The Legend of Jesse Smoke

by Robert Bausch

  “No. I don’t want to, either.” She flipped the ball up and let it spin. Caught it again gently, then flipped it up again—just the way she had that day on the beach when I first saw her.

  Andy looked at me. It was clear he’d never heard her talk about her mother or father. This was all news to him. He looked sad to me.

  “So what’s the drill?” Jesse asked. “You going to teach me something here or what?”

  “I’m going to try to.”

  She flipped the ball again. She looked a little bit like a tall, teenage boy with those brown freckles across her pretty, broad nose.

  “You’ve got to learn to do one of three things when you’re under pressure,” I said. “Step up, in between rushers and blockers; step to the side a bit and throw, leaning toward your front foot as you should; or take off with it, and throw on the run. What you cannot do is step back and try to whip it off at the same time.”

  “All of this I know,” she said. “But you left out one other option my father taught me.”

  “What’s that?”

  She took the ball into her stomach and doubled up, her head down in front of her knees. Then she straightened and looked at me. “Fold ’em. Take the sack.”

  “Absolutely, he was right about that.”

  “That’s what I can’t seem to learn to do, you know? Whenever, I should do that, I just end up stepping back and throwing the damn thing.”

  “Well, right now I don’t want to drill you on taking sacks. I’d like to see if we can work on the other three options.”

  “Okay.”

  So that’s what we did. All that morning and even into the afternoon we worked on it. By the time we quit, the other Diva players had arrived for practice and were stretching on the sidelines.

  In the first drill, I had Nate and Andy rushing at her, with me and Michelle in front, blocking them, which formed what is called a “pocket.” I showed Jesse how to “step up” in the pocket. I could tell she was just humoring me. It was a move that came naturally to her, though I hadn’t had a chance to see her do it in a game. She moved forward easily, planted, and threw. Then we stood in front of her and waved towels in her face, overhand, fast and hard so she could feel the wind of them, and she’d step to the side, left and right, plant, and throw. Finally, I had her drop back to pass while Nate, Andy, and I threw footballs at her, not exactly trying to hit her, just having them in the air all at once, coming toward her, while she had to plant, look for Michelle in various pass routes, and hit her on the move. Every time she shied away from one of those footballs, I blew a whistle. A few times she got hit, but we weren’t throwing them hard, and after a while, she didn’t even flinch.

  We repeated the last drill, relentlessly, every chance we got, over the next few weeks, hefting footballs at Jesse, and as far as I could tell she’d stopped throwing off her back foot. She got a bloody nose once (after that I put a helmet on her) and had the wind knocked out of her a few times, but as long as she had the ball in her hands, she never ducked or shied away. Jesse learned and adapted as swiftly as any player I’d ever coached. (We like to call that, “coachability.”) But the thing I remember most from all those drills was her power of concentration. After a while, it was as if only she and Michelle were on the field, playing catch. Michelle didn’t drop many balls, and Jesse didn’t miss once. It really was delightful watching her play.

  At the end of one of our little practices, after I had gathered all the balls and bagged them, and we’d all drained a bottle of water or two, as we were walking off the field, Jesse said to me, “You remind me of my father a little bit.”

  Even back then I was a little portly in the middle, though at six feet four, I suppose I had the height to carry it. I said, “I feel sorry for your father.”

  “No. I mean the way you coach me.”

  “Really.” I was moved by that, if also a little disappointed. I didn’t feel old enough, yet, to be completely eliminated from the romantic arena. Jesse was beautiful. I had been admiring her beauty in just the way a potential suitor admires that sort of thing. But I was just being an old fool, I see now. At twenty-four to my fifty-one, she was almost thirty years younger than me. I guess I was just coming to terms then with the notion that I was too old for a lot of the women I saw and admired. At any rate, it was a high compliment she’d given me, and I was moved when she expressed it. I reached over and tapped her on the shoulder. “He would be very proud of you.”

  I saw Andy’s pace shorten a bit ahead of us, as though he had to avoid stepping on something in front of him.

  “You’ve coached them up well, Andy,” I said.

  “Thank you. They’re a great bunch of gals.”

  Jesse shot him a look.

  “A great bunch,” he said again. “Terrific women.”

  I laughed a little, and Jesse said, “I hate being called a ‘gal.’”

  “Come on! It’s just the opposite of ‘guy,’” Andy said.

  The truth was Andy had done a good job getting them all to play together, taking advantage of the talent he had on the team. The Divas finished the season at 7 and 1, first place in their division. (They beat the Cleveland Bombers 34-0.) And so they did indeed get a chance to play the Fillies one more time—this time for the championship. I was as excited about that game, I have to say, as any in my own professional career. I couldn’t wait to see it.

  Six

  I shouldn’t mention my own professional career as if it meant anything. What I mean is, I was not ever a first stringer on any pro team. I played well at the University of Illinois and got enough recognition to be drafted in the fourth round by the Atlanta Falcons. I even got a bit of attention my rookie year because I showed so much “promise,” as the sportswriters like to say. In one exhibition game—teams only played two in Jesse’s day, but back when I was playing, they played four—I threw three touchdown passes to rally our third stringers to a victory over the Bears’ third stringers. That won me a spot as the third-string quarterback that year. I carried a clipboard and studied the playbook and watched a lot of football. In practice I sometimes got to run the “scout” team. Those are the second and third stringers who pretend to be the opposing team of the week and run that team’s plays against the first-string defense so they can recognize them in the game. When you are running the plays of the team you’re about to play, against the first stringers of your own defense, you don’t learn a hell of a lot about how to run your own offense. I was always pretending to be the opposing team’s quarterback and sometimes that was fun. I would never admit this to anyone back then, but I got a kick out of beating the defense in practice. You could tell sometimes that it pissed them off, too. They’d make a little more noise when they rushed at me. I used to hear the word “kill” a lot.

  Anyway, I ended up playing for half a dozen teams—or, I should say, ended up on the roster of half a dozen teams—and then one year nobody wanted me. In my entire NFL career I threw only twenty-two passes that counted and completed twelve. I never threw a touchdown pass in a regular season game, though I did have a couple of spectacular interceptions, one of them run back more than a hundred yards. It was Reggie Clovis’s last interception as a matter of fact, and he is now in the Hall of Fame. The other was only technically an interception. I was playing for the San Diego Chargers at the time. Second-string quarterback behind none other than Jonathon Engram. (That’s how we met and became friends, and how I eventually got into coaching.) We were on top in a huge blowout when the coach took Engram out and put me in to “mop up.” It was a simple shuttle pass to the halfback—a glorified draw play, really—where you drop back like you’re going to throw the ball, then flip it underhand a few feet in front of you to the halfback, who takes off up the middle. Well, I flipped it to the guy and he fiddled with it a bit, almost gently, before a defensive lineman from the other team picked it out of the air in front of him and went the other way with it. In the replays it looked like I’d shuttled the ball to the running bac
k so he could lovingly hand it off to the opposing lineman. Anyway, on his way to the end zone for his big moment in the limelight, the lineman ran right over me and shattered my collarbone.

  That was my last game. I got put on injured reserve and spent the rest of that season in a sling. I was released during the off-season, and that was that. Like I said, nobody wanted me.

  So, I got into coaching. I started out as a special teams coach with the University of Maryland, then moved to Atlanta and caught on with the Falcons as quarterbacks coach. I stayed in Atlanta a few years and worked my way up. I was offensive coordinator when the head coach got fired and I was asked to serve as interim coach for the last six games of the season. I did pretty well. Coached them to three victories, but at the end of the year, the owner and general manager started their search for a permanent coach, and as the owner said to me, I wasn’t “in the mix.” That’s when Jonathon Engram called. He’d been hired to coach the Redskins and wanted me for his staff. I jumped at the chance, of course; we were already friends, so I knew I could work with him, and I knew I’d probably learn a whole lot about coaching, too.

  At any rate, I’d been involved with a very good team or two but had never won a championship. The Redskins had come close that one year, and there was talk that we’d have to make good the year I met Jesse or Jonathon would be out of a job, which of course meant so would I. As they like to say in every sport: The pressure was on.

  But with all that stress, you know what I was worried about that spring? The championship battle between the Divas and the Fillies; it really had me tied up in knots. You’d have thought I was their head coach, not Andy Swilling.

  I stayed away from practice the week before the championship because I didn’t want to know Andy’s plan for the game; I wanted to watch the thing unfold without the knowledge of how it was supposed to. It’s sometimes very rewarding to watch a game that way.

  The championship was played at Claremont High School in Northern Virginia—a pretty good field, with far better lighting than they’d had for any of the previous games played in D.C. and freshly limed lines that made it look like the proper venue for a championship. The stadium even had assigned seating in real seats, rather than just elevated boards. There was a pretty good crowd there, too. It wasn’t a sellout, but the stands looked pretty well full. I’d say maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand people.

  Of course I was invited to watch from the sideline if I wanted, but I preferred watching from the stands, so I bought a seat high up, near the 40-yard line. When I got to the game I stopped near the sideline and waited until a few of the players noticed me. I waved to Jesse and a few of the girls to let them know I was there, then climbed up to my seat. I got up there just in time to see the opening kickoff.

  The Divas won the toss but elected to let the Fillies have the ball first. As they had done in the first game, the Fillies started pushing their way down the field. They started at their own 28-yard line, and thirteen plays later were on the Divas’ 11. Only this time the girls on defense came on a hell of a lot stronger. On third and 3, the Fillies tried to run it up the middle; one of the girls broke through low and fell in front of the running back, who tripped over her for a 2-yard loss. They were close enough for a field goal, but the kicker missed it. The Divas had stopped the Fillies without a score. Three minutes left in the first quarter, and the score was still 0 to 0.

  Andy’s game plan became apparent on the Divas’ first possession. Everything Jesse threw would be from what they like to call a “quarterback waggle”—rolling slightly to her left or right as she dropped back to pass. Either she’d dump the ball off short or she’d fire it to one of the outside receivers. Andy put Michelle Cloud in motion on almost every play, too. The women’s league doesn’t use a lot of motion before a play, because that takes so much practice to get right, and the league just doesn’t have the facilities or the money to devote that much time to practices. But Michelle was perfect for it. She was smart and never made a mistake. She would move from the left side of the field to the slot position and then, just as the ball was snapped, she would disappear in the confusion for a second before coming open 5 or 10 yards downfield, where Jesse would hit her. The play looked like this:

  Michelle began the play on the left. As Jesse called the signals, Michelle would go in motion to the slot position on the right. She timed her move to the slot position perfectly. Each time they ran this play, she was in that position the instant before the ball was hiked to Jesse. Jesse would fake a handoff to the running back (who would then run through the line and become a receiver), only to fall back and throw it to Michelle on the outside. Also, they worked out a kind of passing tree for each receiver; I could see that Jesse was throwing to a place on the field. Many times she dropped back, looked to her left, then to her right, then she’d throw the ball 15 yards to what looked like an open space until Michelle or Brenda Smalls would suddenly emerge out of the pack into that area, take the ball from the air, and keep going. Jesse’s release was so quick, and the plays developed so quickly, that the Fillies’ pass rush was useless. Jesse threw it a lot harder than she had all year too, though still not as hard as she could actually throw it. Michelle didn’t drop one ball. Neither did Brenda.

  The Divas didn’t run the ball much, but they had a dainty little halfback named Cissy Davis who could run and catch. On the last play of their first possession—after they’d driven a little more than 50 yards downfield with quick, short passes to the wide receivers—Jesse threw one of those dump-off passes to Cissy in the flat just to the outside of the pass rush, and she took off like some frightened Pekingese and ran 25 yards for a touchdown.

  A flat pass looks like this:

  When Cissy got to the “flat,” which is just to the right of Jesse in the backfield, a few yards behind the line of scrimmage, Jesse flipped her the ball. The right guard, the tackle, Michelle Cloud, and Brenda Smalls were all in front of her to block, and nobody could catch her.

  On their next possession, the Fillies, slow and plodding as always, couldn’t even get a first down. The Divas defense, in a kind of frenzy, stayed in their positions, held on to their blockers, and went down with them if they had to. It might have been luck the second time the Divas stopped them, when the Fillies running back fell down trying to cut through a gaping hole in the line, but they went three and out and had to punt from the 50-yard line.

  On first down, Jesse flipped another flare pass in the flat to Cissy and she ran for 16 yards. Then on the next play, Michelle went in motion to the strong side, and when the ball was snapped, she took off down the middle of the field. Jesse lobbed it over everybody and hit her on the run for a 69-yard touchdown.

  Just like that, the Divas were up 14 points. I could hear the girls screaming and cheering down on the sideline. The crowd got into it too. It was pretty damn noisy and exciting throughout the stands.

  The Fillies started getting careless now. When you’re trying to catch up, you want to move the ball a little faster and you get nervous about letting your opponent have it back, since another score might finish you. They even tried a few passes—including one that went for 12 yards. But they kept stepping on their own hair, as the saying goes in the women’s league. By the end of the first quarter, they were down 21 points.

  Jesse was something to watch. She was so sure of herself directing the offense, pointing to places on the field where she wanted folks to move. And I really admired the way Andy Swilling had coached his team for the game. I mean he really coached them. They were playing like one beast, every move exactly choreographed as though the plays were rehearsed, rather than practiced. Even the defense played with more confidence. The Fillies pushed them around, as they had before, up and down the field, but every time it looked like they might bully their way into the end zone, the Divas would manage to stop them. The Fillies kicked three field goals out of five tries, but the half was winding down now, and they were getting more and more frustrated. The very thing they were
used to exploiting as a weapon ran out on them: time. Though they had the ball for most of the first half, by the time it ended they were down 27 to 9. It was something to see.

  I was as deeply involved in that game as any I had ever watched from the stands, or anywhere else, for that matter.

  With four possessions in the first half, the Divas scored four touchdowns. (Their kicker missed one extra point.) They had the ball for less than 6 minutes in the entire half. I wanted to go down there at halftime and hug every one of them, including Andy.

  It started to rain in the second half, and it was all pretty sloppy after that—sloppy and scoreless. By the end of the game, everybody was making a mess of things. The Fillies started trying to throw the ball even more—they had to catch up, after all—which was something pretty comical, really. I’m sorry to say this, but to put it mildly, their quarterback threw the ball like a girl. And nobody on the Fillies could catch all that well either.

  The Divas had their share of mistakes in the second half, sure—dropped balls and fumbles. At one point, when Jesse threw a pass to a spot where Michelle was supposed to be, Michelle fell in the mud trying to make her cut and the ball hit one of the referees right between the eyes. He fell straight back into the mud and just lay there. Everybody thought he was dead. But it was just a broken nose. And a severe case of male humiliation. Coming to, apparently he said “Mommy” real loud and a lot of the folks attending to him heard it and started laughing. I felt sorry for the guy.

  When the game was over, I went to congratulate Andy and the team. The school was kind enough to let the Divas use their gymnasium and locker rooms, although all athletic equipment was off-limits. Andy had the players gather in the gym so they could celebrate a bit.

  It’s a different thing when women celebrate. They aren’t as noisy or physical with it somehow. I can’t describe what it was like in that gasping crowd of tired, muddy, bruised women, as they looked at one another and embraced with these deep sighs. It was a celebration of something almost spiritual. That’s all I can say about it. I’m not a poet or anything, and I don’t want to get sappy, but … you should have seen it. They weren’t just high fiving each other and grabbing one another around the neck; they didn’t howl or shout or slap anybody on the ass. They were just joyful together. Does that describe it? You have to see it to believe it, but it was almost as if they could know each other’s thoughts without words, so it was all conveyed through tearful smiles and knowing glances.