Hempel called a quick-out pass to the right corner of the end zone to draw at least one of our safeties over there, and Taylor Price ran a quick slant over the middle from the other side. Hempel tried to throw it high so the magnificent Price could leap right over everybody for it. It seemed like a year that ball was in the air, but Doug Harris, like an NBA player fighting for a rebound, jumped right up and ripped it out of Price’s grasp for an interception. He came down in the end zone and went right to his knees for a touchback. We took over on our 20. Jesse went in and knelt down twice and the game was over. We won 10 to 6, our lowest scoring victory in almost fifteen years.
But we won the division title, and throughout the playoffs we were going to have home-field advantage. We’d compiled our best record under Coach Engram, 14 and 4. With Jesse at quarterback, we were 10 and 1. She made us a true team, Jesse. Her presence, the way the offense played for her. Oh, those days, man, those days. What I would give to go back there, just for an hour.
Forty-Two
Along with Arizona, we drew a first-round bye in the playoffs. The Giants, finishing in second place in our division, were the wild card team and so they had to play New Orleans. San Francisco, the other wild card team, would go up against Minnesota.
We began preparation for the Giants during that bye week, thinking we’d see them again, and, sure enough, they beat New Orleans handily, 28 to 0. But with San Francisco beating Minnesota 19 to 10, the 49ers came to play us here, while New York traveled to Arizona.
San Francisco gave us a hell of a game. We held on to win, but it wasn’t easy. Jesse got the wind knocked out of her, and Spivey had to finish up for a final score of 27–21. Also, the 49ers tried the same tactics the Giants had used: all-out blitzes from so many different angles we’d have to study film for a week to chart all of them. They didn’t have near the success the Giants did, but Jesse still got knocked down seven times, chased out of the pocket twice, and once got thrown back on her head so hard I could hear it on the sideline. That was the play that knocked the wind out of her. She lay there a long time, and when she got up and came back to the sideline she seemed so wobbly on her feet, we had to put Spivey in. Jesse went through the concussion procedure again, and although she did okay, we decided to keep her out the rest of the game. We were already leading 27 to 14 at the time. Our defense had to hold out again against a furious rally at the end.
In the 4:00 game that afternoon, Arizona shocked all the experts and stopped the Giants cold, 24–7. It wasn’t even a contest.
That week Football magazine ran a collage of pictures on their cover of Jesse after various knockdowns. In one, Dan Wilber was helping her get up off her back while three dark blue shadows of Giant players loomed over her; in another, a huge 49er lineman was throwing her to the ground and you could see a grimace on her face; in still another, Jesse was flat on her back after getting the wind knocked out of her and hitting her head. Two 49er players stood over her, one of them gesturing as if he was a boxer who’d just taken down his opponent with one punch. Superimposed over the photographs was white lettering that said: THE GLOVES ARE OFF. Under that, in smaller text: JESSE SMOKE GETS BACK UP, BUT HOW MANY TIMES? NEW ATTITUDE PUTS REDSKINS QUARTERBACK AT RISK.
Coach Engram was of course furious when I showed it to him. “It’s not a new attitude, idiots. It’s called a new strategy. Fucking press always gets it wrong.”
“Guess it makes for a better story that way.”
“Like they weren’t trying to knock her on her ass all year.”
“Yet they all still believe it, that the guys had been laying off her because she’s a woman. Maybe it’s a good thing.”
“Thing is, I am worried about her.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. “She’s taken a hell of a beating the last few weeks.”
“She say anything to you?”
“I think she’s in some pain. A lot of pain.”
I’d been with her almost every day, and I hadn’t noticed she was in any trouble.
“In our meeting yesterday,” Coach Engram continued, “she suddenly coughed up a clot of blood into her hand.”
This sent a cold sensation into the top of my heart.
“She was embarrassed,” Engram said. “Said it was nothing, but I could see it hurt her. Then her nose started bleeding, right there at the table.”
“You take her to the doc?”
He nodded. “He said it was nothing. Just the dry air. He listened to her lungs and they were clear. Apparently the bloody nose dripped back into her throat before it came out the front.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I don’t want her getting hit so much in games. We gotta stop that.”
“I mean, it’s not like they don’t know by now that the strategy doesn’t work,” I said.
“Look at her numbers against the Giants and 49ers. It works.”
Jesse had not had a banner day in either game; that was true. In the Giants game she’d been knocked down a dozen times, hurried eight times, and sacked once. She completed 13 of 44 passes, for only 166 yards and 1 touchdown. She only had one interception, but a lot of her passes just got knocked down. It was a miracle she didn’t have more. Against the 49ers, she completed 17 out of 30, for 215 yards and 1 touchdown. She had no interceptions, but again she had balls batted down.
“Everybody’s going to be trying some version of that defense now,” Engram said.
“Except they don’t have the Giants’ personnel now, do they?”
“Look, we’ll switch to zone blocking up front—that’ll slow some of it down. But what I want to do is practice this week to take advantage of it; I want to fucking slaughter that kind of defense in this next game.”
“Hit it hard,” I said.
“We’ll see how long it takes the rest of the league to catch up.”
I didn’t say anything to Jesse about her bleeding episode. You can bet I watched her closely all week in practice, though. We rehearsed only three-step drops preparing for Arizona. With her quick feet and quick release, we could hit some short passes just behind the line and in front of the linebackers before the defensive line could get fully out of their stance. It would put a little more pressure on our wide receivers, but running patterns that close to the line they’d be able to take advantage of a few picks that would be impossible to detect. (A pick works to get a man open. We might run Rob Anders and Gayle Glenn Louis in a crossing pattern and have them just run into or get in the way of Darius Exley’s defender, which would leave Exley suddenly wide open.) Like this:
We could do that with both receivers. Technically it’s illegal, but when you run it close to the line with the confusion of players in there, the penalty is rarely called. We could work it with Darius picking off Anders’s defender, too. Jesse could read defenses well enough to know when she was facing man-to-man. That’s when picks really work.
Jesse would have a lot of choices on every play, and we would have as our goal that she not get knocked down even once. On most plays we’d have her drop three or four steps and fire it to one of the wide receivers on a quick in or a quick out. Or she might hit the tight end. The fans would be treated to the quickest passing game they’d ever seen.
To win the NFC championship, we were going to have to beat the Cardinals. They had a defensive line and set of linebackers as hard-hitting and powerful as the Giants, so we’d make sure we were ready for them. I was disappointed, though, not to be facing the Giants again. For one thing, we couldn’t be sure the Cardinals would try that same defense. They were smartly coached and they had handled the Giants’ defense so easily; they were favored to beat us by 3 points.
The night before the big game, Jesse called me and insisted she had to see me right away. I drove over to her apartment a little worried about what might be up. She’d been practicing every day without any evident pain, or much of it. Fact, we were finally so confident in her condition, we hadn’t even listed her on the injury report that week.
At the door she s
miled and took my hand. She did not have the porch light on, so I stepped out of the darkness into a well-lit hallway. She closed the door then led the way into her living room. She gestured for me to sit anywhere, so I took a seat on the couch. Jesse sat on the love seat across from me. “You want something to drink?”
“No.”
Liz came down the hall from the bedrooms there and installed herself in a chair by the fireplace. She took a deep breath and smiled. “Hello,” she said. “It’s good to see you, Skip.” She looked as if she’d been working hard.
“This is serious,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
Jesse cast her eyes down, then looked at me. “I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but this afternoon my mom said I should— I think I have to let you know.”
“Let me know what?”
“I’ve been spitting up blood, Coach.”
Forty-Three
I’m not the sort that panics, but I insisted that Jesse go with me straight to the team doctor. I would have rushed her to an emergency room, but if we did that it would be all over the news before midnight, and none of us wanted that kind of publicity. The team doctor was a general practitioner named Ron Bryan, but everybody just called him Doc. He met us in his office at Redskins Park. I thanked him for coming out so late to see us.
“What’s the problem?”
“She’s bleeding again,” I said.
Jesse looked at me.
“Coach Engram told me about the other day,” I said. I was pretty scared. I think Liz was, too. Jesse was simply Jesse. Curious maybe, but not especially alarmed. Doc listened to her describe her symptoms, then asked her if she felt any pain in her chest.
“No,” she said. “Not recently.”
“Recently? When did you have pain there?”
“Back when I got hit so hard in that first game. When my back was bruised.”
“Have you been coughing?”
“No.”
“Any fever? Night sweats?”
“No.”
He watched her with serious eyes. She said she had frequent headaches.
“How frequent?”
“A lot, lately,” she admitted.
“Since the other day?”
“Yes.”
“Bad headaches?”
“No. Not even very painful—just, well …” She looked at me. “Just sort of an achiness in the center of my head? Nothing I’d even take an aspirin for.”
He made her stand up and close her eyes and extend both arms to the side. “Now, bending only at the elbow, touch your nose with each forefinger, one at a time.” She did this. “Okay,” he said. “Now put your arms down to your sides. Close your eyes again, and raise both arms up, palms down, so they are exactly parallel,” She did this too.
“Okay,” he said.
She opened her eyes. “Did I pass?”
“You did.” Then Doc said he wanted to take her back into an examination room and have a look in her mouth.
“You want us to come along?” I said.
“No, you wait here.”
“What do you think it could be, Doc?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it something bad?”
I wanted him to tell me there was no cause for alarm, but he didn’t do that. He didn’t look worried, but neither was he being very sanguine about it. All I could get him to say was that the list of possible causes was as long as his arm. “Look, let’s just take things one step at a time,” he said.
“Doc,” I said. “We got a game tomorrow.”
“I know that.”
“If there’s any chance she won’t be able to play …”
“I’m playing,” Jesse said. “And stop talking about me like I’m not here. I hate it when you do that.”
I nodded in apology.
“We’ll see what this might mean,” Doc said. “It’s probably nothing. But it won’t do any harm to be sure of a few things. I want to listen to her chest again.”
While I waited in the hallway with Liz, I called Coach Engram, and he came down to join us. After a while, all three of us were pacing. I asked Liz if it had been a lot of blood.
“No. Just a little. In her handkerchief.”
“Was she coughing?”
“No.”
I didn’t know, but thought maybe that was a good sign.
At one point, Coach Engram broke the nervous silence. “I thought you were going to tell me she was pregnant or something.”
Liz looked at him.
“I took her to Doc a week ago for the same thing, the bloody nose,” Engram said. “He said she was fine.”
“It got worse,” Liz said.
“I just hope she’s all right,” I said. “I don’t give a damn about the game anymore. I want her to be all right.”
Finally Jesse came out, looking none the worse for wear. Doc was behind her. When he saw Coach Engram he moved over to talk only to him. But we were all there listening.
“She’s got nothing going on in her chest,” he said. “Her lungs are clear. I listened and this time I took an X-ray. Her teeth look fine. Nothing I can see in the back of her throat.”
“So what’s the problem?” Coach Engram asked.
He shrugged. “It could be high up, in her nose. The sinus area we can see—‘Little’s area’ it’s called—that’s clear. Higher up, though, she could have a polyp, or even an injury that’s bleeding down into the back of her throat.”
“She had a bad bloody nose during the game Sunday,” I said.
“And after the Giants game, too,” Jesse said.
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“I do.”
“So what do we do here?” Engram said.
“I want her to get some rest,” Doc said. “Have a CAT scan on her head as soon as we can arrange it.”
“What about tomorrow?” Engram said.
“Well …” He didn’t finish. He looked at Jesse kind of sadly, then at me. With a short wave of his hand he said, “I don’t think she should, but … I left it up to her.”
“I’m playing, ” she said.
“Is there any danger of permanent harm?” I asked.
“I’m playing,” Jesse said.
“My best guess is, it’s safe,” Doc said. “I’d rather she got this taken care of first, certainly, but … there’s no concrete danger.”
“Should I keep her out, Doc, or not?” Engram said, flatly.
Doc paused a minute before speaking. “I’ve left it up to her,” he said, quietly.
So on Sunday, Jesse walked onto the field with the rest of the offense and the crowd cheered like they always did. We kicked off and the Cardinals went three and out. They punted and Sean Rice, catching it on our 24-yard line, broke through the first line of defenders, slipped to the sideline, and ran it back for a touchdown. Jesse trotted out and kicked the extra point. Before she even took the field for our offense it was 7–0. Over the next 5 minutes or so the Cardinals held on to the ball, got it down to our 15, but then stalled. They kicked a field goal and it was 7–3.
Then, after they kicked off to us, Jesse began one of the most incredible shows I’ve ever seen. As it turned out the Cardinals did try a version of the Giants strategy against us, blitzing from a variety of formations, but they never laid a hand on her. Time and again, she just dropped back three steps and fired the ball—or flipped it, or gently lofted it—to Exley, Anders, Louis, Rice, Mickens, Frank, and White. Everybody got into the act. She completed 20 of her first 22 passes, for 244 yards and 4 touchdowns. It was uncanny to watch, actually. These were passes of 5 to 15 yards, mostly. I think her longest completion that day was an 81-yard pass to Anders that started out as a quick 8-yard toss over the defensive line and two blitzing linebackers. The cornerback on that side fell down, and Anders was free to jog his way to the end zone. We led 35–3 at the half.
In the locker room, Jesse spit a lot of blood into a white towel, and Coach Engram said he was going to let her take th
e second half off. “If we score again, you can do the kicking. But you’re done for the day.” He announced it to the whole team.
She didn’t like it, but when he told her it was to keep her fresh for the Super Bowl, everybody got into it, cheering and hollering Jesse’s name. It was a sweet thing to see. She put her hands up over her face and rubbed her eyes. Everybody stepped past her and patted her on the shoulders as we went back out for the second half.
The Cardinals scored on their first possession of the third quarter, but we took the ball on the following kickoff and ran it on them—a long, time-consuming drive that took up most of the third quarter. We kept the ball for 14 plays. Mickens ran it in from the 4. He gained 128 yards on 24 carries in the game, and he had 11 of those carries in that one drive. They couldn’t stop us. Spivey mopped up, completing 5 of 7 passes. Winning the game 42–10, we were headed for the Super Bowl. The next day all the papers and sportscasters in the country were calling us a “powerhouse.” One article suggested that we might even be able to beat the Oakland Raiders, who had also “waltzed” into the Super Bowl.
On the Monday after we won the NFC championship, Jesse woke up and found a mass of blood on her pillow. She told her mother about it, and me. I insisted she go to the doctor, but by noon she felt okay and refused to do it. “I know what I’m dealing with,” she said. “Okay? Please don’t ruin this chance for me.” She wanted so badly to play in the Super Bowl I believed it clouded her judgment. I even asked her, “Do you want to risk your life?”
“I’m not ‘risking my life.’”
For two weeks, while the press chased after her, desperate for an interview with the First Woman to Play in the Super Bowl, she carried a red handkerchief around to spit blood into, as necessary, making sure nobody noticed.
She was sharp in practice, though—threw the ball like she always did—and she studied film of the Raiders, preparing for the game as though she knew it would be her last game on earth. Gradually, over those two weeks, the bleeding got worse. She was sick from swallowing it. In spite of how she played in practice, she started to look ill. Roddy wanted to know if she was losing weight. “She looks a bit thinner to me, Skip,” he said. “She okay?”
The Legend of Jesse Smoke Page 33