by Mark Bowden
But the bomb did precisely what Mora intended. It knocked the Eagles’ defense off stride. Hanging back more than usual, the secondary was on its heels when fullback Craig “Iron head” Heyward caught a short shovel pass. Loose in the secondary, the 270-pound runner (“I’m bein’ nice with that two-seventy,” said Madden) shrugged off the blows of McMillian and safety Rich Miano, both of whom were outweighed by about a hundred pounds. Heyward crossed midfield before a determined John Booty, another lightweight Eagles backup safety (the injured Hopkins and Waters were watching in civvies from the sidelines), rode him down.
Then McMillian screwed up. Instead of following receiver Eric Martin across the middle of the field, the rookie let him go, thinking that Booty would pick him up. But Booty had been assigned deep coverage, so he was fifteen yards away when Martin slanted into a broad empty space in the center of the Eagles’ defensive secondary. Martin sprinted down to the Eagles’ thirteen-yard line before Booty caught up this time.
So the Saints were in plus territory, inside the Eagles’ twenty-yard line. Only four minutes into the game, and their supposedly overmatched offense was pushing the vaunted Gang Green backward in big thrusts on nearly every play. The Dome was vibrating with noise. This was the best of all possible beginnings for New Orleans. Barring a fumble or an interception, they were going to score. If you take the ball on the first possession and march straight down your opponent’s throat, you not only take an early lead, you serve notice.
Especially in a game like this. It takes more than talent to win a play-off game. More than emotion. At the beginning of a season, teams approach each other anew. They may be old rivals, but each off-season has brought retirements, draft picks, free agents; strengths bolstered, weaknesses addressed. Aging superstars no longer play the way they once did, and youngsters step up. There’s a degree of uncertainty on both sides. By the end of a sixteen-game season, however, both teams know each other well. They know which linebackers can’t keep up with tight ends, know which defensive ends with mending knees tend to shy away from low blocks, know which green cornerback is often confused in complex pass coverages. Intelligence counts for more in the postseason.
Tasting blood, the Saints’ coaching staff bored in on McMillian. They lined up a three-receiver formation, a triple, which assured a one-on-one matchup between the rookie and Martin, their wily veteran (who was five inches taller than the cornerback and outweighed him by about forty pounds). On the snap, Martin sprinted down the sideline, and, noting that the cornerback was staying too wide, broke toward the center, toward the goalpost. Realizing he was a step too late, McMillian made a desperate lunge and grabbed the back of Martin’s jersey. It prevented the touchdown, at the cost of a penalty that gave the Saints first down on the one-yard line.
And Reverend Reggie opened the door. On the first play of the goal-line stand, the star defensive end was supposed to keep his nose down and hold his ground, aiming himself in from his left side of the line toward the center. But even future Hall of Famers goof. Reggie either misheard or forgot the defensive call, because instead of nosing in to his right, he charged out to his left, head up, nearly bowling over right tackle Stan Brock, but leaving an open door behind him to the end zone. Heyward ran across the goal line untouched. The chubby fullback trotted over to a section in the stands for disabled fans and chucked them the ball. This throttled the roar even higher—the nobility of it!
Seventy-three yards on the first eight plays of the game! Who dat? Yessir, the Saints were marchin’ in! Morten Andersen’s extra point spotted his team a seven-point lead, and the fans were dancing in the aisles. It looked like one long Mardi Gras afternoon.
Things got worse. Randall started off shakily, ignoring (as usual) the checkoffs he was supposed to be making on passing downs and missing what the coaches felt would be easy targets. This was frightening, because Randall has a history of playing either brilliantly or abominably, and rarely anything in between. The quarterback fumbled the first time he tried to run with the ball (but the Eagles got a break; officials ruled he was down before he dropped it) and then, in classic Randall form, took off upfield on the next play, ignoring three wide-open receivers. It was the kind of play that infuriates his coaches. He forfeited an easy big gainer by declining to throw the ball, but before Richie and quarterbacks coach Zeke Bratkowski had time to vent their disgust, Randall had high stepped into the New Orleans secondary, slipped two tackles, and, catching and righting himself with one hand on the turf, lunged forward to complete a magnificent fifteen-yard run—the same yardage he might have effortlessly gained by throwing the ball, only that would never have made a highlights tape, the way Randall’s scramble would on all the postgame shows tonight (win or lose).
As would the next play, which is the sort of thing Randall did whenever they started thinking he was hopeless. Richie was trying to mix up first-down calls; the Eagles had run the ball twice in a row on first down. This time it would be a pass. He selected a play that involves lining up on the same side of the field two receivers, Fred Barnett and the dour, precise Calvin Williams. Fred and Calvin would run a crossing pattern. Fred lined up split wide to the right, over near the sideline, and Calvin positioned himself between Fred and the right tackle, in the slot. The critical part of the play call was the number 75, which designates the target of the pass to be Calvin, the 7 receiver, and the pass route, a 5 or “sail,” which calls for him to sprint exactly 12 yards upfield at the snap and then tear to his right and “sail” toward the sidelines. That was the plan. Only, given a choice between throwing to Calvin or Fred, Randall would almost always throw to Fred, another of the quarterback’s standing problems (and one of the reasons that Calvin is so dour).
The moment Randall stepped out of the huddle, he saw he’d made a mistake. It was easy to make a mistake. The quarterback got his play call through an elaborate sequence of hand signals from Bratkowski, the dignified old journeyman, veteran backup from the days of Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas. Intelligent, unflappable, and precise, Zeke stood in the unholy din of the Superdome signing intensely. He had been standing on the sidelines for most of his sixty-one years. He was so used to playing the game in his head that football existed for him like some Zen abstraction—as opposite as one could get from the flamboyantly instinctive Randall. The actual play call in this instance was “slot-I-right, K-44, 75, Z-stop, slow,” with each portion of the call fleshing out the play’s design: formation (slot-I-right—left flanker Calvin in the right slot, backs stacked in a row behind the quarterback,tight end to the left side, and Herschel Walker lined up directly behind Heath Sherman in the classic I formation about three yards off Randall’s right shoulder); play fake and blocking assignment (K-44—fake handoff [hence the K] to the 4 hole between tackle and guard, right side, and the whole line slides to provide left-side pass protection); target receiver and route (75); secondary receiver and route (Z-stop— Fred, the Z receiver, runs a stop-and-go); and the tight end’s blocking assignment (slow—Keith Byars, lined to the left, blocks for a few seconds, then slips out into the flat on a delayed short-pass route). For every one of these instructions (and this is a relatively simple play, with no presnap motion, no line stunts, and only two wide receivers), old Zeke has to make a hand signal; he looks as though he’s singing rounds in sign language. When the old warhorse Jimmy Mac is out there, he will often just cut Zeke off in midcall, waving his hand dismissively toward the sideline to indicate “Okay, I’ve got it,” picking up the whole sequence (as familiar to him as a popular ditty) from just the first two beats. But Randall, who was sensitive about getting blamed for screwing up, wanted to make sure he knew exactly what the coaches wanted him to do at all times, so he demanded the whole rigmarole. This time, somewhere in Zeke’s elaborate sidelines mime, Randall picked up a “5” for the blocking assignment instead of “4.” As he left the huddle, and watched Calvin trot out to the right-side slot, it dawned on him that if his play fake was to the left, and his blockers were sliding toward
the 5 hole, he would almost instantly have two unblocked quarterback-eating Saints in his face.
“Uh, you’re gonna want to get out of this,” warned center Dave Alexander, who saw the same thing.
“No, Dave!” Randall shouted, trying to be heard over the crowd. “Four! Four!”
Alexander started screaming, “Forty-four! Forty-four!” turning his head to his left, then to his right, adjusting the blocking scheme.
Randall quickly walked back to Sherman and Walker and alerted them to his mistake. With just two seconds left on the play clock, he lined up behind the center and took the snap.
Saints cornerback Toi Cook had to make a choice when both Fred and Calvin started down his side of the field. Cook’s free safety, Gene Atkins, was supposed to help him with deep coverage, so Cook was keeping one eye on Fred but more closely watching Calvin. If he could jump the slot receiver from behind, he could pick off the pass and have a clear fifty-yard sprint to the end zone. It was tempting. And when Fred came off the line at just three-quarter speed, it reinforced Cook’s hunch that this would be a short pass to Calvin on the out route (which is, in fact, the play Richie called). Cornerback is the least forgiving role on the football field. With just an eye blink of hesitation—Cook did no more than turn his body a half degree to the left—you were (so to speak) cooked.
Fred had spent some quiet time this morning in his hotel room visualizing just this play. He was always up at about 5:00 a.m. on game days, which drove his roommate, Calvin, crazy. Fred sat up in his bed and made mental pictures, trying to project himself into the situations he would be apt to encounter in the game. It was more than technique to Fred; it was mystical. He knew the patterns he was going to be running in the game. He knew the defenses and the adjustments they’d make. He just fed in the scenarios and ran them like videotapes in his head. And then, during the game, racing downfield in the Superdome, seeing Randall release the long pass, hearing no sound … Fred felt a whisper of déjà vu; he had been in this moment before; he was in perfect sync with his mind’s eye.
COOK REALIZED A SPLIT SECOND TOO LATE that Fred was Randall’s target. He pivoted and turned upfield, but he was already beat. He glanced over for Atkins, but the safety, too, had bought Calvin’s out route. They were both out of position.
The pass was a thing of beauty. Zeke had been preaching for years that the place to throw the long pass was not to the corner of the field—where quarterbacks instinctively throw it—but toward the goalpost. When the ball is thrown outside, the receiver has to find and track it over his shoulder. And because the spin on a right-handed passer’s football is clockwise, the longer the ball stays in flight on a deep pass to the right, the more it will tail off toward the sidelines and out of reach. Thrown inside, toward the goalpost, however, the ball has a trajectory that draws the receiver into the middle of the field, so he can run toward it without worrying about running out-of-bounds, without craning his neck, without breaking stride, and the spin pulls the ball toward the receiver, not away from him. “You make the physics work for you,” Zeke told his quarterbacks, who tended to return funny looks. Physics?
This pass was a textbook case. Fred saw it rising in silhouette against the roof, and, for a heartbeat, he lost it in the lights … then it was back. He hadn’t broken stride. He knew he’d left Cook well behind. Fred caught the pass with both hands more than fifty yards downfield and with four long strides was in the end zone, the feeling of déjà vu complete.
South Street Fred was becoming a star.
“If there’s one thing I’ve always said this Eagles offense doesn’t do enough of, it’s get the ball deep to Fred Barnett,” cheered Madden (the lovable, exuberant former Raiders coach is so respected, he has more power than anyone except head coaches to make or break careers, and he’s loved Fred since the first time he saw him play three years ago). “He just does that with his speed. Toi Cook just doesn’t have the speed to cover Barnett man to man.”
But that perfect moment was all the Eagles’ offense could muster in the first half, and the defense—the great defense—was struggling badly. It was always that way. For weeks they’d be impregnable, then abruptly turn doormat. The spirit came and the spirit went. It drove the club’s defensive guru, that white-haired, chain-smoking fussbudget Bud Carson, to madness. Players and coaches saw the game differently. To players, the game was a physical battle, where the team with the most strength, speed, and agility conquered. To a coach, especially to a wizened pro like Bud, whose “Steel Curtain” Pittsburgh defenses back in the seventies were legendary, the game was a mental contest. On every play, eleven men tried to quickly execute a complex action while eleven other men tried hard to stop them. Every time, players on both sides of the ball screwed up—that was a given. The team that made the fewest mistakes won; that was football from the Coach’s-Eye View. Coaches entered a game with the whole thing scripted, a cunningly crafted rout, then the players went out and fucked it up.
So the first half of the Saints’ play-off game, from the Eagles’ Coach’s-Eye View, was a string of little mistakes that eventually added up to two touchdowns and a field goal. The coaches had McMillian’s rookie mistakes and Reggie’s all-pro mistake to allow the first score. Then Eric Allen, another all-pro, failed unaccountably to stay with receiver Quinn Early, who caught a twenty-yard pass and set up a field goal. Lastly, New Orleans’s rookie running back Vaughn Dunbar, their prized first-round pick, had broken free to run the ball deep in plus territory again. Dunbar’s-eye view: a brilliant effort by an up-and-coming NFL superstar. Eagles’ Coach’s-Eye View? Miano let himself get out of position by coming too close to the line of scrimmage and getting walled off by blockers, and then Booty made a pitiful attempt at an arm tackle. John Madden, the old coach, saw it clearly; he might as well have taken the words right out of Bud’s mouth: “I tell you,” Madden said, “that’s where they [the Eagles] miss Andre Waters and Wes Hopkins. Watch when he [Dunbar] breaks through here.” Then as the run was replayed in slow motion, Madden noted, “Booty is going to come up and he’s going to have a shot”—Booty lunged at Dunbar’s legs, arms outstretched—”right there! And he misses the tackle. Hey, if that was Wes Hopkins, that’s the end of the run.”
In other words, Bud had his players in the right positions; they just failed to make the play. It was like some perverse variation on chess, where outcomes were always uncertain; sometimes knight took pawn, sometimes pawn took knight.
Two plays later, Hebert completed a short pass to Early in the end zone—C-E-V? Eric Allen, instead of playing the receiver wide outside, taking away the corner, was caught underneath, giving Early an open corner for the fade—and the Saints finished the half ahead by ten points in what was supposed to be a defensive battle.
In other words, the Eagles look sunk.
ON THE OFFENSE’S side of the room, Ron Heller isn’t feeling darkly sentimental or frustrated. He’s feeling good. For weeks he had worried (Ron’s a worrier) about facing the Saints’ Pro Bowl linebacker Pat Swilling inside the Dome. It wasn’t Swilling’s excellence alone that concerned the Eagles’ left tackle; it was the Dome. More particularly, it was the noise inside the Dome. Ron is obsessive about noise. A full excited house inside a domed stadium means a noise level at which safety engineers would mandate earplugs. But Ron hadn’t been worried about his ears; he’d been worried about his pride.
The football team isn’t family to Ronald Ramon Heller. He grew up in the lap of a big, loving suburban family on the west end of Long Island. His dad is an executive with the New York Telephone Company. To Heller, football is a chosen career. After nine years as an NFL starter, Ron is making more than $600,000 annually, and while he’s not one of the league’s big-name stars (few offensive linemen are), he prides himself on being a solid pro, not just one of these mammoth wide-bodies recruited because they’re nearly impossible to knock over, but an athlete. He likes to think of his size as a kind of genetic accident, something incidental to his athletic success. He
feels insulted when somebody walks up to him and, surveying his Goliath proportions, remarks, “Dang, if you don’t play football, it’s a waste!” Despite his size, Heller is built like an acrobat, and he works hard year-round to stay in perfect shape. He has a weight and conditioning room built onto his tract mansion down in Tampa and works with trainers and therapists in the off-season to keep his muscular thirty-one-year-old body trim and flexible. He studies things like footwork and blocking techniques the same way an attorney might study a fine point of patent law. Ron is a highly precise individual. His house, his boat, his car, his clothes, his hair—hell, even his wife—they’re all like scenes on a cheerful postcard. Out on the football field, where things get messy, Ron always looks perfect. His shirttail never flops; his uniform socks never droop. He wears these triple-wide shoulder pads that, unlike the lumpy armor worn by most linemen, are smooth and symmetrical, flaring to a crisp outer rim over each shoulder that accentuates Ron’s broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted frame. He has this way of standing perfectly erect with his feet close together, kind of delicatelike, that can make him look almost prissy out there—truth is, Heller is a bit of a priss.
He plays best when fired with indignation, when convinced that his opponent is playing dirty, and works himself into that state of mind, consciously or not, in almost every game. His teammates know him well enough to help out, pointing out plays in the week before the game, when the line reviews an opponent’s game films, noting late hits or cut blocks—”Did you see what that bastard did, Ron?” Not that he needs help. He would find something, seizing upon some small transgression of the man he would be blocking, and start to grumble: “That sonofabitch, I’m gonna kill him!”
Ron is always railing against opponents who refuse to play by the rules! After one game against Pittsburgh, Ron pursued Steelers defensive line coach Joe Greene (the famous “Mean” Joe Greene) off the field with his complaints, telling Greene in his earnest way, “I had a lot of respect for you, Joe, as a professional and Hall of Famer, but it’s a disgrace the way you’re teaching these guys how to cut people from behind and take cheap shots and try to hurt people!”