by Mark Bowden
Walking through final drills the day before the Monday night matchup, Dave confesses to his buddy Ron that he has this peculiar feeling about tomorrow night’s game.
“I feel like I’m gonna get the ball, Ron. I’m gonna get the ball and I’m gonna try to score with it.”
He was only half-kidding. He’d had this dream. It was not a feeling he had often.
“No you’re not,” scoffed Ron. “I’ll score before you do.”
“Put a little money on it?”
They agreed on fifty dollars for a touchdown, twenty-five dollars for advancing the ball for a first down, and ten dollars for recovering a fumble.
SEVERAL HOURS before game time, before the stands begin to fill, Jimmy Mac is on the field playing with his remote-control car, racing it madly up and down the turf.
Back in the locker room, he entertains the troops by dropping his pants to his ankles and waddling around the room doing his Richie Kotite imitation, throwing his arm around a teammate and bellowing in his best Brooklynese, “My friend,” “Without question,” and other Richie-isms, then climbing up on the table in the middle of the locker room, still with his pants down, and striking some of the classical, heroic, mock action poses found on old football cards or in old magazines—one knee up, straight-arm out—which gets a few of the other guys clowning, and before long gales of laughter echo from inside the clubhouse.
Bill Muir, the team’s new offensive line coach, peeks in at the mayhem and walks over to Dave.
The coach says, “Well, I guess there’s no worry about this team getting too tight for any game, is there?”
“A HAPPENING… an electric atmosphere … whichever team wins tonight is going to take a big step toward winning the NFC East!” gushes announcer Al Michaels to the nation shortly before kickoff.
(Aerial view of the city ablaze—the chamber of commerce has urged Philadelphians to leave their lights on for the generic panoramic dirigible shot. Lines of traffic can still be seen snaking in from all directions to the great and shining concrete bowl.)
Color man Dan Dierdorf goes Al one better. “Are the Philadelphia Eagles the best team in the National Football League? Randall Cunningham is the NFL’s most exciting player, and they have the best defense in football. If they beat the Cowboys here tonight, the answer is yes.”
THE GAME STARTS madly. The Cowboys win the toss, and on their first play from scrimmage, before ABC has time to flash the lineup on screen, Reverend Reggie blasts through the Dallas line and chases quarterback Troy Aikman backward about ten yards. Aikman dumps the ball to avoid the sack and draws a penalty, losing both the down and another five yards. At second and twenty-five, now deep in the Cowboys’ own half of the field, with the stadium thundering approval, the league’s leading rusher Emmitt Smith is stopped for no gain, and then Aikman’s third-down pass is intercepted.
Taking over on Dallas’s fourteen-yard line, Randall drops back to pass, finds no one to throw to, tucks in the ball, and races down to the Cowboys’ three-yard line. Two plays later, he fakes a handoff to the left and swings around, running the ball to his right, outrunning a Cowboys’ linebacker and then, with a feminine swivel of his slender hips, dodges a flying safety and slips standing into the end zone. Roger Ruzek’s extra point gives the Eagles an immediate seven-point lead.
But Dallas comes right back. Aikman’s pass to Michael Irvin is slapped by cornerback Eric Allen, but the Cowboys’ receiver reaches back for the blocked pass, bobbles it, but hangs on and races fifty-nine yards before Eric can catch him and haul him down from behind. It’s a fluke, but it sets up an Aikman touchdown pass, and just that quickly, the game is tied.
That’s all in the first seven minutes of the game. Then things settle down. The Eagles manage a long drive and a field goal, and Wes picks off another Aikman pass in the end zone to thwart a goahead Dallas touchdown—he starts to run with it, hesitates, thinks better of it, tries to drop to one knee, but his momentum carries him back out of the end zone. So Randall gets the ball on his own oneyard line. He leads the Eagles out of the hole, but they don’t score again, and the score is still 10-7 at halftime.
Randall is not having a good night, despite those two opening runs. In the first half he has only completed three of his ten passes, and he’s been intercepted. Nevertheless, his face fills the screen for ABC’s halftime show, prepared earlier in the week. He’s introduced by Frank Gifford as “the game’s most complete quarterback,” older and wiser after missing a season with his knee injury.
“In the past, I just tried to lead by example,” says Ran-doll, in his commanding soft voice. “I’m more verbal now. If a guy makes a mistake, I’ll tell him, but in a nice way … no feelings are hurt.”
After a quick exploration of Randall’s, well, Randallcentric worldview, Gifford runs down the long list of Randall’s off-field activities, the TV shows, candy bar, clothing line, autograph-signing sessions, and so on, and says the quarterback has matured “as a businessman and a player.”
As for his coming back from the injured knee, ABC offers up a last, reflective Randallism, a piece of wisdom from the mountaintop.
“When you fear something it can happen,” says the Scrambling One. “But if you train yourself not to be afraid of anything, then it won’t happen. So I’ve been confident since my injury.”
In other words, Randall feels he can prevent injury by not fearing it (this is actually a common superstition in NFL locker rooms).
Presumably, Randall remains fearful of being sacked, because he gets clobbered moments later, on the first Eagles’ offensive series of the second half, and falls to the turf clutching his knee—which leaves the ball skittering free a few feet to his left.
Dave dives for it and comes up at the center of the screaming bowl, square in the gaze of the nation, with a herd of Cowboys closing in, and bellows, “Heller, you owe me—”
… and the “ten dollars!” gets lost in a flattening stampede of three-hundred-pounders in blue-and-silver jerseys.
Dave is having the time of his life, the best time he’s ever had on a football field. Despite this setback—Randall jogs around on the sidelines for one play and then comes back in—his team now shifts into its bringing the heat zone.
Seth had hyperextended his knee on a play early in the first half and, typically, has refused to come out of the game. He’s been limping around ferociously ever since and has been repeatedly victimized by Dallas tight end Jay Novacek, who is hard to cover even on two good knees. But a needle or two of numbing juice at halftime has the Eagles’ star linebacker feeling like his old self. On Dallas’s third play from scrimmage in the second half, he swoops in on Aikman and slaps the ball into the air, where it is gathered in by Byron.
The Eagles run and pass for a second touchdown—Herschel scores against his old teammates and in a rare demonstrative moment does a fancy windmill spike motion in the end zone, then freezes and lets the ball just drop to the turf. Dallas gets the ball, and Byron forces a fumble, which is picked up by Willie T. This time the Eagles score in just four plays, with Herschel slipping a tackler and losing a shoe, racing sixteen yards for his second touchdown.
Seth is playing like a wild man.
“He’s one of those rare football players, he just makes thing happen on a football field!” says Dierdorf excitedly.
Reggie sacks Aikman; Andre delivers another punishing hit to poor Emmitt Smith, who will gain only sixty-seven yards (preserving an Eagles’ streak of fifty games without allowing a running back to gain one hundred yards). Smith, the Eagles are convinced, is now just taking the ball and looking for a safe place to lie down. Andre is off in his killer torpedo zone, throwing himself around the field with such abandon that he literally knocks himself out on one play—inadvertently spearing headfirst into the padded leg of his teammate Willie T. Andre lies motionless on the turf for a few moments, then tries to stand, only to have his legs fold under him. He’s back in the game a few plays later, reoriented and unhurt, wildly
cheered by the home fans.
The stadium is in a blood-lust frenzy midway through the fourth quarter, as the home team’s 24-7 lead begins to appear decisive. The noise becomes a constant, joyous ringing; on the field it’s like a drug, the soundtrack of victory at home.
“Here’s a team that ought to be in Pasadena!” says Dierdorf, catching the mood, projecting the Eagles into the upcoming California Super Bowl game.
On the last chance Dallas has to get back in the game, Buddy’s Boys drive Aikman and the offense backward ten yards in three plays.
Richie is about to explode with happiness on the sidelines, his great foghorn voice blasting nonstop, greeting his players as they come off the field, slapping their helmets and butts:
“All right! All right!”
“Keep it going! Keep it going!”
“Way to go, kid!”
Out on the field, the Cowboys are reduced to bickering with one another, screaming to be heard over the din. As the Eagles hammer out a last scoring drive in the final minutes, Dallas defenders are shouting at each other:
“Hey, that was your gap! You’re supposed to make that play!”
“Where were you at, man?”
“What’s going on!”
The supreme moment for Dave comes in the final touchdown, a twelve-yard run by Byars—his eighth carry of the night and his first points of the season. Dave lines up across from big Dallas nose tackle Russell Maryland, the Cowboys’ number-one draft pick from the year before, a Jerome protégé from Miami.
Dave has had his share of good blocks before. He’s caught guys off balance and knocked them flat or met some giant’s charge headon and held his ground and then pushed him backward. But this block, on this play … it’s the most amazing block of his life.
Maryland lines up on his left shoulder, so as Dave snaps the ball, he turns his head into the bull-rush and drives forward, standing Maryland upright, locking his hands up inside the big nose tackle’s shoulders and getting a firm hold of his jersey. Maryland sees Byars breaking out toward his right, so for a moment he stops concentrating on Dave and tries to pull off, which gives the center all the leverage he needs. With Maryland thrown slightly off balance, and Byars turning upfield, Dave now begins to drive the big man backward. They’ve gone about five yards downfield when Maryland starts bellowing and swinging his arms, trying to knock the blocker off him, but Dave has his face mask buried in the tackle’s chest, so the blows rain ineffectually off the back of his helmet, and Dave keeps on driving the big nose tackle back, back … back all the way to the end zone.
Ron Heller lets up after Byars rumbles by, and looks up to see the Cowboys’ nose tackle locked up and flailing at Dave, so Ron takes a flying leap at Maryland, trying to knock him loose, and ends up collapsing both men. Maryland leaps up in the end zone—twelve yards downfield from the line of scrimmage—cursing up a storm and swinging now at Ron, who gamely lunges right back at him. The ref signals touchdown. Dave is so caught up in the bliss—his touchdown, too— that he just trots back toward the bench, trying to calculate how many yards straight backward he blocked Maryland.
Heller draws a fifteen-yard personal foul, which is assessed on the kickoff.
The Eagles haven’t just won, they’ve romped—31-7. Having lost two Pro Bowl players, Jerome and K-Jack, they seem to have gotten stronger. What team depth! What fire! What mastery!
Just about every Eagles fan packed into the Vet is still in place at midnight as the Cowboys attempt a meaningless forty-eight-yard field goal on the last play of the game. The ball sails wide right, a final image of futility, and the stadium sends heavenward one last winning wail.
The ABC cameras capture a handwritten sign in the crowd, held aloft by a grinning Philly fan in stocking cap and mittens.
The sign reads: ANY QUESTIONS?
The boys in the booth chuckle.
“Nope,” answers Michaels.
Dierdorf offers this closing national benediction on the Battle of the Unbeatens: “The Eagles leave the Vet this evening crowned, I think, the early October Super Bowl favorites. Tune in next week.”
• • •
THE LOCKER ROOM is mobbed. There’s potbellied Dr. Z., Sports Illustrated’s football guru Paul Zimmerman, with his thick, well-worn notebook, cornering players and questioning them nose to nose.
There’s the clink of metal on metal as ESPN, ABC, and HBO cameras war against those from NFL Films and all the local crews, and the usual pack of printhounds has swelled to almost three times its usual size. The team’s mood is definitely ready-for-prime-time, and they turn on their considerable charm.
Wes kids about his “size thirteen” feet peeking out of the end zone on his interception.
“Willie T. tipped it, and I alertly got it,” says Wes. “I didn’t alertly stay in the end zone.”
Andre jokes about about knocking himself silly. “My teammates make the highlights, and I make the ‘Football Follies.’”
The Pack has dozens of promotional angles: Byars Gets TD (Who Needs K-JACK?), Randall NFC’s Player of the Month (He’s Back!), Herschel Plows for Two (Sweet Revenge!), Seth Plays Hurt (Jerome’s Best Bud Inspires!), Reverend Reggie Sets the Tone (Divine Intervention!), O-Line Comes of Age (Antone’s on Track!)—all will be pursued. Not so Dave’s career-best twelve-yard block, his recovered fumble, or any of the other hard-won small victories on the offensive line. But the big guys don’t care. They play their own game within the game, and the victory is as much theirs as anyone else’s—maybe more.
“It’s better than sex! There’s no better feeling in the world,” says lineman Mike Schad.
At the other end of the room, before a small convention of TV and film equipment and tape recorders, Seth stands with a bowling-ball-sized ice wrap around his right knee and revels in the heroism of his performance, pronouncing himself the prime author of victory.
Recalling the pass he slapped away from Aikman in the third quarter, which was then caught by Byron, Seth says, “That play was really the turning point. It gave the ball to our offense in a position where they could get something done. Turnovers are what it’s all about [true Buddy disciple]. That’s how you dominate. … I love the big games. The only thing that would have kept me out is if I couldn’t run and started hurting the team … I just told myself to put it out of my mind and play.”
There will be talk of greatness in tomorrow’s newspapers, talk of a possible undefeated season.
• • •
OUT IN THE PARKING lot in the early morning darkness, long after the fans have departed and the stadium has gone dark, a group of the players and their wives linger, savoring the moment.
Dave describes his perfect block at least three more times, and Pink makes everybody laugh, talking about how scared he got when Randall had gone down clutching his knee—Pink had misheard the snap count, so was left squatting ridiculously in place as the nose guard ran over the quarterback. At the time, Pink had been close to tears on the sidelines. But everything had worked out. Now he could laugh about it.
“Coulda sworn he said ‘On two,’” says Pink, which strikes everyone as hilarious.
“That’s how I got my fumble,” says Dave. “I knew I was gonna get the ball tonight…. Yo, Ron! You owe me, Buddy. Ten big ones.”
And their laughter rises in the cold night air, happy fading clouds of steam.
10
BEING SETH
Seth Joyner, Monday night hero, architect of the turning point, is still in the training room hours after the Dallas victory, getting treatment for his injured knee, when in walks his wife, Jennifer, and his daughter, Jasmine.
Jasmine is a perfect blend of her interracial parentage: she has skin of soft beige, with a wild thick halo of frizzy blond hair. She and Jennifer haven’t seen Seth for about three weeks, since catching up to him in Phoenix before the Cardinals game.
The linebacker turns on his baleful, stone-faced stare—blank brown eyes, a crease of scar tracing the ridge of his le
ft cheekbone, black stubble outlining full lips. His features fall naturally, even when he’s not angry, into a scowl. Jennifer recognizes the expression, of course.
It’s just Seth being Seth.
He asks, “What are you doing here?”
JENNIFER POPPING UP like this is just the latest thing to go wrong this season for Seth. Nothing he does seems to work out as intended.
Seth is really getting on people’s nerves.
He plunged into a funk so deep after Jerome’s death that it scared those who knew him best. He got the word when he was out in Los Angeles taping the television show “American Gladiators” and flew back home to El Paso before flying east for the funeral. Jennifer had never known how important Jerome was to Seth. It was like he had lost his brother, or his mother! She encouraged him to call Buddy.
“You need to talk to somebody who cared as much about Jerome as you did,” she said. But Seth wouldn’t pick up the phone. It was not his way to reach out to anyone.
And now, having dedicated the season to his fallen buddy, Seth feels an obligation to produce a Super Bowl win, to make it happen. If the team needs somebody to step up, fill that leadership void, who better than Seth himself? Only, the idea scares the hell out of everybody else. Anybody who knows Seth knows he’s the wrong person to shoulder Jerome’s leadership role.
Seth’s motivational methods are … well, crude. Take the Skins game at the end of the ’91 season. The Eagles were down 10-7 at halftime, and the offense hadn’t done squat. The touchdown had come on an interception by defensive back Otis Smith. Resilient Eagles backup quarterback Jeff Kemp was getting hammered like one of those round-bottomed punching dolls that keeps popping back up with a grin. In the first two quarters, the Eagles had advanced the ball only twenty-six yards. They were averaging just over one yard per play.