Collision Low Crossers

by Nicholas Dawidoff

  Playing the Raiders in Oakland, said Pettine, was going to be “like fucking Halloween come early.” Many Raiders fans dressed up in ghoulish costumes and treated the stadium stands as a mosh pit. The field was shared with the Oakland Athletics baseball team and so it would have dirt instead of grass across the infield skin. Oakland halfback Darren McFadden’s passing ability was yet one more unpredictable element to look forward to.

  By Tuesday evening, the game plan was in process, and so was the peanut butter plan. That Ryan had been spooning prolific amounts straight out of the communal jar had led the defensive coaches to set up a trap for him. They’d superglued the top of the peanut butter jar shut and set up an iPhone camera to film Ryan’s efforts to open it. The code phrase for Ryan going in search of peanut butter was “spider in the web.” Ryan, meanwhile, was in his office making a tape to boost Wayne Hunter’s self-esteem. “His confidence is shot,” Ryan said. The head coach’s plan was to invite Hunter into his office and tell him, “I want you to play like this guy.” Then there’d be a video featuring a few dominant frames of the Hall of Famer Anthony Muñoz, followed by a seamless segue to several dominant minutes of Wayne Hunter.

  Around midnight, the spider headed for the web. O’Neil and Smitty turned on the arachnid-cam and then ran away so Ryan wouldn’t hear them giggling. Pettine kept his head down. Watching the web film together afterward, the coaches saw Ryan struggling with the jar, muscling and tugging at it. Eventually he began murmuring, “I don’t need to do this.” He kept trying for a while longer and then he put the jar down, told himself, “The thing’s too hard to open anyway,” and walked away. “Sometimes you get these flashes of brilliance,” said Pettine.

  As for the other game plan, the Raiders used a fairly similar scheme to what Jacksonville ran, so there were only six new Jets defensive calls, which Pettine referred to as “tendency breakers.” A blitz that had worked well was removed because Pettine guessed the Raiders would be too ready for it. Most other Jacksonville calls would be up again on Pettine’s call sheet, including several that Pettine had put in the Jaguars plan and then not used. That frequently happened with new calls because in the moment, he’d think back to practice and feel unsure that the players had mastered them.

  On Wednesday morning, Schotty told the quarterbacks and receivers that Al Davis had been running the Raiders in the same way for years. Davis always wanted huge pass rushers ripping up the field toward the passer while sprinter-fast DBs glided along in coverage. Sanchez was sitting there in Schotty’s office hooked up to several mobile electronic-stimulus machines—he ached all over. Schotty and Cav asked him what hurt the most, but Sanchez refused to address the topic. He wanted only to talk across the table with his favorite receiver, tight end Dustin Keller, about how they’d exploit the Raiders over the middle.

  As Schotty ran through the game plan, Mark Brunell noticed that the coordinator looked wiped out. He had been in the office deep into the night, door closed, like a lonely scrivener in his garret, fueled by chips and chocolate. “Was your dad a grinder?” Bru asked. “Yeah,” Schotty told him. “They called him Roadblock.”

  The receivers left. “Boy,” said Sanchez as he reflected on all the material Schotty had just introduced to them, “the receivers are really into it. If we asked them one question, they wouldn’t get it.”

  “That’s just receivers,” said Schotty quickly. “Don’t let it affect you.” Time and again through the year, I’d see evidence that the stereotype was true: receivers and cornerbacks were the most difficult players to coach. As for tight ends, somebody in the meeting now mentioned Dustin Keller’s lackluster blocking. Sanchez spoke up loyally: “If he misses a block, he’ll just score later in the possession, so who cares!”

  At the 8:50 team meeting, Ryan announced that Cro had been named the AFC defensive player of the week, and the team gave him a hand. In one week, Cro had plunged and then soared. As Pettine liked to say, that was life in the NFL.

  Out at practice that day, Callahan predicted that with help, Nick Mangold would be back quickly from his painful ankle sprain. Callahan said that he sometimes dropped in on the training room before games to see the injured players lining up to take pregame injections, saw “the veteran guys hesitating, yes, no, okay, I’ll do it. It’s amazing what they’ll do to their bodies.” Most of the shots were anti-inflammatories and not casually administered. The NFL was vigilant about its drug protocols, keeping all medications under frequent review, and Jets team doctor Ken Montgomery was considered by the coaches to be an especially caring professional. A tall, amiable Californian, Montgomery shared Callahan’s admiration for the ability of Mangold and other players to endure their injuries. Like anything else, the doctor said, playing well with an injury required experience.

  Early Thursday morning, Schotty was talking third-down alignment principles with Sanchez and the other quarterbacks when Ryan appeared. “If I could just interrupt,” he said. “They’re motivated by the hot-dog incident. How funny is that?” The last time the Jets had played the Raiders, the Jets had been so far ahead that Sanchez, then a rookie, was taken out of the game. He was soon captured on camera eating a hot dog on the sidelines, an action the Raiders considered disrespectful.

  For Sanchez, life was good. The team was 2 and 0. His pal Scotty McKnight had just been re-signed to the Jets practice squad. There was in front of him a fine McElroy-catered breakfast of steak and eggs slathered in A1 sauce. At practice, as he often did, the quarterback ran extra sprints during his rest breaks.

  On the practice sidelines, I listened to Bart Scott claim he had never had the flu in his life, had never tasted beer, and had never seen the like of Nick Bellore’s large head. “It’s so big, he’s evolution!” Then Scott began naming the NFL all-melon team. Peyton Manning was the squad’s (heady) quarterback.

  As for DT, the man was feeling puckish. For the upcoming long flight to California, he instructed Carrier to “tell the old lady to bake me some cookies.”

  The team traveled to California on Friday so as to have a day to recover from the cross-country flight. To encourage rehydration, there were coolers filled with Gatorade and other drinks installed in the hotel’s meeting rooms and near the elevator banks on every floor. On Saturday, after a walk-through at a local high school where Sanchez, the native Californian, ran around barefoot, Ryan, Weeks, and I visited Alcatraz. Ryan, after hearing that no prisoner had successfully escaped the island, surveyed the San Francisco Bay’s watery swells and declared, “Hell, I could swim it, no problem. The old sidestroke!” Schottenheimer telephoned Ryan during the drive to say that A-Lynn’s son, D’Anton, a Penn State defensive back, had been carried off the field during a game against Eastern Michigan with a spinal injury. Ryan immediately called A-Lynn and urged him to fly to his son. It turned out that D’Anton was not as severely injured as had been feared, but Ryan got back in touch with A-Lynn and told him, “Either way, you should go. He’ll be scared.” Right there was Ryan in full, absurdly self-confident and deeply and feelingly good-hearted.

  The game did not go well. I watched with Tannenbaum, who pointed out that Burress offered the time-honored leaving-the-huddle clap only on pass plays. During his three years with the Jets prior to joining the Patriots, Bill Belichick had taught Tannenbaum to notice details like that. The Jets went ahead by ten and were positioned to score more, but Sanchez threw an interception into the Raiders end zone. Given the chance, the Raiders rallied. At halftime, the Jets had outplayed the Raiders but were tied with them at 17, which the GM considered a troubling harbinger. He was right. The Raiders running game surged through the usually implacable DeVito and the other linemen. By game’s end, Cromartie had been charged with four penalties and had fumbled a kickoff, missed tackles, and, finally, hurt his chest. Down on the sidelines, Mason lost his temper, confronting Schotty about the play-calling, screaming, in effect, that he wanted more balls thrown to him. After the 34–24 defeat, Cromartie, accompanied by the trainers, passed through t
he cramped visitors’ locker room, picking his way around strewn luggage, his eyes wide with suffering and fear. There was a damp, anxious smell in there. Young Jeff Cumberland had torn his Achilles tendon and was on crutches. It could all go to shit so fast.

  On Monday morning, following a long, brooding return flight, the defensive coaches were trying to understand what had happened, what had been done to them, how the Raiders could have failed to convert a single third down and still won the game. Most NFL games boiled down to four to six crucial plays that either went your way or didn’t. After a close win, teams simply moved on. After a close loss, everything was questioned, as happened now. The coaches berated what they saw on the film. Jets had loafed. Jets had failed to react. Jets had overreacted. Jets had panicked. What had caused all this? The coaches themselves had caused all this. They were babying the players. As a result, the players were out of shape. The players were distracted. The players needed urgency. “Fucking awful,” said DT. “Little bit of tough love coming this week,” said Pettine. By the time the film was over, the coaches felt better enough about life that the outcome of the game was no longer taken personally. They could go and meet the players in a constructive frame of mind.

  Ryan told the assembled team that they’d been soft. Better not try that again this week. The Ravens were the same sort of tough, physical team as the Raiders but much better at almost every position. And then after the Baltimore game, the Patriots awaited the Jets. Ryan smiled. He said these two weeks would be “a great challenge,” one for which he personally couldn’t wait. How about them?

  “It isn’t going to happen just because Rex says it is,” Pettine informed the defense in their meeting. On film, time and again, the players watched themselves loping in pursuit or simply freezing while opportunity sped past. BT made soft groaning noises. Cromartie’s arm was in a sling. He looked years younger, simultaneously meek and resentful. It occurred to me how unusual it was to glimpse vulnerability on the face of a football player. It was difficult even to see Wilkerson’s face behind the cairn of ice bags the rookie had strapped to his shoulder. Leonhard sat there wondering how some players could play to their peak ability every game while others fluctuated from week to week. By now, upstairs and the coaches were agreed that the season would probably hinge on whether the crucial trio of Sanchez, Hunter, and Cromartie played well. When they did, the Jets were formidable. When they didn’t, the Jets were something less.

  The games quickly came and went, and so did players. The lower end of the fifty-three-man roster was a mass of shifting parts, as was the eight-member practice squad. You were either getting better or getting worse and getting gone, everyone said. The team brought Aaron Maybin back from the street and also Julian Posey. Revis took Posey aside and told him how serious football was. “Don’t be late,” he warned. “They’re not so invested in you that they’ll let it slide.” The aspiration for the week was “tempo.” That was the point of Maybin. The team didn’t, of course, know how he’d been spending his time out on the street. If Maybin was fit, that dude was the full agitato. If he wasn’t fit, they’d cut his ass, allegro.

  Cromartie’s character was a source of fascination around the facility. Each week, the superlative athlete was a different player. At the moment, the severity of his injury was a topic of internal conjecture. Would he play against the Ravens? Building the game plan, the defensive coaches had to assume not, and they began to construct calls that would protect the less skilled cornerback who’d man the position in Cro’s absence. How glad they all were to have this to do. The urgent challenges of the near future relieved the coaching tendency to perseverate over the recent failures.

  In a building filled with competitive people, Pettine was on the ferocious end of the spectrum, and the desire to beat the Ravens consumed him more than it did for any opponent. The year before when the Jets had lost 10–9 to his old team, he’d come out to the stadium parking lot where the coaches always gathered with friends and family to picnic and unwind after games. Pettine had been so disappointed he couldn’t talk to anybody. He climbed into his car and sat there alone staring at the steering wheel. Right now he would do anything to beat the Ravens, but with such motivation came the risk of doing too much. This week, the Jets defensive players hoped for fewer calls than the forty-eight they’d had in the Oakland plan. During the Raiders game, Smith and Leonhard had reported to their coaches that the defense was feeling overwhelmed. Part of Pettine realized he probably should cut back. But it was the Ravens! He knew their offense intimately, had opposed that offense with Ryan for years on the practice field, and had developed antidotes for everything the Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron might try. Pettine’s intelligence had made him discussed around the league as a rising NFL coach, but right now too much insight might bring ruin. Pettine couldn’t bring himself to shrink the plan, because anticipating every explosive play the Ravens might try and providing defusing responses was what he had to offer. At the moment, on Tuesday, the new defensive plan had forty-eight calls.

  Bart Scott, who had looked slow and tired in the second half against the Raiders, was going to lose reps this week. Smitty worried about the effect on his old Baltimore carpooling companion, wondered if they shouldn’t create a new package for Scott to respect his pride. “Listen, Sara Hickmann,” Pettine said, “just make the depth chart.” Smitty sighed. He was feeling overwhelmed by life. The staff at the clean, brightly lit nursing home where Smitty had arranged for his ailing father to stay had called. His father was “acting out,” and if things didn’t improve, he was going to be asked to leave.

  Pettine was watching tape, and he discovered a middle blitz Buffalo had used to good effect against the Ravens. After modifying it to his own personnel, Pettine thought about the name for a while, searching for a distinctive M word to communicate “middle.” He settled on Megan Double Field, after his daughter, who was at home in Maryland that day turning seventeen.

  With so many former Ravens around the facility, suggestions from all points arrived with frequency at the Schottenheimer unloading dock. He and Pettine met—it was unusual for either to cross the bullpen, but these were no ordinary times. Ryan provided thoughts. During the quarterbacks’ meeting, so did Derrick Mason, who said that with his ex-team, it all came down to knowing where Ed Reed was. “Ed! Freestylin’, doin’ what he wants to do,” replied Schotty. He looked at Sanchez. “They’re all confident because they know they’ve got him lurking and they’ve got a good pass rush. If they get to you, which they will some, say uncle! Throw it away.”

  The receivers left. Then the door reopened and Mason returned. Looking at Schotty, he apologized for his outburst during the Raiders game. “Thank you,” said Schotty. “I appreciate it, but it’s not necessary. We’re thrilled to have you here.” What he didn’t say was that he couldn’t solve Mason’s problem, which was that the man still thought like a number-one receiver instead of what he was, the number three on a team that ran a lot because of the limitations of its young quarterback. Had Schotty been up in the box during games calling his plays, he would have been unavailable to Mason. “I would never want to avoid the receivers,” Schotty said. “I want to deal with it head-on.” Later he would tell me, “There’s dysfunction at times when you’re losing. There’s anger. But once the game’s over, you watch the film, you come together, and you move on. You don’t want the players to see you change.”

  It was Wednesday and Pettine’s plan still had forty-six calls—he’d killed two darlings. In a normal week, you’d want at least ten fewer. Pettine told his players, “If there’s a call you can’t play fast, tell me and it’s out.” O’Neil believed that the worst quality in a coordinator was “to be boring” in front of the players. Now, Pettine reviewed the Ravens offensive personnel with the defense, and when he got to the center Matt Birk, he said, “He’s declined physically, but he gets by because he went to Harvard and might throw a book at you!” When he described Megan Double Field, he explained that the cal
l name was a birthday present for his daughter, adding, “The play looks goofy because she’s goofy!”

  During practice, Cromartie tried wearing a Kevlar vest to protect his chest. He ran sprints, lowered his shoulder a few times against a padded goalpost, threw a ball around. Many silently questioned him. If he could do all that, how hurt could he be? Cromartie looked like a man who could tell what the others were thinking. “He’ll play,” Pettine predicted. “He’s sensitive. We’ll build him up.” And then, even as the coordinator spoke, there went Derrick Mason and running back LaDainian Tomlinson over to Cromartie, teasing him, making him laugh as they yelled, “He’ll play!”

  At the end of practice, Ryan gathered the team around him on the field, as he always did, and told the defense he was cutting the plan down to thirty-six calls. “Same for the offense,” he went on. “A hundred and twelve down to—” I laughed. Schotty, standing next to me, said, “You think that’s funny, Nick?” His voice was tense. He’d slept two hours.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We don’t have that many calls,” he said.

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. “He was just joking.” I hoped it had been funny. My only role was to behave well. I’d had all of four hours of sleep each of the last three nights. I hadn’t seen my family. It was stressful to be around the team after the loss. I looked up to discover O’Neil taking my measure. “What you’re finding out is that you could never be a football coach,” he said.