by Mark Bowden
At the snap, both Byron Evans and Seth drop back about ten yards. Byron’s job is to pick up any receiver running a crossing pattern, but nobody breaks across the middle. So Byron charges Hebert, who is already being chased out of the pocket by Reggie and Clyde. Rolling to his left, Hebert can’t find an open receiver, and Byron is closing in fast. So the quarterback makes a mistake. Instead of just throwing the ball deep, over the heads of everyone, avoiding the sack and lining up at second and ten, Hebert tries to make something happen. His favorite receiver in a pinch is Eric Martin, and he knows Martin, seeing his quarterback in trouble, will break across the center of the field. And, indeed, that’s what Martin does. Only he’s not just being shadowed by a cornerback and safety, there’s a third unexpected presence lurking in the middle of the field.
Seth also knows Hebert in trouble will look for Martin, so he’s alertly shifted his normal zone over to the right. With Mark chasing behind Martin, and Booty playing back, a well-thrown ball, lofted over Byron’s reach, might reach the receiver in the center of the field. Martin is out there waving his hands in the air, begging for the ball. Hebert throws off balance, trying to propel the football to his right, out toward the center of the field, while he’s moving to his left. He doesn’t see Seth until the linebacker catches the ball.
Seth brings it back fourteen yards, all the way down to the Saints’ twenty-six-yard line.
It’s almost too good to be true. In two swift, spectacular plays, the Eagles have climbed back into the game, and now, thanks to Seth’s interception, they’re already in position to kick a field goal and tie it. The crowd in the Dome smells doom. Clyde and Eric drag a late tackler off Seth and pummel him as players come running from both sides of the field. As the officials try to break up the melee, Seth just trots off the field holding the ball, enchanging high fives with his defensive teammates, ignoring the offense as they jog back out.
In five simple plays, the Eagles chip down to within six yards of the goal line, picking up yardage in three- and four-yard bites, aided by a five-yard offside call on New Orleans. It’s warm inside the Dome, and the long afternoon’s work is starting to take its toll. Poor Pink is feeling the effects. After every play he lingers at the line of scrimmage, gasping for air, sweat pouring off his pudgy cheeks and brow, stinging his eyes.
Randall is peering over at the sideline, picking up signals for the next play, and Dave is circling the boys in the huddle—they have only forty-five seconds to get off the next play—and as he counts around the huddle he’s missing his right guard.
“Pink! Pink!” he shouts. “Where the hell is my right guard at?”
And just as Randall leans in to call the play, Pink makes it back to the huddle.
“Pink, what the hell are you doing?” Dave asks as they break huddle and turn to set for the new play.
“I’m more tired than Phoenix,” Pink complains.
Brian Baldinger, who is filling in at left guard for the injured Mike Schad, forms a hilarious contrast. Baldy is a pink-faced twelveyear veteran who is so wired for action that he sometimes seems a little off-kilter; his motor seems to idle in overdrive. He likes to wear his shirts buttoned all the way to the top, even without a tie, so his teammates have been heard to wonder if ol’ Baldy’s head is getting sufficient blood. Baldy loves everything about football; he loves practice; he loves meetings; he loves arriving at the stadium hours before game time—teammates have even heard him exclaim his enthusiasm for getting his ankles taped. Most of these guys like what they do for a living, but Baldy’s gusto is often comical. And now, Baldy is starting in a play-off game! He seems to have found an even higher gear for his engine, sprinting on and off and on the field, chasing downfield after plays he couldn’t hope to catch, then hustling back to the huddle, face growing pinker and pinker, lips stretched dry and white with excitement. After Heath plunges four more yards for a first down, Baldy comes hopping back gleefully. “This is great shit! Great shit!” he keeps shouting at Dave. To his right, Dave’s worried about poor Pink passing out and suffering heart failure from sheer fatigue, and to his left he’s worried ol’ Baldy’s heart is just going to explode with adrenaline.
Dave isn’t feeling too much either way. His energy level is closer to Baldy’s, but his eminently sane, jovial outlook on the game is more like Pink’s. The two nudge each other and roll their eyes in the huddle at the newcomer’s excesses.
A three-yard run by Heath, and a quick six-yard pass to Keith, and the Eagles face another important third-down play. They need one yard for first and goal. A touchdown gives them the lead; a field goal just ties the score.
Third and one (Saints’ six): Time to attack Swilling again. Despite the success the Eagles have had running straight at the linebacker, Richie has used the plays sparingly enough that New Orleans is still anticipating that they will run away from him. To further that impression, on this one-yard play, Richie calls a strong right formation, which stacks players up on the right side. On the left side, Baldy is going to pull out and head to his left, but the rest of the line—left tackle Ron Heller, Dave at center, and behemoths Pink and Antone—is going to form a train banging down to the right. They call it an elephant block, because each lineman just places his helmet on the rump of the teammate to his right and crashes blindly ahead.
It’s the counter OT play again, with Heath following Baldy, swooping straight down on the vaunted linebacker. With the rest of the Saints plunging in the wrong direction, fooled by a play fake and the elephant block into the right, Baldy lays a good hit on Swilling. Heath doesn’t just get the one yard and first down, he doesn’t stop running until he slams into a photographer behind the Girard Street end zone, right underneath the PROJECT PASADENA sign.
Untangling himself from the elephant heap back at the line of scrimmage, Dave can tell by the sudden sound vacuum that something very good has just happened. He sees Heath pop back up behind the end zone, sees the refs hands held high—23-20, the Eagles take the lead!—and peers into the face mask of Saints defensive end Wayne Martin, who lies beside him on the turf. Martin looks at Dave angrily and shouts, “Why’d you do that?”
“What?” Dave answers. He figures Martin is going to accuse him of cut blocking him or doing something illegal.
“Why’d you guys score!” Martin says.
“Hell, man, we’re trying to win the game!”
As they leave the field, the Eagles’ players are now shouting at the fans, “Who dat? Who dat?” The point after puts them up by four— and the Saints suddenly need more than a field goal to catch up.
Baldy is so fired up after throwing the key block on this play that he comes off the field shouting at line coach Bill Muir, “We’ve got to keep running the ball. We can kick their ass. We can kick their ass!”
Muir goes down the line, asking each lineman for input. “Dave, what do you think we can do?”
Dave is Mr. Analysis. “Well, Bill, that trap block scheme seems to be working well if we …”
When Muir comes to Baldy, whose facial blood vessels are straining for deeper shades of red, the left guard blurts, “Who cares? Just do anything! We’ll kick their ass!”
As bad as things are for New Orleans, they’re about to get worse. Inside the windless and suddenly silenced Dome, Roger’s kickoff sails out of the end zone, so the Saints take over on their own twenty-yard line. Over the last few years, the Eagles’ fans have often seen what happens next. Smelling blood, with an opponent cornered, Buddy’s Boys go into what local sportswriters have come to call a “feeding frenzy.” They do more than shut down the enemy’s offense; they actually begin driving the team backward, play after play, crashing in like waves on a swelling storm tide.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty): With the pass rush swarming, Hebert tries to hit Eric Martin on a simple out pattern, but Martin is flagged for pushing Eric Allen.
First and twenty (Saints’ ten): Hebert’s pass is slapped out of the air and back at the end zone by Mike Golic, who jump
s up triumphantly pumping one finger at the ceiling.
Second and twenty (Saints’ ten): Noting that the Eagles’ linebackers are dropping back into pass defense zones, Mora calls a play designed to exploit zone coverage, a quick screen to running back Vaughn Dunbar, who is a terrific open-field runner. Mora figures Byron Evans, who ordinarily would cover Dunbar man to man, will be playing off ten yards or so, giving the rookie back room to maneuver. But, instead, Bud has anticipated the play and signaled in a change in coverage. Instead of dropping back, Byron is hugged up on the smaller running back so close that he nearly wrests the ball away when Hebert flips it. Dunbar hangs on, but Byron just wraps his long arms around him and drops him for a three-yard loss. The Saints have now run four plays and have gone backward thirteen yards. Their backs are now against the end zone.
Third and twenty-three (Saints’ seven): And here comes the next crushing wave.
Instead of dropping back into a prevent defense, Bud decides to gamble—send everybody. He feels the feeding frenzy, too. If the Saints anticipate the blitz, they have a remedy—they just send two receivers on quick slant patterns and Hebert dumps the ball fast. With just two men playing deep, the short pass can turn into a huge gain. If the receiver can dodge a tackle and outrun the pursuit, it could turn into a go-ahead touchdown, pull the plug on this late Eagles’ surge. But Bud knows that on third down, with twenty-three yards to the stick, the Saints won’t be anticipating a blitz. They’ll be sending out at least four receivers. With Hebert dropping back to pass, that leaves just six guys to block. If he sends eight, somebody is going to get a free shot at the quarterback.
At the snap, all hell breaks loose. Hebert manages to drop back to the end zone, but before he has a chance to throw, Reverend Reggie runs right over tackle Stan Brock, whose co-blocker can’t help him because he’s picking up the charging Rich Miano. Reggie lunges, grabs Hebert’s right leg, and pulls him down in the end zone.
The big man leaps up, joins his hands over his head (as if in prayer!), the signal for a safety. Two points! The Reverend comes dancing off the field excitedly before the humbled Dome crowd. The Saints are still down only by six points, with more than five minutes left to play, but on the turf it smells like a blowout. The Eagles are just crushing them now.
“That’s why they call them dominant players,” enthuses Madden up in the booth. “Reggie White in the second half just took over this game. That’s why Reggie White is the best defensive player in football. He can just take over and dominate a game, and that’s what he did here today.”
Reggie trots off the field into the embrace of Wes Hopkins, who slaps hard at his broad back.
And for these few blessed minutes, the team is soaring. They’re in that zone of complete domination, offense, defense, and special teams playing at a level where no one can touch them, where all the petty rivalries and jealousies of the locker room, feuds with management, criticism of play calling, anger over contract talks, shabby accommodations, all of it is irrelevant now; all that exists is this moment on this field against this opponent, when everything they try works, when every player is better for being part of the family, the Team. It’s bliss.
On the bench, Reggie sees the network camera pointed at him and seizes the moment. He points skyward with both hands, leans back, and shouts over and over, “Yes, Jesus! It’s Jesus! Praise Jesus!”
Into the teeth of this surge, the Saints must now punt the ball back to the Eagles. Running behind Baldy, again right at Swilling, the Eagles sweep three times in a row around the left side, for eleven yards, then six more, then sixteen yards. Fred hauls Heath up from the last tackle shouting, “Stay in bounds! Stay in bounds!” The drive ends with a thirty-nine-yard field goal and just over two minutes left to play. If the Saints aren’t completely finished, they will be shortly, when Eric Allen interrupts their next frantic possession with another interception. Pressured by the rush, Hebert tries to hit receiver Wesley Carroll, but the wily Eagles cornerback has it read the whole way. He just steps in front of the ball and practically walks the eighteen yards into the end zone. In their last five trips to the field, the Eagles’ defense has intercepted three times and scored twice.
Buddy’s Boys now break into a N’Awlins strut in the end zone, gloating before the stricken home crowd. Izel Jenkins points with both fingers at the crowd and shouts, “Go home! Go home!”
Byron taunts them with an impromptu mime. Helmet off, long arms extended, he gives an exaggerated shrug, and puts on a comically long face, wiping one eye sadly with the back of a white-gloved hand.
Exuberant and brazenly contemptuous, the Eagles welcome themselves to the Next Level.
“Dallas, here we come,” shouts Keith Byars. “One more time, baby! Next week! New Orleans don’t know it’s a sixty-minute fight.”
“Man, this is great shit,” shouts Baldy. “This is what it’s all about! This is the way it should be every Sunday!”
Forever and ever.
Epilogue
MARCHING OUT
Ernest Hemingway believed he had only a set number of orgasms allotted to him in his life. It’s as good a way as any of understanding what happened the next weekend in Dallas to Richie and Randall and Buddy’s Boys. They were plumb out of ammo.
There were lots of explanations: The younger and virtually injury-free Cowboys had been getting stronger as the season progressed, the Eagles weaker. The Eagles had left their hearts and souls on the Superdome turf in their comeback play-off win. Dallas (which would go on to win the Super Bowl handily in ’93 and again in ’94) was the Team of the Nineties, nobody could expect to beat them again this century. You heard a million theories. Reggie White was over the hill. Randall was on drugs. Troy Aikman was the second coming of Joe Namath, with healthy knees, and ol’ helmet head, Jimmy Johnson, was the reincarnation of none other than St. Holy Vince. Take your pick.
“I wish I knew,” offered a beleaguered Richie immediately after the slaughter. “I couldn’t be prouder of this football team. It wasn’t lack of effort out there today, it just didn’t work for the Eagles today.”
Two days later he was on a plane to Alabama to scout the Senior Bowl and begin preparing for the college draft and the ’93 season.
The spirit comes and the spirit goes. Fresh from that heady triumph in N’Awlins—Reggie had entered the locker room shouting, “Finally! Finally! Finally!”—the Eagles emerged in Dallas woeful, dispirited, and sad. There would be little use in dissecting it play by play. Nothing the Eagles tried worked; everything the Cowboys tried did.
– The final score was 34-10, and that’s misleading. It wasn’t that close.
Rookie Mark McMillian had written on the front page of his playbook the warning “Harper likes to give stutter step, then break” and underlined it three times. In the second quarter, Cowboys receiver Alvin Harper gave him a stutter step, blew by him, and caught a deep pass for a forty-one-yard gain, setting up a touchdown. The rookie was also beaten by Michael Irvin for a big gainer. Before the game ended, he was in tears on the sidelines.
Satisfying his months-long rehab quest, Andre got in the game in the second half, a desperate ploy to rev the Eagles’ sagging spirits. Taped to the safety’s forehead, a response to Emmitt Smith’s “bad things” remark, was Andre’s latest motivational slogan, Psalm 70, which reads, in part: Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt. On his first play, unable to pivot on his left leg, and losing one of his contact lenses just before the snap, the Dré Master was burned for a twenty-yard completion by tight end Jay Novacek. Smith would gain 114 yards rushing and generally avoid taking any big hits from his nemesis. He’d later complain that Andre was running around shouting, “Hold him up! Hold him up! I want to break his leg!” Asked about it afterward, his playing gear in a heap at his feet, Andre looked confused, and said, “It never happened.”
The most lasting memory of that game for Eagles players was of th
e seemingly endless slog of the fourth quarter—with the game already lost, the JeromeQuest dashed—and what seemed like hours of playing time left. It was like making a fighter finish all fifteen rounds after he’s been KO’d in the ninth. One image stands out: Seth, Andre, Reggie, and Mike Golic waiting in the gray misting drizzle, seated in a row on the Eagles’ bench. Behind them, sadistic Cowboys fans hurl barbs of invective into the open wound:
“Go home, you motherfuckers!”
“Philly sucks!”
“Whazzamatter, Reggie? Not paying you enough?”
Buddy’s Boys were in shock. Reggie kept checking the scoreboard, then scanning the field, his expression frozen in a look of alarm and disbelief. Mike rested his chin in one taped, bloody hand, eyes up on the giant TV screen. Andre was talking to himself, and Seth just retreated into a black hole of gloom. They were all mystified at their ineffectiveness. They were angry, humiliated, and deeply disappointed.
When it was finally over, they trudged off the field and into the tunnel, passing through the exit where the Cowboys’ fan dangled his effigy, the rubber chicken dressed up like an Eagle. Ron Heller paused after entering the tunnel, then reached one big taped hand to tear it from the startled fan, and threw it against the tunnel wall. It lay there in the corner soaking up the mud from their cleats, a pathetic, silly, trampled emblem of the dream.
The network TV cameras caught a hand-lettered sign held aloft in the stands by a Cowboys’ fan with a good memory. It said: ANY QUESTIONS? This team, this family, had played together for the last time. Jerome was gone; Keith Jackson was gone; soon Reggie would be gone; Ron, Mike Golic, Keith Byars, Jim McMahon,… and eventually Wes, Andre, Clyde, and Seth. It was only a matter of time.