The Legend of Jesse Smoke

by Robert Bausch

  We clicked from day one. I think I learned more about my own plays from her than I had in almost a decade of coaching. I’m not just saying that.

  As he said he would, Engram closed practice that week. (Roddy was livid, but he wrote stories about a strategy that might save the season. “This team is at a crossroads,” he said.) The players themselves all got behind Jesse, and the offense looked really crisp. We worked on the running game, but there were a few good passing plays sprinkled in. The whole line worked to keep Jesse on her feet. We even ran a few plays against our own defense, promising $200 bonuses to the defensive guy who could lay a hand on Jesse before she let go of the ball. Nobody got to her. Even Mickens blocked his ass off, and he never did like to do much of that. It got to be a matter of honor on the part of the offensive guys: They really wanted to keep Jesse from being hit.

  Of course, all of them knew it was a virtual impossibility to keep the quarterback from getting knocked down once in a while. But Coach Engram is wonderful at motivating people. One day he got the offense together and showed films of the greatest offensive line the Redskins ever fielded. And it wasn’t that early group of “Hogs” that won those eighties championships, either. The 1991 offensive line allowed just 8 sacks in fifteen games. In the last game, playing in a meaningless contest, they gave up a ninth, but their quarterback that year, Mark Rypien, was as well protected as any quarterback ever was. Engram made it a matter of pride for the whole offense, and Dan Wilber made sure every man on the line knew and understood what they were going for. They were going to be better than that 1991 line.

  On the whole, I was happy with how the practices went. So was Engram. He came up to me on Thursday, late in the afternoon, when we were just finishing two-minute drills. “I gotta tell you,” he said, grinning, “she looks good.”

  “Reminds me of you.”

  “More like a young Tom Brady.”

  “She stands like him sometimes, but you know when she drops back in the pocket, she actually looks like Griese. You ever see film of him?”

  “Really solid footwork. Like she’s dancing on air.”

  “Did you ever think you’d see such a thing? That young woman can throw it as hard as Brett Favre did.”

  “A woman,” he said, shaking his head. “Wait’ll I make that announcement.”

  “Look, we’ve all seen women play basketball as good as any man.”

  “Spivey’s fit to be tied,” he said, a slight change in his tone.

  “Didn’t think he’d be happy about it.”

  “He’s trying to be a mensch. He likes her. They’re friends.”

  “Really?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “No, they’re friends. Says he’s glad for her.”

  “He knows he can play. He’ll be ready.”

  “It embarrasses him. He’s ‘humiliated beyond measure,’ is how he put it.”

  “Who’d he say that to?” I asked.

  “Charley Duncan. He thinks it’s pretty silly too.”

  “Duncan’s the first general manager to sign a woman,” I said. “He should be happy to know he’s going down in history.”

  “It’s the ‘going down’ part I expect he’s worried about. Maybe on some level we all are.”

  I said nothing for a while, then I gave a short laugh. “I guess it is kind of humiliating. I wouldn’t want to get beat out by …” I didn’t finish the sentence. “What about Ambrose?”

  “I don’t know. I put him on the unable to perform list this morning. He’s out of it, in any case.”

  “I feel kind of sorry for him.”

  Engram shook his head, chuckling to himself. “Man, either I’m delusional and on the verge of being fired or we’re about to chart a whole new territory.”

  “It’s new territory, that’s for damn sure, no matter what happens to you or me. Calling it ‘new territory’ may be a vast understatement of what we’re about to do.”

  “You got that right.”

  We both stood there a while, thinking. Then he said, “Let’s go have a cigar and talk about how we make the announcement.”

  Saturday morning at his regular pregame press conference, Coach Engram told the press. What he said was, “I’m making a change at quarterback. All my coaching life I’ve tried to emphasize that I am always looking for the best player at every position. I have played quarterback in this league, I know what is required, and I am certain that we can improve the play at that position. So I’m going to give Jesse Smoke a shot at it before this season starts to get away from us.”

  Well, you remember the pandemonium that followed. The whole country seemed to ignite with the news. We were in every newscast, every newspaper, every online news feed. Jesse’s face and mine and Coach Engram’s instantly plastered all over the world. Almost nobody had ever seen her play quarterback. So maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising that what the sportswriters of America wanted to know was: Had Coach Engram lost his mind? Some said it was “a give-up move,” that the coach was saying good-bye to the season as flamboyantly as he could. Some said it was simply a novelty move to fill the stadium, that she’d be benched after the first series. Others claimed it was an affront to the league and the league office, a deliberate attempt to humiliate the commissioner. It was no big deal to let a rookie kick field goals for you, and nothing new about starting a rookie quarterback, even in the middle of a season. But when that rookie happens to be a female? You’d have thought we’d announced that the president of the United States was going to start at quarterback.

  The Raiders came to town Saturday, and most of them said they didn’t care who played quarterback for us. Delbert Coleman, who the Steelers had traded to the Raiders at the beginning of the season, said he was looking forward to the game. He was asked, “Do you feel as though you have a score to settle with Jesse Smoke for the way she hit you in the face with the ball back in training camp with the Steelers?”

  He still had a Band-Aid across his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I feel like I got a score to settle. But I don’t really believe they’ll play a woman. I promise you this, though: Whoever’s at quarterback, I’m going to put him or her on the seat of his or her pants.” Most of the Raiders were confident, and quietly respectful—they did not make fun of us the way some of the media did—and they were ready to play.

  It rained on game day, water dropping out of the sky like it was being poured from a watering can. Even so, every seat in the stadium had an ass in it. And they sold 2,000 standing room only tickets as well. You couldn’t find an empty space to move around in. More than 96,000 people waited for the kickoff, in an atmosphere of expectation the likes of which you’ve never seen, outside of a rock concert, say—or a public hanging.

  As in every game up to that point I called plays from a booth upstairs, the best seats in the house. Jesse could hear me and Coach Engram through a headset in her helmet. Our game plan was to run as much as possible to keep the ball away from the Raiders’ offense. We won the toss and after the Raiders kicked off, we got it out to the 25-yard line.

  On the first play from scrimmage, Jesse gave the ball to Walter Mickens and he ran off tackle for 6 yards. When he got back to the huddle, he was muddy and soaked. On the next play I called a sweep around the left end. It’s one of the oldest plays in all of football, and also one of the most basic. Vince Lombardi called it 49 28, and it came to be known as the Green Bay Sweep. It was designed for the running back to “run to daylight.” It looks like this:

  The two guards and the left tackle pull out of the line and run to the left, taking out whoever’s in the way; the center blocks the middle linebacker; the sweep-side wide receiver takes out the linebacker or the cornerback on that side; and the running back looks for “daylight” and does his best to run through it.

  We had all of a half a dozen running plays in our game plan that day and the Raiders pretty much knew we were going to run them, but our offensive line was strong and good enough to succeed. Our guys were really fi
red up, see. Engram saw to that. It is so much better in a game if the other team knows what plays you’re going to run and they still can’t stop it.

  Mickens took the ball on the sweep and raced laterally toward the left end, found an opening, and gained 9 yards. (Anders flattened the Raiders’ right linebacker.) First down on our 40. The crowd roared as though we’d scored a fucking touchdown. I saw Jesse telling everybody in the huddle to settle down and listen. No question, she was in charge out there.

  On the third play, I called a center trap—a play where the center pulls out of the line as though he is going to lead a sweep, and our running back, following the fullback, goes through the hole created by the center when he pulls out. If the lineman across from the center goes with him, anticipating a sweep, the fullback hits the middle linebacker, shoves him out of the way, and the ball carrier gains right up the middle. If the lineman stays put, the linebacker usually follows the center and the fullback has to hit the lineman and get him out of the way. The only time the play doesn’t work is if both the lineman and the linebacker “stay home” and don’t go for the fake. The play calls for a very quick handoff, which Jesse executed brilliantly. The lineman and the linebacker went with the center, and Mickens gained 11 yards right up the middle. First down on the Raiders 49.

  On the next play I wanted an off-tackle run again, but Jesse changed the play at the line, ran the 49 28 Red, which was a sweep to the right. This time Mickens found a huge gap, leaped over a diving safety, and ran for 18 yards. First down at the Raiders 31. Now the crowd really got into it.

  And I got ambitious. What happened was all my fault, I admit. But I could see the Raider defense gearing up to stop another run, and I knew what our tendencies were in that situation. I always knew our tendencies, see; that was part of my job: Scout our own offense so I could see what other teams might be guessing about us in certain situations. Another run to one side or the other was precisely the kind of play we might run 95 percent of the time in a driving rain, from inside the opponent’s 40 on first and 10. So I called Double X2, Red22M, Quick Z. It was a play fake and quick pass to one of the wide receivers. All Jesse had to do was fake a handoff to Walter Mickens, then stand up and hit either Darius Exley on the right or Rob Anders on the left, each running a quick slant to the middle. The receiver was to take the ball, turn up field, and run like hell. With the defense piled in close to the line to stop the run, that kind of play might gain 50 yards or more. The play called for Jesse to drop back only three steps, after she made the fake to Mickens, and then to let the ball fly. Jesse knew it well, had hit it perfectly every time we tried it in practice that week.

  I saw her walk confidently up to the line as the offense took their positions. From up in the booth you couldn’t even tell she was a woman. She was just a quarterback, built like most of them, tall and lean. She stood behind center looking over the defense. Both the Raider safeties were right up on top of the linebackers, and both corners crowded our two wide receivers. They had eight men in the box—eight men, that is, within five yards of the line of scrimmage. It was absolutely perfect. They might stop a run, but what we had called, if we could hit it, would gain big yardage.

  Jesse took the snap, but just as she was pulling back, Dan Wilber, who was taking his position to pass block, accidentally stepped on her left foot, sending her squirming down in the mud. She got back up as quickly as she could, but she missed the fake to Mickens, who went on by and hit the line, trying to fake a missed handoff. Jesse stood for only a few seconds looking for Exley or Anders downfield, and just as she saw Anders break into the clear about 10 yards behind the line, she got hit in the middle of her back by the Raiders left corner, who had blitzed on the play. Her head snapped back, her helmet flew off, and the ball sailed free. She went down hard on her chest into the mud with the cornerback on top of her, while Delbert Coleman, the Raider defensive end on the right side, picked the ball out of the air and raced 61 yards for a touchdown.

  I know everybody in the world has seen that highlight film—it is always called “Delbert’s Revenge”—but I can’t look at it. The sight of her getting hit like that, on our first pass play, still makes me weak in the knees. It was 6–0 Raiders before we’d played 3 minutes, but I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I didn’t even see Coleman score. I watched the Raider cornerback get up and strut away and then I saw Jesse turn over slowly on the field. She lay there a while, not moving, then Dan Wilber reached down and offered his hand. She reached for it, and I gave a sigh of relief. She was definitely conscious. He pulled her to her feet. She picked up her helmet and trotted to the sideline, staggering a bit as she got there. I thought of those fine bones in her neck and got sick to my stomach.

  I picked up the phone and called down to the sideline. Usually either my offensive line coach or Jesse would answer the bench phone, but this time I got Greg Bayne, the defensive coordinator.

  “Where’s Jesse?” I said.

  “They’re looking at her.”

  On the field, the Raiders were lining up at the 33 to kick the extra point, which, to a smattering of boos, made it 7–0. I saw Ken Spivey warming up behind the bench. “Is she hurt bad?” I said into the phone.

  “I don’t know. She fell down when she got back here.”

  I hadn’t seen that. I told Bayne to put Ken Spivey on the phone so I could go over the plays we would try to run when we got the ball back, but I also needed to talk to Jesse. When Ken got on the phone he said he was ready.

  “You think she’s going back in?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Ken. “I can’t tell what’s going on. She’s on the ground, I think.”

  The Raiders kicked off and the ball bounced through our end zone for a touchback. We’d be starting on our 20-yard line. There was a long TV time-out, and I watched the field to see what was happening over on the sideline. I saw a crowd around Jesse. The offense trotted on the field and waited in a sort of standing huddle for the end of the time-out. Spivey was at quarterback.

  The crowd really started booing.

  I heard Spivey’s headset start to crackle.

  I called another running play. He put his hands up to the ear holes on his helmet to let me know he’d heard me. The referee blew his whistle, and then Spivey and the offense leaned down in the huddle.

  I still couldn’t see through the crowd around Jesse.

  Twenty-One

  They took Jesse to the locker room and X-rayed her back. (Seeing two of our medical staff walking her to the locker room, I felt something cold stab me in the heart; it was real fear for her, and it shocked me.) The X-rays turned out to be just a precaution. The doctor was afraid of broken ribs, but there was no fracture. She’d gotten the wind knocked out of her and she’d have a hell of a bruise, but … she was going to be okay.

  After Jesse went out, as you may remember, the game just got away from us. Our defense spent a lot of time slogging in the mud, chasing Raider running backs and wide receivers. They didn’t run it on us much—although they certainly tried that move against Orlando that had been so successful in the Giants game. He got pushed out of the way a couple of times, but he’d learned to stay in his lane and fight for position. The trouble was, the Raiders were throwing short dump-off passes to the running backs in the rain, slicing through us like our defense had their feet planted in the mud. At one point, I was half afraid Orlando would break a leg, the way he lunged out of the muck to throw himself at those dark, ghostly, little backs speeding by him, just eluding his grasp.

  Spivey couldn’t hit a thing. We had the running game going pretty well, but eventually we needed him to hit something. A few times he lost his footing, too. He threw an interception in the second quarter that was a direct result of his front foot slipping out from under him as he was releasing the ball—the kind of thing that can happen to anybody. The ball, sailing too short and high, was, of course, picked off by a linebacker.

  By halftime, it was 23 to 0. (The Raiders kicker had slippe
d in the mud and missed an extra point.) I’d gotten a report from Bayne early in the second quarter that Jesse was going to be all right. When she came back out of the tunnel, the crowd cheered for her, but Engram told me she was done for the day.

  We were heading for another loss, though it would be no shame. The Raiders were favored to go all the way that year. And they’d already shown us they could whip us pretty bad in the preseason.

  Still, any loss really takes it out of you. And we were losing very badly.

  In the middle of the third quarter, the Raiders drove the ball 70 yards and had a first and goal at our 3. They missed a quick pass to the tight end, who was wide open and dropped it. Then they tried to go up the middle on us, but Drew Bruckner and Zack Leedom stuffed it good. No gain. It was third and goal from the 3. They tried to go around Orlando’s end, but he knifed through and dropped their running back for a 6-yard loss. The crowd cheered then, glad for something to cheer about. But the Raiders kicked a field goal, and now it was 26 to 0. Eight minutes to go in the third quarter.

  Here’s the thing: If your game plan is to run the ball and you’re down by more than two scores late in the third quarter, you got to adjust. The game plan? That goes out the window. We had to pass, and we had to pass with Spivey.

  What we’d practiced all week was short, quick passes to the wide receivers and running backs. We only had one or two long balls in the plan. Spivey could throw it hard and he could be pretty accurate, actually, but with only 6 minutes left in the third quarter and the ball on the Raiders 37-yard line, he got knocked down. He’d completed a 16-yard pass to our tight end to get to the 37, but the same cornerback who had dropped Jesse put Spivey’s face into the mud and he got up swinging. He hadn’t fumbled, but he wanted to kill somebody. Dan Wilber got a hold of him and sort of danced him back toward the huddle, but there was no calming Spivey down once he lost his temper.