. He still had not fully grasped the playbook, and what was worse, he let things upset him—had a terrible temper—and when he got angry he’d lose concentration, which is to say, he�
�d lose his talent. I mean all of it. Hell, he’d lose the ability to hold a football, much less throw the damned thing. You could tell when he was getting upset, because his face would turn bright red. And you know what upset him? He didn’t like it when somebody pushed him or knocked him down. Which tends to happen a lot in football, especially when a fellow is playing quarterback.
The third-string guy was Jimmy Kelso. He’s a head coach now, but back then he was one of those fellows you like to have around because he was plenty smart and plenty willing. He played well in college, showed he could lead a team downfield. His passes were unerringly accurate—I mean he could drop the ball over a guy’s shoulder and into his arms before he had time to look for it. Problem was, he couldn’t throw the ball very far. The arm strength just wasn’t there. We used him in practice a lot, especially when we wanted our defense to be ready for a short, quick passing game, but even then you have to be able to really fire the ball sometimes. For a quick-out pass, where the wide receiver runs five to seven steps and then breaks toward the sideline, the quarterback has to be able to put the ball in the air, on a line, with little or no arch, twenty to twenty-five yards, before the receiver makes his cut toward the sideline. When he does make his cut and turns his head to look for the ball, it’s supposed to be right there in front of him. Half the time Kelso couldn’t even make that simple pattern work. He’d throw it quickly enough, but the ball wouldn’t have enough steam on it and a lot of the time the defensive back or even a linebacker would simply knock it down, or worse, intercept it. When you intercept that kind of pass, there’s only three people who can stop you from taking it back all the way “to the house,” as the players still like to say: the receiver you jumped in front of to intercept it—and he’s usually moving pretty fast in the other direction, and therefore isn’t likely to catch up to anybody; the quarterback, who generally isn’t very fast, or likely to be able to tackle a coatrack; and the referee, who is usually racing down the field next to the interceptor so he can signal touchdown. So an interception under those circumstances is a pretty grim development—and, unfortunately, what you could frequently expect with Kelso leading the charge.
The truth is, in spite of the All-Pro talent at starter, and the almost prissy cockiness of our bench, we were considered pretty weak at quarterback.
I got back from my vacation on a Thursday, but I didn’t go to Redskins Park right away. I had another few days to relax before I had to get back, and I wanted to do a little scouting.
This was a joke I kept up for myself: that I was actually scouting Jesse Smoke. The truth is, I wanted to see her in a real football situation, so I got on the Internet and looked up the Washington Divas. Turned out, they played an eight-game season, and though they were located out in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in Ruby Park, they played their games at Spellman High School in D.C. Tickets were all of five dollars. Their first game was three weeks away, on April 1, a Friday night.
So, they were a professional team, I guess, but three weeks to get ready for a season wasn’t a lot of time.
I went to the “tryouts.”
I saw Jesse zipping a few balls here and there and a lot of long, lanky women dropping most of what she threw. I saw her lighten up a bit, take it more softly, and gently lay the ball out there. After a while, she looked like our third stringer, Kelso, and the girls were catching it now. It was clear Jesse was going to make the team. The coach—a big burly-looking fellow who wore horn-rimmed glasses, hollered in a very high-pitched voice, and used his whistle way too much—kept her in for almost every drill. When one of the other Diva wannabes tried her hand at it, he would soon have Jesse talking to her, showing her where she needed to improve.
I was kind of sorry to see that she had to soften her throws, though. I really was. Seemed a shame to take somebody down from such a great height. See, the ability to throw a football forty to fifty miles an hour, it’s the equivalent of a ninety-nine mile an hour fastball.
The thing I noticed about Jesse’s play, though, wasn’t so much her arm. The coach had her holding back on that talent pretty quickly. No, what I noticed was her footwork. Only five quarterbacks in history, maybe, had perfect footwork: Bob Griese, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Tom Brady, and Jonathon Engram. Don’t get me wrong—there have been truly great quarterbacks who just didn’t happen to have very good footwork. Johnny Unitas always looked like he was trying to get his feet out of horseshit when he dropped back to pass. Sonny Jurgensen skipped in a little backpedaling semicircle, like a boxer retreating from an especially capable and damaging left jab. Brett Favre seemed to shimmy back, as though his pants were full of ice cubes. Joe Montana crossed his legs like a ballet dancer, not a quarterback, and sometimes he planted both feet and seemed to hop a little before he made up his mind where he was going with the ball. Peyton Manning backed up or retreated sideways like a man trying to keep his feet dry by dodging an oncoming wave on a beach. A lot of great quarterbacks just couldn’t master the footwork. Somehow each of those guys managed to overcome bad form, and perhaps that is why they were such memorable players—for all they managed to do in spite of their poor footwork. But Griese? He set the standard. The rest of those guys—Namath, Marino, Brady, and Engram, too—perfect footwork. I can’t describe it exactly, but I know it when I see it. And Jesse had it. When she dropped back to pass it was like watching a cartoon of perfection; like some instructional video from on high on the art of quarterbacking.
She also had an unbelievably quick release. Once she made up her mind to throw it, the ball left her hand nearly instantaneously.
When the tryouts ended, after Jesse had put her equipment in a big bag that Nate hoisted on his shoulder, I walked over and made my presence known to her.
The coach knew exactly who I was, and told me he was honored to meet me.
“I just thought I’d come out,” I said. “You know, see what’s going on here.”
He laughed. Then he told me he’d played for the University of Pittsburgh. “I was a guard.” He smiled. “Andy Swilling. I was pretty good, but I didn’t get drafted by any of the NFL teams. I couldn’t even draw their interest as an undrafted free agent. Too small.”
He’d made up some ground on his size, I saw, though not necessarily the right kind, so I didn’t say anything. Jesse motioned for Nate to put down the equipment bag. When he recognized me, he came over and took my hand. “How you doing? Come to see Jesse play?”
The coach looked at me. “You know Jesse?”
“She can throw a football,” I said.
“I know. I think we’re going to have a pretty good team this year.”
I asked him how long he’d been coaching the Divas.
“Since our first year.”
I waited.
“Six years ago.”
“It’s a whole league and everything,” Nate said.
“Who won last year’s championship?” I asked.
Nate looked over to Andy who answered for him. “The Philadelphia Fillies. They’re pretty tough.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. They’ve won it every year since they came into the league. Before that it was the Cleveland Bombers.”
“So the Fillies new to the league?”
Andy shrugged. “There’s a few women’s professional football leagues, believe it or not. The Fillies came from the WFA—the Women’s Football Association.”
“And your league?”
“We’re the IWFL. The Independent …”
“Women’s Football League.” I finished for him and he looked a little embarrassed.
“Right.”
“Strange, I don’t understand why I never heard of—” I stopped. “Anyway, it’s news to me. Isn’t that something?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Women’s professional football.”
“There’s also the WPFL, the Women’s Professional Football League, and the—”
“No, I get it,” I said.
Jesse, who had not sai
d a word up to this point, now moved a little closer to me. “What are you doing here?” she said, looking into my eyes.
“I wanted to see you throw a ball to somebody, you know, with folks chasing after you.”
“Why?”
“I told you.”
“You were serious?”
“You think I wasn’t?”
She looked away.
“I’d hoped you’d call me.” I tried to keep it easy, cheerful. “Thought we had a deal.”
“Seven hundred,” she said.
“Sure, why not?”
“Seven hundred for what?” Andy said.
“This fellow wants to use me for some sort of practical joke,” she said. Then she turned back to me. “I was going to call you.”
“It’s not a practical joke exactly,” I said.
She smirked, stepped back a little, then still looking at me said, “Let’s get going, Nate.”
“Seriously,” I said. “I’ll pay you.”
“Hey,” Andy said. “What is this?”
I looked at him.
“What’s going on? Are you trying to … What’s going on?”
“Nothing complicated. Really. I just want her to come down to Redskins Park when we have our second minicamp.”
“You want her to try out or something?” He said this with a half smile.
“Right,” I said. “Because that makes a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Well what do you want her for, then?”
“I guess I’d like some of our more complacent players to see her throw a football.”
“I’m sorry. But she’s not going to be able to do any of that until the end of our season.”
“Fine. The hell with minicamp. She can come to our first real camp, in July. Your season ends the first week in June. I looked it up.”
The Legend of Jesse Smoke Page 2