by Mark Bowden
Dr. Vince was surprised by the other surgeons’ findings, particularly by how poorly Ben’s knee had responded to the KT/1000 tests. He had inspected the joint back in March, when he scoped it, and it had looked fine. That was a far more reliable way to check on the success of his reconstruction than strapping Ben’s leg into a KT/1000, which is why Dr. Vince hadn’t used the machine. It wasn’t like he was unfamiliar with it. Hell, he had been one of the first sports-medicine experts in the country to use it! But given such poor readings from Ben’s knee, it was clear to him that something had happened since he had last looked at it. Since Ben hadn’t run on it, and had resisted any kind of strenuous rehab, he could only conclude that the knee had been reinjured in the manipulations he had been forced to perform— a more violent therapy than the daily rehab sessions with Otho would have been.
The way Dr. Vince saw it, Ben had only himself to blame for the poor progress he had made since surgery, and for the football season he would now miss. Of course, that’s not how Ben and his agent saw it. Three weeks after Ben told his story to the Philadelphia Inquirer, all but accusing the doctor and the team of what amounted to malicious incompetence, Dr. Vince resigned as the Eagles’ team doctor. It was a step he had been considering for some time, given the changing climate. He had even discussed leaving with Harry Gamble months earlier. Ben’s case, and this new round of bad publicity, just sealed it.
When Dr. Vince had signed on as team doctor all those years back, he hadn’t bargained on it so regularly taking a public bite out of his ass.
BEN FLEW OUT to Los Angeles in November and Dr. Shields redid the knee, a little more than a year after he crumpled to the grass in Cleveland Stadium.
Days after the surgery he had regained the flexibility it had taken him two or three months to regain after the first operation. Less than two months after the procedure, Ben’s knee measured a 3.0 on the KT/1000 at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic. He felt his career had been robbed of a year. The first year he chalked up to the injury, but the second year he blamed on Dr. Vince and Otho and the Eagles. Sure, they were paying him, but no one could ever give him back a full season’s joy in doing what he did best, and the ground he had lost proving himself Eric’s equal in the secondary. His contract would be up at the end of the ’93 season. How much more valuable would he have been with another full year of playing time, and maybe that trip to Honolulu? He and Bell were optimistic about his winning back his starting job in ’93, but what if he couldn’t? If Ben didn’t make it all the way back, they were going to come looking for Dr. Vince and ol’ Merlin Otho with lawyers. Ben had bad feelings about the Eagles. He wasn’t sure, frankly, he wanted to play for them anymore.
Ben had a lot of time to weigh these things as he recuperated out in L.A. He checked into a Hilton near the airport and got the hotel maintenance crew to hook up his Nintendo to the TV, and for a month and a half, while his team fought through a rocky period of uncertainty and conflict, Ben went to therapy sessions in the morning and hung around his hotel room for endless hours playing video games, trying to read Magic Johnson’s book (he got through part of it), staring out the window at the planes coming and going, chalking up huge telephone bills, ordering out for pizza, drinking beer, and counting the days until weekends, when he could watch football on TV.
During those long, lonely weeks, he got one call from the Eagles. Bud Carson phoned one afternoon to see how he was doing and wish him well. It meant a lot to him. Ben started thinking, Maybe playing for Bud again wouldn’t be so bad.
13
RANDALL AGONISTES
(The End of the World)
It is a peculiarity of the football field inside Texas Stadium that players sitting on one bench can see players standing on the opposite sideline only from the waist up. This is because the stadium designers went a little crazy with the concept of a “crown,” building up the middle of the field from goalpost to goalpost so that the green plastic turf slopes down toward the sidelines—in this case, the dropoff is a foot and a half, steeper if you continue down toward the benches—which makes someone standing on the center ridge feel like king of the hill. The contour facilitates drainage when it rains through the giant rectangular hole in the roof (the one TV viewers peeked through all those years in the opening credits of the TV show “Dallas”), but to an extent that can only be appreciated by playing here, it means that a quarterback throwing a pass to a receiver running a sideline pattern must literally throw the ball downhill.
Eagles quarterbacks coach Zeke Bratkowski thinks that might explain why Randall has opened this game so badly off target.
On their first possession in this game, which is their eighth of the ’92 season, Randall hadn’t thrown the ball. He nearly had his head taken off trying to make the third-down play—by himself, of course— diving for the first-down marker with two tons of Cowboys in heavy pursuit, only to be met in midair by cornerback Larry Brown with such a resounding smack that it sent a gasp of pleasure through the sixty-five-thousand-plus hometown fans. And when Randall bounced a pass toward Calvin Williams to abort the second series … well, that was because Calvin slipped. Randall threw the ball to the right spot.
But there’s no excusing what happens next. The ornery and increasingly impatient defense forces a fumble—Clyde Simmons reaches up to slap the ball away from Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman from behind, and Eric Allen pounces on the ball at the Cowboys’ thirty-yard line. The defense has been doing this all season, rising to the occasion in big games, handing the offense choice scoring opportunities again and again. Especially over the last three games, Richie’s offense has fallen embarrassingly short.
And this time Randall blows it on the very first play. He throws a bad, bad, bad pass—bad read, bad decision, bad throw. Richie had signaled in an 81, a play that sends both Fred and Calvin, split wide to either side, on quick little out routes—it’s a safe, high-percentage, short pass (this one to Calvin) designed to gain five or six yards on first down. Only, as Fred and Calvin line up, the Cowboys’ cornerbacks guess the patterns and move up close, which pretty much closes off the quick out. This maneuver calls for an automatic countermove that both receivers and Randall know without even signaling one another or changing the play. Instead of running five steps and turning out, they will both take their routes slightly deeper, fading into the dead space behind the cornerback and in front of the safety. Randall’s job is to lob the ball in over the corner’s head or, if the receiver is sandwiched tightly between the corner and safety, to throw the ball away— or, in Randall’s case, the ever-present third option: kick up those goldtipped shoelaces and scoot.
First, a bad read—Calvin is sandwiched, but Randall forces the pass. Second, bad decision—first down deep in the Cowboys’ territory with the whole game left to play is no time to be taking a risk. Third, a bad throw—the pass floats softly into the blue number 24 on the front of cornerback Brown’s jersey for the easiest interception of his two-year career. Bad, bad, bad. On the sidelines, Zeke, the old pro, just shakes his head.
You can see the deep clouds of disgust on the faces of the defense as they come back out. What could Randall have been thinking? What’s wrong with the guy?
Randall sulks off the field. There is a delicate grace to Randall that seems out of place on a football field. His long, lean body seems fragile, even with the pads on. There is refinement even in the way he reaches in with spidery fingers to extract the plastic toothguard from his mouth, carefully thread it through the bars of his face mask, and then insert it in his wristband, a fluidity that seems almost effeminate. But the face behind those bars doesn’t match; it’s a blunt, hard expressionless mask—the face of a man determined to show nothing. Randall doesn’t stop to consult with Richie or Zeke or anybody, just walks back to the bench keeping his thoughts and feelings zipped, pulls off his green, winged helmet and sets it on the turf, then pulls his black, self-designed and -marketed I’M BACK SCRAMBLING hat over his mussed-up flattop—the helmet does we
ird things to the ‘do—and when the sideline cameras catch the hat … bingo! … sales leap.
Zeke walks over to commiserate. Sometimes in the early going it’s hard to get used to the slope caused by the crown.
The Eagles hate to play in this place anyway. The partially enclosed ceiling collects and redirects noise down toward the field, and the fine citizens of Dallas and surrounding Cowboy country reserve a special loathing for the Eagles. Notwithstanding the wholesome image bequeathed this city by Tom Landry, Roger Staubach, and the other members of “America’s Team,” its fans are among the league’s most bellicose. No fans are more surly than Philly’s Id-people, of course, but Dallas is a worthy rival. It gets ugly inside Texas Stadium. Eagles players trot out to the field through an entranceway hung with abusive slogans, beneath a clump of regulars who arrive especially early just to rain spit, insults, and ridicule on opponents. There is one fan, present at every home game, who taunts opponents by dangling a ridiculous effigy in their faces as they emerge—today it’s a scrawny rubber chicken dressed in a tiny Eagles uniform, complete with a cardboard silver-winged helmet, dangling from a noose. The players wonder what kind of person has the time and inclination to sit at the kitchen table during the week for hours fashioning such a thing. What kind of weird negative energy does it express? Should they be afraid of such a person? During the game, there are Dallas fans who crowd along the railing just behind the Eagles’ bench, who neither watch the action nor cheer the home squad, but spend the three and a half hours hurling coarse, personal invective.
“You fairy, Heller! You suck cock!”
“Whazzamatter, Randall, you pussy!”
“Fuck Philadelphia!”
“Philadelphia sucks!”
“Go home, you candy-assed motherfuckers!”
That sort of thing. To turn around, even for a split second— and sometimes you are just dying to catch a glimpse of what kind of idiots these might be—just wrenches it all up a notch or two and brings it raining down on you personally. So the players just keep their eyes on the field and trust that the local cops, patrolling the narrow space behind the bench, will intercept anything actually dangerous aimed at their backs.
Today, the home crowd is even more worked up than usual. With the 31—7 pasting their ‘Boys took at the Vet a month earlier on national TV, still the only loss of the Cowboys’ ’92 season, civic pride is on the line. The teams have gone in opposite directions since the Monday Night Superspectacularama, but a win today by Richie’s struggling squad will not only pull the Eagles’ 5-2 record even with Dallas’s, it will put them ahead once more in the standings, thanks to two head to-head victories. While it’s still too early in the season to call this game critical, psychologically, at least, Gang Green could use the lift.
But to win, you have to score points. And to score points, your quarterback has to make things happen. For the better part of three outings now, Randall has looked terrible. He’s bouncing passes to receivers, running when he should be throwing, and throwing when he should be running. The Scrambling One, easily the most mercurial and important player on the team, has not looked like himself. During the four-game winning streak in September, he was named the NFL Player of the Month, but even then, to the knowing eye of his coaches and teammates, Randall’s performance looked spotty at best. Great plays alternated with blunders, touchdowns with turnovers. Starting with the Chiefs debacle and up through last week’s stilted effort against the Cardinals, Randall has slumped terribly.
This is obvious to everyone except the quarterback himself, who has something of a blind spot where his own performance is concerned—which annoys the hell out of Richie. For three years now he has been coaching Randall, and the pattern is clear. In victory (and sometimes even after he has made a few showstopping plays in defeat), the quarterback is all smiles, amazing even himself with his intuitive onfield genius. But in defeat, he’s invariably poor Randall, the miracle worker hog-tied by the rigidity of Richie’s offensive system. There is a vacancy in the self-critical quarters of his brain. A play doesn’t work because (a) it was the wrong one for the coach to call; (b) the line didn’t give him a chance to set and throw; or (c) a receiver ran a wrong route. The line “I threw a bad pass” or “That was my fault” is not in Randall’s vast store of postgame ruminations. Statistically, he looks great, ranked second in the NFL so far this season behind the 49ers’ Steve Young, but then Randall always looks great on paper. He is the best running quarterback in NFL history—during the Skins defeat two weeks ago he had surpassed in just seven seasons Fran Tarkenton’s all-time record for yards gained by a quarterback (3,674), a record it had taken Tarkenton seventeen seasons to compile. Running removes from Randall’s stats the deliberately errant passes other quarterbacks frequently throw when receivers are covered, which keeps his completion percentage high. His ability to scramble around and buy time for his receivers to shake loose downfield gives him an always-strong average of yards gained per throw. These are, of course, real advantages on the field, but they also give the Scrambling One an edge in the complex equation used by the league to rank quarterbacks every week of the season. High rankings mean high profile, high salary, and high off-field earnings. But his teammates and coaches couldn’t care less about Randall’s stats and money—they are sick of hearing about them. The only numbers that count for them are the ones on the scoreboard. They are still in the race this season despite Randall, not because of him.
Nevertheless, Richie defended Randall in the week before this second Dallas game. The Pack had discerned the winds of discontent blowing from the back end of the locker room. When a hound had the temerity to ask what it would take for Randall to “snap out of it,” Richie hunched his shoulders, gave his bald dome that belligerent tilt.
“I don’t think he’s in a trance, first of all, okay?” he said, punching his big cigar toward the offending questioner. “So I don’t think he has to ‘snap out’ of anything…. We have very high expectations for number twelve. You people do, the fans do, everybody does. But he’s not Superman. He doesn’t have to be Superman. He has to do what he’s supposed to do and let the other guys do what they’re supposed to do.”
Okay, or as Richie liked to put it, without question. But that was just Richie’s public face. Privately, he had confronted Randall.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. As Randall would later recall it in his ghostwritten autobiography, I’m Still Scrambling, the coach insisted, “We have to get things going. Your timing is off, your focus is off. What’s the matter with you?”
Randall had nothing to offer. When things go badly, he turns sullen and withdrawn. He has a slight underbite, so his face falls quite naturally into a pout.
Like in today’s game. The Eagles’ defense is stopping Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, et al. cold, and Randall looks like he’s sleepwalking.
John Madden, analyzing the game for CBS, makes note early in the game: “Randall Cunningham is, I think, suffering a little from lack of confidence. Maybe not lack of confidence in himself [Madden knows the Scrambling One well enough for that], but lack of confidence in the offense, what they’re doing, the guys around him. He’s really been in a slump, and I think if he’s gonna get out of this slump, he’s going to have to have some success … Richie Kotite was saying last night that Randall has to get into sync with these guys, and he hasn’t gotten in sync here early.”
Randall is violently sacked the next time he tries to throw. He has no chance. His receivers haven’t even turned out of their patterns downfield before he’s hit from both sides simultaneously. It feels as if his arms are being taken off. Back to the bench, draw out the mouthpiece, face blank, helmet off, black cap back on.
Randall is pissed. Okay, so the line can’t block. He’s lived with that his whole career. What bugs him is the confining way Richie insists on blocking for him. Richie, the former tight end, likes to “max-protect,” that is, insert two or sometimes even three tight ends into the game … an
d leave the running back in the backfield to help block. The idea is to give Randall time to read the situation downfield and get rid of the ball. Only, with so many guys in blocking, there are too few targets downfield. And, besides, Randall doesn’t mind coping with a dangerous pass rush. He likes it when all hell breaks loose in the backfield and he has to flee. That’s when the reflexes flip to warp speed, and Randall the Rocket can make things happen, either dodging around in the backfield and waving his receivers deep for the bomb or taking off for one of his celebrated open-field sprints, dodging tacklers, hurdling bodies. That’s what he’s better at than anyone in the whole storied history of football—you could look it up! Only, with so many guys in blocking, Randall’s escape lanes are all clogged. He doesn’t have a chance. He has nowhere to throw, and nowhere to run. Then he gets crushed … and everybody blames him! What do they expect? What do they want from him?
On into the second quarter, the defense is still shutting down the Cowboys cold. But Randall opens the Eagles’ first drive of the second quarter by bouncing a short pass at the feet of Fred, who is open. By now, it can’t just be the crown. On third down he ignores an open primary receiver farther downfield and tries to dump the ball instead to Keith Byars, who has slipped off a block and is waving his hands, shouting his “Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!”—begging for the ball. The short pass is batted down.
Again Randall sulks off the field, draws out the mouthpiece, removes the helmet, dons the cap. Same blank look. The quarterback is radiating frustration. To his teammates it’s disheartening. He’s back in the tank.
Again the Eagles’ defense holds. Richie calls for a naked bootleg to start the next offensive series, a play that Randall likes, because it gives him a chance to run with the ball and throw on the move. He executes it well, too, completing an eight-yard pass to Tank that results in the biggest gain of the day. Then Keith bulls out three yards up the middle for the first Eagles’ first down of the half. But just as it seems momentum is building, Randall bounces a third pass at the feet of an open receiver and the minidrive dies.