The worst part of what Denver does is that they view their antics as tough, like they belong to some exclusive fraternity. To me it’s just pure garbage. I know I probably sound like a sour defensive lineman. You’re damn right I am! We’ve got enough violence out there on Sunday afternoons without the Broncos offensive line or the other assholes of the league trying to shelve us for an extended period of time.
In all honesty, I keep a list of the all-time cheap-shotters. There’s Runyan, Steve Wisniewski, the Raiders great Jumbo Elliott, my former teammate, Erik Williams of those great Cowboys offensive lines, Kevin Gogan, a veteran guard. Some lists may differ, but that’s mine.
The first four are all from the same generation. If you beat them on anything at all, the next play you’ll get a finger innocently slipped under your face mask and into your eye. Or how about a punch in the windpipe or down low in the ribs? They’ll wait for a scrum and suddenly, wham, you’ve got a big old leg whipping around, kicking you in the bottom of your leg.
There’s a reason why four of the five guys I’ve named are out of the league. For some reason, today’s lineman doesn’t have the same nasty streak or junkyard-dog style his predecessors possessed. The officials have certainly made it harder on them, but I also think in football, different generations have different standards. Now when a guy pulls this type of junk, the whole league hates him. Back in the day, you had better play like that if you wanted to gain a nasty reputation.
While for years I hated going against Jumbo in practice, he made going against guys like Erik Williams easier for me. After practicing with Jumbo, it wasn’t a shock when one of those guys grabbed my Adam’s apple in retaliation.
Now Runyan is a different kind of cheap. I hated him when he first went to the Eagles because they touted his signing as an acquisition to stop me. Stop me? For some reason that really got under my skin. But what really ticked me off about Runyan, what makes him so cheap, is his behavior around the pile.
Runyan waits innocently for a play to be about over until he blasts some poor soul distracted by the play. It’s like having your friend tap a guy on the shoulder, he turns the other way and your other friend runs up and punches him in the face when he turns back around.
A defender could be standing over the pile and here comes Runyan, flying into the air to take someone out right as the whistle is blown. It’s gutless, as if we need any extra push.
While the NFL eventually made a rule prohibiting such actions, Runyan made a living for a while doing that sort of garbage to people. This year, because of his history with these types of infractions, Runyan was fined his entire game playoff share with the Eagles because he hit somebody late. That’s another thing the league is cracking down on, thanks to Jon Runyan.
The ironic thing about Runyan is he won’t do it to guys who have earned their stripes. He doesn’t pull that on me. He has a respect for me (which he should, considering how many sacks I’ve gotten on him).
Take away this ploy and Runyan’s Eagles offensive line is exactly the difference between cheap-shotters like Denver and guys who just play mean, nasty, hard football. Philly likes to lock me up on Runyan. Then at the last moment, their guard will shoot out and sucker me in the ribs. They’ll always get somebody to throw a body part at me where it’ll hurt the most, and it always comes when I’m engaged with another player. I usually end up screaming at them for half the game to leave me with Runyan one-on-one. If he’s so great and he was signed to stop Michael Strahan, then let him try to stop me one-on-one. Rarely do they do it.
Playing against Runyan the last few years has gotten less exhilarating because I don’t hate the guy anymore. We became friends at the Pro Bowl in 2002. Now I have to find other people to hate.
As players, we’ll watch the highlights to see how our brethren take a beating. We know how bad our own hits are, but we as players love to see who else gets teed up come Sundays. The next day we’ll come into the locker room and either laugh at someone or get into rants about whether something was cheap or not. When Kansas City quarterback Trent Green got lit up in the opening week this year with a horrific concussion, seeing that actually put a little lump in my throat. We weren’t playing until that evening, so I got to see Robert Geathers’ hit on Trent over and over and over all day long.
You gulp because it’s a reminder of how brutal our chosen profession really can be. Playing with the fear or anxiety that you could get hurt often leads to getting hurt. Seeing a hit such as Green’s bonds us closer together in the locker room because we know it could happen to any one of us on any Sunday. We’ll debate as players whether or not something was cheap, and then talk a huge game about how we’d kick the butt of any guy who did that to us.
Which brings me right back to good old Haynesworth. Monday morning, seeing his head stomp, there wasn’t a single coach or player in our locker room who didn’t have an opinion on the matter. A few argued, but most agreed. Sue him. Kick his ass. Kick him out of the league. Call the police. File charges.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chess on the Gridiron
Sunday, October 8, Redskins at Giants
When the game starts, I’m so excited to put my fingers in the dirt, I literally feel like exploding, like my head may fall off. I look at football as the unequal opportunity profession. None of us are made the same and if I’m in a battle, my job is to make it unequal, tipping the scales in my favor, in favor of the Giants.
There’s a winner and loser every single snap of every single game. I’ll try to set my guy up and make him believe that by the time the game’s final tick counts off he’ll be thinking, “Damn, I just played Michael Strahan, and he’s everything they said he’d be and I don’t want to see him again.”
Football is actually one big game of chess, and the last thing I wanted was for the Redskins and Joe Gibbs, Mark Brunell and their buddies to start swiping at will all our pieces off the board.
Chess? You must think I’m crazy. Every snap of every play of every game, there are a handful of inside battles playing out that the fans don’t know about. There could be four or five different things going on between two players on any given play. A reaction to a reaction. An adjustment to an adjustment. It really is that intricate.
Coaches play chess games against the opposite coaches. There are numerous plots and subplots that go into every single play of every single game, many of which play out under the radar. Fans might see a right tackle and me battling it out like two heavyweights punching each other silly. But for both of us, there’s actually a mental checklist on every play that we run down before the snap which we then recheck as we’re clashing. It’s so incredibly specific and detailed, only the final action and result is what the fan usually picks up. Every little thing is accounted for as the coaches break down every minute factor and incorporate it into each and every call.
On some plays the coaches make a call that requires me to line up with my inside eye on my opponent’s outside eye. Sometimes they line you up foot to foot, inside foot to his outside foot, which places me a little bit farther out on the edge. Whenever Brunell lines up for the snap, we don’t just line up wherever we damn well please. Everything is controlled.
At the same time, I have to adjust based on my build and the build of the blocker in front of me. It’s those details that other players sometimes fail to grasp. If my opponent has really long arms, it could lead to imperceptible yet crucial shifts in how I bring on the heat. If he’s strong or weak, quick or too big to move, that all factors into a snapshot judgment of how I’ll bring on the heat every Sunday afternoon.
Fans see me lining up against a guy like Jon Runyan, Flozell Adams or, in the case of the Redskins, Jon Jansen and believe we’re just slugging away at each other without a plan. Nothing could be further from the truth.
After I’m sure I’m digging in with the correct alignment, next I think about exactly where I’ll place my hands on a blocker, depending on the rush that has been called or on one that I’ve chos
en. I know if I have to go outside of my guy, I’ve got to put my hands somewhere where he can’t cut me off and pull me back inside. All of these things have to be figured out before the ball is snapped, and that doesn’t even include breaking down what our actual calls and responsibilities are on each play.
On this day I’ll go against Jon Jansen, whom I personally don’t care for. He played one good game against me his rookie year and lives off bragging that he beats me one-on-one, but they rarely let him take me on one-on-one. And when they do, he loses.
My war, my chess game, starts with the first pass rush of the game. Usually on the first play of a game, right off the bat I come on as strong as I can, just to get into his head. On my first rush, I’ll try to smack a guy in the head, run through his chest and push him back just to let him know I can do it. On that first play, I bring out my bishop, queen, rooks and knights. I try to punch him so hard that my hands go through his chest. I want his heart on the first play.
I want him thinking, “Oh, man, is it going to be like this all day?” I want him telling his teammates and coaches, whether verbally or through body language, he’s not so secure with himself today.
This sets him up for later in the game when we really need a sack. I may use the exact same “bull rush” (a pass rush technique that uses leverage and strength to try to power through a blocker to the quarterback) three times in a row. On the fourth play I’ll act like I’m going to bull rush him again, but instead I’ll swipe his arms and rip around him.
The idea is to show one rush, like jab, jab, jab and then, when he thinks another jab is coming, bop!, I switch to a hook to the body that sends him buckling over, gasping for air. Move a bishop to show him one thing, but it’s really just a trap for when I bring my queen out.
At this point instead of just thinking about that bull rush, he has two other things to think about. I’m trying to get him to think, “When Strahan lines up like he’s going to bull rush, will he really?” Your move, maestro.
As the game progresses, I try to build my options and add to his confusion. I try to make his guesswork more and more difficult, play by play. The next play I’ll act like I’m going to bull, then shift like it’s a fake just to get his feet moving, and then actually bull when his body is out of position. That’s the art of the pass rush.
The best in the league in defending against my head games are guys who are comfortable with their own games, guys who don’t get too excited. The Seahawks’ Walter Jones is the best in the biz. The man is so composed, so relaxed, he never gets fooled by your first move. If you’re going to beat Walter Jones, it’s going to be on either a messed-up drop by the quarterback or when your defensive backs’ coverage is so great, they’ve given us time to try a second and third move on him.
Another top-three guy is Jon Runyan, the Eagles tackle who, despite all the sacks I’ve dropped on him, has evolved his game. And I respect that.
My chess match with him used to be so easy because he was so anxious to get his hands on me, he’d come out after me and expose himself. Since, he’s calmed down. Now he really makes me work to beat him. Jonathan Ogden of the Ravens is awesome because at 6 foot 8 he has such long arms, he’s confident enough that if you beat him on your first move, he’ll regroup and get a piece of you before his quarterback feels the pain of another screwup.
Flozell Adams of the Cowboys could be unstoppable if he wanted to. If he had the same fight in him as his former teammate Larry Allen did, he’d be damn near unstoppable all the time. Allen is now a guard, but when he lined up at tackle, you knew it was going to be a very painful afternoon. When Larry Allen gets his hands on you, there’s a big chance he’ll put you in an awful lot of pain.
The personal battles and the chess games I play on Sundays changed toward the end of the last decade. Guys like Erik Williams, Kevin Gogan, Steve Wisniewski, Jumbo Elliott, those guys made Sundays a living hell. Playing those guys wasn’t a game, it was a damn street fight. Now, their type of play has become extinct. After each game, every head coach in the NFL calls the league’s officiating department to complain about certain calls not made by the game’s officials. If a guy gets clubbed in the face, punched in the nuts, leg-whipped, anything cheap, head coaches point it out and if it’s on film, the league will drop a stiff fine on the blocker. Not only do they get fined, they’re threatened with suspensions and on-field penalties. As a result, players can’t be as aggressive.
The last generation and generations before may have been dirty, but I respected their dirtiness because they at least made it a fun fight. It was old-school, backyard football at its finest. Now everything is about the finesse of the chess game, making it much easier for guys like me.
Now I no longer have to worry about exposing my ribs or my back when I’m setting a guy up. I can focus primarily on each blocker’s strengths and weaknesses.
For example, when I go against some of the larger tackles out there, I won’t even show my pass rush move until after I’ve taken three steps on him. Why not just try to immediately shoot around him? If some guys are immovable in their little one-yard comfort zone, I try to get them to move their feet. Once I get them to step one foot out of that box, it can be like taking candy from a baby.
The chess match continues all game long and it involves many other people. After every couple of plays in the Colts game, I asked our right defensive end Osi Umenyiora how the Colts were blocking him on his side. Were they sliding toward him? Were they leaving him one-on-one or were they using another blocker or running back to chip block him?
Depending on the other team’s ploys, Osi and I will talk to the defensive tackles and I may call a certain stunt. Sometimes we’ll call the stunt to disrupt the play and crush the quarterback. In other cases we call the stunt to get them to adjust out of something that could be giving us trouble. If we have success with a certain stunt, they may make a slight adjustment that in the end frees us up in the trenches. Every little thing we do has a reason.
Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But that’s nothing! Nothing compares to the overall matchup between offense and defense. The best way to explain it is to go through actual scenarios that have been used by one of our opponents. Let’s take a play from the offense, an actual call that one of our opponents has:
Weak Right Ride 35 Bob “Kill” Horse 3 Y Flutie X Shallow Cross.
Sounds like a different language. The problem is, coaches and their quarterback buddies around the league have hundreds of these foreign-sounding phrases in their language books. What makes a quarterback so special is that not only does he have to memorize these calls, he has to be able to execute on the drop of a dime and sometimes adjust several times before each play concludes. They store these calls in a memory bank that gets used eighty times a game.
Here’s what happens on that particular play. The “Weak Right Ride 35 Bob” part of the play signifies the initial call as a running play.
Their quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage, where he’ll try to do whatever he can to see what defense we’ve called. He’ll look at our personnel, try to figure out where the safety is, and the quarterback will usually call out some fake cadence to see where we’re going to be. You may hear him call out a series of colors and numbers. Generally it’s all a crock of crap. He’s just waiting for us to flinch and show him our cards.
Suddenly, we shift from full-contact chess to full-contact chess and poker. The quarterback is like a poker player staring at the table, looking for any tip. This is why guys like Drew Brees, Manning and Brett Favre come to the line so fast. They want time to use all their little decoys to get us to tip our hand, and they’re awesome at it.
Let’s say on that play he sees that our safety is cheating up to where they’ve called the tailback to run. If that’s the case, the quarterback will call out a word like “Kill” or “Scrap” and that immediately shifts the call to “Horse 3 Y Flutie X Shallow Cross,” which is a passing play. Some quarterbacks like to use a certain color or a g
irl’s name to kill the play.
Once he kills the original call, every single player on that offense has to know that the run has just been killed and they’re now required to adjust to another call. They’ve got to keep this in mind despite the fact that I’ve got my hand in the dirt revving my engine to take his ass apart. Try thinking under that kind of pressure.
Wait, let’s take it even further. Let’s use another call in our cat and mouse game.
Full Right 40 “Kill” Pass 82 All Go.
This is a running play, a draw, and just like before, the quarterback will come to the line and maybe he’ll make a fake cadence, maybe he won’t. It’s on us to figure it out and still get a good jump on them. If in his decoying, he thinks our safety is going to cheat up for the run and thus leave one safety back deep all alone, the call shifts to “Pass 82 All Go” which has four receivers taking off vertically downfield.
If, at the last moment, he sees that we’ve adjusted to his adjustment by sending a pair of linebackers on a blitz, the play gets even more complicated. Now, the quarterback and the tight end have to immediately, without ever talking to each other, know the call has just shifted to “Pass 82 All Go Y Shallow Cross.” Three receivers go deep and the tight end stays in and runs a “hot” route.
Hot calls are a series of routes installed in most passing plays used to counteract blitzes. They are completely nonverbal but entail the quarterback and receivers knowing when to cut routes short, so the quarterback isn’t holding the ball too long on a blitz, and when not to. That’s why quarterbacks and receivers have to spend so much extra time together after practice, in the off-season and in the meeting rooms. I hate meetings for the defense, but I can understand why they meet, meet and meet some more on offense.
Think about how much there is for them to process. Within the course of three seconds, a team can switch plays three times, yet never actually yell out the play once they leave the huddle.
Inside the Helmet: Hard Knocks, Pulling Together, and Triumph as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior Page 14