“I Don’t think this is in my contract,” Stewart said, trying to force a laugh.
While the Ravens were trying to figure out who would punt when they got the ball again, the jets were methodically moving the ball downfield. Carter, doing as he was told, found justin McCareins in front of Fuller for 16 yards. Then he threw a quick pass to backup running back Lamont Jordan, who took the ball 25 yards to the Ravens’ 18. The building frustration was never more evident than on that play, when Ray Lewis was called for a late hit, moving the ball to the 9. Martin came back in on the next play and scored. The Jets led, 14-0, with 4:14 left in the half. The day was quickly becoming a disaster.
The offense went three-and-out. When Zauner called for the punt team, his punter was standing a few feet away from him, huddled in his windbreaker. “Kordell!” Zauner screamed. “You’re the punter!”
Stewart had forgotten. He tossed off the Windbreaker, raced onto the field, caught the perfect snap from Joe Maese, then dropped the ball quick-kick style, and managed to wobble a 31-yard punt to the Jets’ 27. Moss returned it 8 yards.
“First time I’ve kicked in a game since high school,” Stewart said to Sanders as he came off. “How’d i look?”
“Like you haven’t kicked since high school,” Sanders answered.
Stewart’s kicking would have been funnier if the situation hadn’t been so grim. On second down Carter went right back at Fuller, finding the fleet Moss breaking down the sideline. Reed came over and pushed him out of bounds on the 17-yard line after a 47-yard pickup. Any Jets score in the final two minutes, field goal or touchdown, would create a three-score deficit. The way the offense was going—one first down since the opening series—that would be almost impossible to overcome.
For some reason, Jets offensive coordinator Paul Hackett, frequently pilloried in New York for his notoriously conservative play calling, decided to get fancy at a moment when nothing but straight-ahead running between the tackles was needed. Looking, no doubt, to drive a stake into the Ravens’ heart, he called an option pass on the next play, sending Jordan sprinting to his right, looking to throw the ball into the end zone.
“As soon as he took the pitch I knew he was going to pass the ball,” Reed said later. “I could tell looking at his pads. He wasn’t trying to get turned at all to run the ball, he was standing up straight. You don’t do that if you’re trying to run.”
Running out of room as he ran toward the sideline, Jordan should have just run out of bounds. Reed and the rest of the Ravens had read pass all the way and the jets receivers were covered. Jordan, inexperienced at making that kind of decision, panicked. He tried to fling the ball into the end zone, hoping someone in green would come down with it. If he had been watching the Ravens play all year, he would have known exactly who was going to come down with the ball. Fuller actually got a finger on it and deflected it right into the hands of Reed, who was four yards deep in the end zone. Seeing himself surrounded by Jets, Reed thought for a moment to kneel and let the offense start at the 20.
“But then I thought, ‘I need to take a chance, try to make a play,’” he said. “Plus, when I make an interception, I always think to myself, ‘These are offensive players out here. They don’t know how to tackle.’”
Reed’s instincts were on target. Bobbing and weaving, ducking tacklers, first in the end zone, then all over the field, he raced the length of the field again, and more, going 104 yards for a touchdown. The Ravens’ bench, which had been completely silent a moment earlier, exploded. There was one problem: peeling back to try to get one last block for Reed, Will Demps had been caught blocking in the back at the Jets’ 26. Instead of a touchdown, the Ravens got the ball on the Jets’ 36 with 1:33 left in the half.
“I can’t believe it,” Demps said, coming off.
“Don’t sweat it,” Reed said. “The O will come through.”
Optimistic words at that moment. They appeared to be more fantasy than optimism a few moments later, when the offense picked up 2 yards on three plays and faced fourth-and-8 from the 34. Billick called time-out and decided not to try a field goal. For one thing, it wouldn’t mean that much. For another, it would be a 51-yarder, and even kicking with the wind, Stover would be working with a new holder (Boller) since Zastudil was in the locker room. He and Cavanaugh agreed on a pass underneath to Chester Taylor, in the game for Lewis because it was third-and-long. Taylor broke two tackles and took the ball all the way to the 11-yard line. Two plays after that, Boller threw a lob to Clarence Moore in the end zone, and he used all of his six-foot-six inch frame to go up and catch it. Touchdown. Instead of trailing by two touchdowns—or more—at the half, the deficit was only 14-7.
The game had been turned around completely. You could feel it in the Ravens’ locker room. Even with McAlister, Zastudil, and Edwin Mulitalo—whose foot had gotten stepped on in a pileup—in the training room, the place was full of life. Mike Flynn had gone in to play center, and Casey Rabach was playing at left guard for Mulitalo. Everything was patchwork. It didn’t seem to matter. “If I have to go out there myself and make a play, I will,” Mike Nolan told the defense. Billick kept saying over and over, “We’ve got what we need to win this game, we just have to go do it.”
Fassel checked in with Boller. “How you feeling, Seven,” he said, calling him by his number.
“Never better,” Boller said.
They quickly cut the lead to 14-10 on a Stover field goal midway through the third quarter. Stewart kept getting off punts that didn’t go all that far but went far enough. The punt team, knowing it had to make plays, was making them. The defense had its second wind, and the jets offense was going nowhere. It became a punting battle until the Ravens finally pieced together a drive in the fourth quarter. Boller, who had spent so much time in the off-season throwing balls to Travis Taylor, finally found him twice when it mattered: first for 23 yards, then for another 6. On a third-and-11 at the Jets’ 16, he lofted another perfect pass to Clarence Moore, who—again—came down with it. Moore had come a long way from being a candidate for the practice squad in August.
The touchdown put the Ravens in the lead for the first time all day at 17-14 with 4:13 left in the game. The defense needed one stop and they could go home with a remarkable come-from-behind victory. But the NFL rarely works that way. LaMont Jordan, trying to make up for his critical second-quarter mistake, returned Stover’s Kickoff to the 45-yard line. On third-and-7 Carter picked on Fuller again, finding McCareins at the Ravens’ 38 for a first down. Curtis Martin then took over, picking up 26 yards on two plays to put the ball on the 12. The clock was running down. Martin was stopped for a loss of 1 with fifty-five seconds left, setting up third-and-6. Herman Edwards used his first time-out. Carter picked up 9 yards—and a first down at the 4—on a scramble on the next play, but for some reason, Edwards didn’t take time-out and the clock ran all the way to eighteen seconds before the Jets ran another play.
Hoping to surprise the Ravens with a run, the Jets ran LaMont Jordan right, but Lewis and Ed Hartwell stopped him for a 1-yard gain. Fourteen seconds left. Time-out, Jets. Carter threw incomplete into the end zone, throwing the ball away with Adalius Thomas bearing down on him. Third down and three yards to go for a winning touchdown. Eight seconds left. The Jets still had a time-out. They could run one more play—as long as it wasn’t a slow-developing one—and still have time for a tieing field goal if they didn’t win the game with a touchdown. But there was confusion on the jets’ sideline, a recurring problem in endgame situations. Edwards ended up using his last time-out then, instead of saving it in case he needed it after the third-down play. Not wanting to risk getting tackled in bounds with no time-outs left, he was forced to send in the field goal team. Doug Brien made the kick with five seconds left and in a scene that could probably take place only in New York (okay, maybe Philadelphia), the fans booed their team for tieing the game and forcing overtime. Their anger was understandable, though; the Jets should have been able to take at least one
more crack at winning the game, but clock mismanagement had forced them to kick the field goal.
The Ravens were thrilled, under the circumstances, to be playing overtime. The defense quickly held the Jets to three-and-out. Overtime is about two things: possession and field position. The Ravens had both, taking over at their own 44 after the punt. The offense couldn’t move. But Stewart, the rookie punter, came up with a huge kick—punting the ball 42 yards, where it was downed by Thomas at the Jets’ 9. They didn’t have possession, but they did have field position. Again the defense forced a three-and-out. Sams very carefully fielded the punt at the Ravens’ 41 and returned it to the 44. They were five minutes into the fifteen-minute overtime and the tension in the stadium grew each second.
On third-and-5, Boller scrambled to his right and found Kevin Johnson, who had been the invisible man for several weeks, across the middle. Johnson, who had always been known for his sure hands, took a big hit and held on to the ball at the jets’ 30. With the wind behind them, they might have been in field goal range right there. Stover prefers to kick from eight yards behind the line of scrimmage (some kickers will go from seven), so the attempt at that moment would have been 48 yards. Billick didn’t want to take a chance, especially with Boller doing the holding. He had done okay so far, but Stover’s last extra point had hit the crossbar before dropping over, and whether it was the hold or the kick didn’t matter. It made everyone a little bit jittery.
Hoping to grind the ball closer to the goalposts, Boller handed the ball to Lewis, who was dropped for a 4-yard loss before he could take a step. Now the field goal would be 52 yards, a bomb even with the wind. They needed a few more yards. boller threw incomplete to Travis Taylor. Third down. From the shotgun, he went back to taylor and this time they connected, Taylor being brought down at the 24. It was short of a first down, but that didn’t matter. It was now well within Stover’s range.
The Jets called time-out. Larry Rosen, the sideline reporter for the Ravens radio network, couldn’t resist a crack: “First time in history someone has called time-out,” he said, “to freeze the holder.”
He might have been right. Normally from 42 yards, even in the Giants Stadium winds, Stover was a near lock to make the kick. Now Maese needed a perfect snap and Boller had to get the ball down for him. “By that point I was so wound up, I was fine,” Boller said. “As long as Joe gave me a good snap.”
Stover was trying not to think about what might happen if the snap or hold wasn’t good. He was just going through his prekick routine, talking to himself the way he always did.
“Time to go home,” Deion Sanders said. It was getting close to dark by now and the temperature had dropped a good deal since kickoff more than three hours—and a lifetime—earlier.
Time was back in. Maese’s snap was perfect. Boller put the ball down, laces away from the kicker, just as they are supposed to be, and Stover hit the kick perfectly. Sanders was trotting in the direction of the tunnel with the ball still in the air. The kick would have been good from 52 yards. For the first time all season, the Ravens celebrated a victory on the field. The Jets, understandably, were devastated. The ravens were still pounding one another gleefully when they hit the locker room.
“Kordell, I knew we brought you here for a reason,” Billick said. “But I didn’t know this was it.”
The game ball was Stewart’s. In fact, he would be voted the league’s special teams player of the week. He had punted five times for an average of 35.4 yards, including the key 42-yarder in overtime.
He wasn’t the only hero, though: Reed had again turned the game around with his interception and return. The receivers had made big catches. And Kyle Boller, the quarterback almost no one in Baltimore thought could come up big in the fourth quarter, had come up big in the fourth quarter. and in overtime.
“The best thing about it is now the guys know Kyle can get it done at the end of a close game,” Billick said, relaxing in the locker room, taking his time to savor what he had just seen. “All of us thought he could get it done. Now we know. That’s an important difference.” He paused and smiled. “Especially when you get to the playoffs.”
The ravens were now 6-3. A lot of the stacking issues Billick had been concerned about on Monday were still in play. But talking about the playoffs was now a reasonable thing to do.
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Best Record Ever
AS EXHILARATING AS THE VICTORY OVER THE JETS WAS, there was work to be done even before the Ravens boarded the train for their trip home.
“I assume you have a punter in your back pocket someplace,” Brian Billick said to Gary Zauner as they left the locker room.
“I’m going to start calling guys from the train,” Zauner answered.
Dave Zastudil was going to be out for at least two weeks, perhaps longer. Kordell Stewart had performed remarkably as a stopgap, but the team needed a real punter. There were other injuries: Edwin Mulitalo’s foot appeared to be okay, but Chris McAlister’s shoulder was sore enough that it appeared possible he might not be able to play the following Sunday against the Cowboys. Jonathan Ogden was confident he would be ready to play against Dallas, but Todd Heap and Deion Sanders were still at least a week—possibly longer—away from playing.
The first order of business was finding a punter. Zauner was intrigued by the notion of bringing in Lee Johnson, the former Cincinnati Bengals kicker. Johnson was well over forty and had been out of football for a while but had the advantage of being left-footed, like Zastudil, meaning no adjustments would be needed. “How old is he, fifty?” Billick asked. “There has to be someone else.”
There were plenty of someone elses. The life of an NFL kicker—placekicker or punter—is often a nomadic one. Few kickers were like Stover, sticking with one team for fourteen years. Except for elite ones like Stover, kickers and punters were on and off rosters like steaks on a hot grill. One kicker whose phone number Zauner had in his back pocket was Nick Murphy, like Zastudil three years out of college but someone who had never kicked in the NFL. Murphy had been in the Minnesota Vikings’ training camp twice and had spent the preseason in 2004 with the Eagles. He had kicked in NFL Europe for two years and had done very well there, leading the league twice, but had never made an NFL roster. Zauner had seen him on tape and knew he had a strong leg. The only real knock on him was that he had never set foot on an NFL field in a game that meant anything. Zauner called Murphy from the train and asked if he could be in Baltimore on Tuesday for a tryout. Murphy was in Phoenix, where he had gone to college at Arizona State, selling insurance and working out to stay in shape just in case his phone rang. Now—finally—it had. “First time in three years I even got a call for a tryout in-season,” he said. “I was excited, but not overly excited. I knew I wasn’t going to be the only guy they brought in.”
He was right. By Monday afternoon Zauner and George Kokinis, the pro scouting director, had a list of ten punters they wanted to bring to Baltimore. One of Kokinis’s jobs was to keep tabs on available players at every position in case of an injury. He was expected to be ready with a list of names if a player went down at any position.
Tuesday tryouts are a regular part of NFL life. Tuesday is tryout day for the simple reason that teams’ facilities are nearly empty since it is the players’ day off. Teams bring players in when someone is injured and when they think someone can make their team better—if not right away, then down the line. The Ravens had already turned over more than half the players who had started the season on the practice squad. One player they had initially brought in to look at for the practice squad, Darnell Dinkins, had proven to be such a good player that he had been on the forty-five-man roster for the past three weeks, getting snaps at tight end and on special teams.
The Ravens worked out the punters in two groups of five. All of them were, understandably, nervous, none more so than Murphy. “I got engaged this past summer,” he said. “I think when I did that I knew the time when I could hang around and hope to get a [football] jo
b was ending. I was running out of time—and chances.”
Murphy hadn’t played football until his family moved from St. Louis to Phoenix when he was thirteen, because he was a soccer player—a goalie—and soccer and football season in St. Louis were both in the fall. In Phoenix soccer was in the spring, so he decided to try football. “To be honest, the main reason I did it was so when people asked me later in life if I ever played football, I could say that I did,” he said. “Funny reason to take up a sport, but that was it.”
He was a decent wide receiver, but when the chance to punt came up his junior year, he decided to try it. “The motions that you make to kick the ball as a soccer goalie aren’t that different than in punting,” he said. “I knew from soccer I had a pretty strong leg, so I decided to try it.”
He received no scholarship offers as a senior, so he decided to go to junior college for a year, hoping he would improve enough to be offered one. He did and several schools expressed interest, including Arizona State—his hometown school. He decided to go there and was All-Pac 10 by his junior year. He punted well enough as a senior that he was one of six punters invited to the combine in Indianapolis. His roommate for the week: Dave Zastudil.
“The one thing we had in common was we were all miserable,” he said. “It was freezing in the dome, we had to get up at five-thirty the day we kicked, and then we got ten kicks and that was it. I didn’t do horribly, but I didn’t do well enough to get anyone’s attention, I guess.”
Zastudil did—ending up as the Ravens’ fourth-round pick in the draft. Murphy ended up in camp with the Vikings as a free agent. He was cut after the third exhibition game and spent the fall working in a Pizzeria Uno. “I did a little of everything,” he said. “I bartended, I waited tables, I valet parked. I wanted flexible hours so I could keep working out.”
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