Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  Every year, all but one of the twenty-eight NFL teams go home frustrated to varying degrees—that’s 1,269 disappointed players, 47 happy ones. The degree of disappointment varies. For the dozen teams who make the play-offs, the end comes abruptly, when their spirits are soaring highest. Clearly the Bills, who lost their third Super Bowl in a row (and would lose their fourth in ’93), felt worse than some rebuilding teams who ended with a losing, but improved, record. Every team in the league begins a season with its own special sources of inspiration, its own history, emotions, loyalties, dreams. But it’s hard to imagine any team in any year wanting to reach the mountaintop, and believing it could, more than the Philadelphia Eagles did in ’92. They just ran out of gas—or ran into the Dallas Cowboys.

  “I’m disappointed,” said Norman, back home in Miami the day after the defeat. Norman, ever the hard-eyed realist, favored the theory embraced by Dallas fans—the Cowboys were a new dynasty. “Dallas is a better team. It’s that simple. It isn’t just this one football game, it’s a whole new level of competition. Anybody in the NFC East who wants to become champion is going to have to be able to beat Dallas, and right now they have a stronger football team that we have.”

  Norman hadn’t decided exactly what he was going to do yet, but it was going to be drastic. He was heading into his third post-Buddy year as owner and was still fired up with visions of building a champion on his own, showing up the Id-people and cynics back in Philly.

  “Reggie is gone,” he said, months before the mighty Rev. signed with Green Bay. “But we still have the nucleus of a strong defense. It may be necessary to take a big step backwards now, maybe, but I don’t want to wait five or six years. I don’t think it’s time to take that big step. It’s at times like these, if you’re not careful with things, that’s when you go 8-8, then 6-10, then 4-12.”

  In ’93 the Eagles would go 8-8.

  Reggie is gone. Despite maintaining publicly that he had hoped to re-sign Reggie and thought the world of him as a football player, Norman had no intention of bidding for the Minister of Defense.

  “My whole effort here has been to get the best compensation for him,” said a bitter and emphatic Norman in late-March, up in the Miami high-rise offices of Braman Enterprises. He sat like a bony Ichabod behind his gleaming, blank desk, his neck still cocked at a slight angle with chronic stiffness. That same week, Reggie’s bigtoothed grin and massive arms and torso graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, which detailed the eager competition among the celebrated free agent’s suitors, the Redskins, 49ers, Jets, Browns, and Packers.

  “I look upon his departure as an opportunity for the Philadelphia Eagles,” said Norman. “Period. We didn’t make it with him. He’s a declining football player. Everybody bitches about Randall Cunningham’s performance against Dallas. Reggie’s performance was putrid against Dallas. It wasn’t against double-teaming or triple-teaming either; it was one-on-one. He didn’t show up for that game. He didn’t show up for a few other games in 1992 either. Reggie White is in decline. He has no finesse as a football player, he can be beaten. He cost us the second Dallas game because of a mental mistake that he made, giving Emmitt Smith a touchdown [actually, Smith’s fifty-one-yard run, while resulting from Reggie’s error, could not fairly be said to have cost the Eagles that game—it set up a forty-eight-yard field goal that gave Dallas a three-point lead on the first play of the fourth quarter, hardly a crushing blow]. … I think when this is all over, we’ll wind up with two number-one picks for Reggie White. I think we’re better off with that. We have to rebuild this club. With those two additional number ones, and some compensation for Keith Jackson, we could end up with four picks in the first two rounds [in 1994]. So I look upon Reggie White’s departure as an opportunity to strengthen this football team.”

  Norman had glimpsed the future in Dallas, just as he had years before scouting out the self-shop department store up in Providence, Rhode Island, for his father-in-law. The Cowboys had obtained a rash of draft picks from the Vikings by unloading their superstar running back Herschel Walker. Well, Reggie and Keith were going to be Norman’s Herschel.

  “Of course, if we don’t do a good job with the draft, then we’ll all look like shit,” he said with his impish grin.

  Norman and Harry and Richie would wheel and deal their way through the off-season, acquiring Tim Harris, a former Pro Bowl defensive end, to replace Reggie. Harris had a history of alcohol-abuse problems and would be arrested again for drunk driving shortly before the season started. He would develop a nagging elbow infection early in the year and would hardly play. They would acquire Michael Carter, a former 49ers’ star defensive lineman, but Carter would play miserably in training camp and opt to retire. They would sign former Jets safety Erik McMillan, another former all-pro, who would play so poorly that he would be cut midway through the year. Keith Millard, another former Pro Bowl player, would play intermittently, but hardly turn out to be the dominant force he once was. The two linemen Richie would select with his two first-round draft picks in ’93, defensive tackle Leonard Renfro and offensive guard Lester Holmes, would play passably well in their rookie year. Holmes showed promise of developing into a good player; Renfro appeared to be yet another disappointment. Rookie receiver Victor Bailey, the only other draft pick who would play much, would look talented but not be much of a factor.

  Two Eagles players would make the Pro Bowl in ’93, the always excellent Eric Allen and Seth, who was picked as a last-minute alternate. The revamped Eagles would finish in the bottom half of the league in both offensive and defensive rankings, including an abysmal fourth from the bottom in stopping the run—a stat that would make poor Jerome turn over in his grave. Clyde Simmons, who led the NFL with 19 sacks in ’92 playing on the opposite end of the line from Reverend Reggie, would finish the next season with only five. As a team, the Eagles would compile 36 sacks—Reggie, playing in Green Bay, made 13.5 all by himself.

  SITTING BEFORE HIS LOCKER underneath Milwaukee County Stadium, after playing in his first game as a Packer (a win over the Rams), Reggie seemed uncomfortable. Since his much-publicized public courtship the previous spring, ending with a four-year, $17 million deal ($9 million for the ’93 season alone), Reggie had become, if that was possible, an even more famous football player. One of the Milwaukee newspapers had a cartoon on the front of its annual Packers’ seasonpreview tabloid of Reggie dressed up as Moses, parting the Red Sea of NFL opposition and leading the wandering tribe of St. Vince, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, Bart Starr, Boyd Dowler, Max McGee, and Herb Adderly back to the promised land of Super Bowl victory—they had won the first two (’67 and ’68) and had not been back since. He was mobbed in the locker room.

  “Are you worried that all this attention on you will be distracting to the team?” a hound asked.

  “He’s doing a pretty good job of ignoring it,” piped up Packers linebacker Bryce Paup from two lockers over, trying to get dressed at the edge of the mob of questioners. “You guys are the ones who won’t leave him alone.”

  “What was the final score in Philadelphia?” Reggie asked a familiar face, a member of the old Eagles’ Pack who has flown out to witness his Packer debut.

  “They won.”

  Reggie smiled. “That’s good.”

  After growling his way through about a hundred postgame questions, trying to deflect attention away from himself and toward his new teammates, Reggie talked for a few minutes about the Eagles.

  “It will never be the same here,” he said. “We’re working to capture some of that kind of spirit here, but it takes time. You know, we were so loose in Philly. We were always having fun. It’s more serious here. There’s a difference in style.”

  Reggie had been stung by the Eagles’ refusal to even bid for his services and by some of the owner’s comments, which reached him indirectly. In particular, he resented being criticized for accepting the sweetest contract offer, after declaring that he was equally interested in playing somewhere where he co
uld work on problems of inner-city poverty and violence. Green Bay is hardly a major backwater of urban decay.

  “I know I’ve been criticized for going for the money,” he said. “But I know what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to finance some things. Mr. Braman don’t know that. He don’t know me. We went out to dinner one time four years ago, and me and Keith Byars one time sat down and talked to Norman and Harry [Gamble] about what we could do to bring us together, the management and the players. That’s it. I’m confident that if I had a chance to explain what I’m doing to a roomful of a hundred people, and Norman Braman was the hundred-and-first person, and after we had that roomful of people vote on what Reggie White was all about, I’d have one hundred votes for me and one against. Mr. Braman makes comments about me, but he don’t know me.”

  Reggie lead the Packers to the second round of the play-offs, right back to the same spot he had led the Eagles in ’92. The Packers faced Dallas in Texas Stadium, and lost, another victim on the path to a second Super Bowl victory for the Cowboys. Reggie made the Pro Bowl for the eighth consecutive time. Green Bay’s defense ended the season ranked second in the NFL, the Eagles, seventeenth.

  The mighty Reverend also unveiled his first community development bank in Knoxsville during the ’93 season.

  Down in Brooksville, Florida, that spring for the Second Annual Jerome Brown Football Camp, Reggie was briefly reunited with a group of his former teammates. Seth teased him, “So, Reggie, did God say exactly seventeen million dollars?”

  MIKE GOLIC, Ron Heller, Keith Byars, and Keith Jackson were all back in the Vet in mid-November wearing their new Miami Dolphins togs, helping Don Shula to his three hundredth win as a High Priest of the Pigskin. Shula was carried off the field triumphantly afterward, on a few former-Philly shoulder pads.

  Tank finally made the Pro Bowl in ’93. Starting all sixteen games at fullback for Miami, the long-suffering Eagle running back/receiver/tight end was the team’s third-ranked rusher and pass catcher. He gained just over nine hundred combined yards and scored six touchdowns—which didn’t equal his best years in Philadelphia. Keith Jackson had another strong, but not super, season. His six touchdown catches and 613 yards on thirty-nine catches were on a par with his stats during his last three seasons in green, but people (other than his agent, Mr. Upfront) weren’t calling K-Jack the best tight end in football anymore. For the third straight season he was not invited to the Pro Bowl.

  Ron Heller started all sixteen games for the Dolphins at right tackle.

  Mike Golic decided to turn down a lot of the requests he got from radio and TV after signing with the Dolphins. His reputation as a media star preceded him to Miami. “It’s incredible!” he said, midway through the season. “I could just pick right up down here where I left off in Philly, not even miss a step.” But he didn’t. He decided to earn his name on the field before taking to the airwaves.

  Shula initially slated Mike as a backup defensive tackle, which bugged the big guy. “Hey, playing behind Jerome and Mike Pitts is one thing, I can handle that,” he said. “Playing behind these guys down here, that’s another thing.” He started seven of the last eight games and toward the end of the year began doing little bits on the weekly Dolphins TV show.

  He was an immediate hit.

  KEN ROSE broke his left leg in the Eagles’ fifth game, the first major injury of his long career. He spent the rest of the season watching, still mentoring Willie T.

  RANDALL BROKE his right leg in the season’s fourth game, against the Jets, after playing superbly and leading the team to a 4—0 start. The same quarterback who began the ’92 season saying “Some guys get injured all the time; I’m just fortunate not to be one of those guys” will enter his ninth season having missed all or part of twenty-nine of the team’s last fifty games.

  He sobbed openly, wiping his eyes with a black handkerchief, as he exchanged marriage vows with dancer Felicity De Jager on May 8, 1993, in the Grand Ballroom of the Trump Taj Mahal casino-hotel in Atlantic City. Guarded by a detail of weight lifters outfitted in pink jackets, the couple starred in a $1 million nuptial song, dance, and dinner production that the Philadelphia Daily News, with admirable and uncharacteristic restraint, called “borderline excess.” It featured an $18,000 fourteen-tier wedding cake that stood six feet tall; a sensational entrance by the bride from behind custom-made sliding French doors in a cloud of smoke, bathed in a pink spotlight; gospel music and modern dance; a five-course filet mignon supper for one thousand topped off with cake and washed down with Dom Perignon; a press conference with bride and groom; special appearances by the Donald and his pregnant Marla; small commemorative booklets featuring brief statistical abstracts of bride and groom (Felicity: five-eleven, and one hundred thirty-four pounds; hobbies include dancing and Randall; hero is Randall; ambition is twelve kids. Randall: six-four and two hundred and five pounds: hobbies include golf and Felicity; hero is director of the U.S. mint; ambition is thirteen kids). Reverend Reggie, Richie, Norman, Keith Jackson, Keith Byars, Fred Barnett, and Calvin Williams were among those from the football club present; Seth Joyner, Wes, Andre, Byron, Clyde, and most of the defense were among those not.

  Randall’s wedding invitation, which released a handful of sparkling confetti on opening, instructed guests to “dress fashionably,” and the quarterback counseled one and all freely on what that meant— he designed his own beaded black silk tuxedo.

  “Zeke, you’ve gotta scrap that watch; it’s got to be gold,” he instructed Zeke Bratkowski (whom Richie named offensive coordinator in the spring).

  “How ‘bout I wear my three championship rings?” countered the onetime Packer and Colts quarterback.

  Randall presented his bride with not one, not two, but three diamond-encrusted gold rings. “One because we’re married, one to keep us married, and one because God brought us together.”

  Which prompted some waggish comment along the lines of “three-ring circus.” Lineman Mike Schad, the big Canadian, described the event this way: “Randall’s wedding? There’s only one word for it: tasteful”.

  BEN SMITH made it back on the field wearing a knee brace early in the ’93 season and played well, vying with Mark McMillian for the starting left cornerback job through most of the year. By the end of the season, however, McMillian had apparently won the job. When Richie said he planned to play Ben at safety in ’94, Ben wanted out. It was just another instance of Coach wanting him to do something he didn’t think was best for him. And true to the pattern he set back in high school, Ben was determined to go his own way. In April of ’94, he was traded to Denver (the Eagles got just a third-round draft pick in ’95). Broncos coach Wade Phillips promised to start Ben at cornerback.

  ANDRE WATERS had surgery in the summer to remove part of the big toe of his left foot, a lingering consequence of the infection he suffered after breaking his leg. He would return to the lineup as starting strong safety midway through the season and play well. He still earned $300,000 less than Byron.

  JENNIFER JOYNER offered Seth a $600,000 divorce settlement, promising to drop all future claims to alimony and child support. He quickly accepted it. The amount was about $600,000 less than what Seth made in ’93. He played much of that season on a bad ankle, and while he led the team in tackles, he made only two sacks and just one interception. In the spring of ’94, Seth signed a five-year $14.5 million contract with the renamed Arizona Cardinals.

  Jennifer moved back to Holland with their daughter.

  CENTER DAVE ALEXANDER signed a $1 million contract after the ’93 season.

  WES AND ERIKA HOPKINS seemed close to a reconciliation early in the spring of ’93. After his knee surgery, Wes showed up at their New Jersey house with an apology and a promise.

  “The relationship between me and Amy is over,” he said, as Erika would remember it.

  Erika said she was willing to work at it, and for several weeks Wes called daily. Erika thought, this is it, maybe we’ve turned the corner. But she still didn
’t trust him. So she decided to stop by his hotel room in Philadelphia early one morning to see if he was alone. In the offseason, Wes stayed out late and slept in late. Nine o’clock in the morning was like the middle of the night.

  So Erika dropped their daughter off at school one morning in April, skipped her aerobics class, and steered the Lexus over the bridge. As she pulled up to the hotel, she saw a car she knew belonged to Amy parked right behind Wes’s van in the lot.

  She was crushed. She had let herself hope.

  She got in another brawl with Amy upstairs, with Wes trying to pull them apart hopping around on his one good leg, and Erika ended up going to the hospital in an ambulance with a separated shoulder after passing out in the hotel lobby.

  In September, Erika got a phone call from Harry Himes, Wes’s agent. The Eagles had decided after all to offer Wes a new contract, despite Norman’s pique over the contract maneuver late in ’92.

  Only—Harry tried to explain this delicately—it seemed the club was a little concerned about Wes’s personal life and the problems he’d been having “at home.”

  Erika told Harry that she and Wes were history.

  “I’d still like for you to come in,” the agent said. He said he just wanted Erika to show up at the contract signing, smile, make nice. Harry himself was still hoping to get the two back together, and he knew that Erika’s presence might help allay the Eagles’ concerns about the marital situation. All summer the Eagles had effectively been telling Wes to get lost. Knowing nothing about the contract-extension request that pissed Norman off, the public and the Pack, with whom the ten-year-veteran free safety had long been a favorite, were mystified. Wes had been an essential part of the Eagles’ defense for a decade. When he was hurt late in ’92, all Bud and Richie did was whine about how much they missed him in that spot. But now Richie was adamant. Wes was, at thirty-one, too old and slow for the position. It was time to turn a new page. The club had agreed to pay $1.2 million to Erik McMillan to play the position and had in Rich Miano a solid veteran backup with good legs, they explained. They didn’t need Wes. It was your typical Eagles-style send-off.