“She’s fine,” I said, but I didn’t really believe it.
The night before the game, she checked into a hospital for further tests—and that, we couldn’t keep from the papers or the television people.
I’ll never forget the hours I spent in that hospital waiting room. I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
Forty-Four
Well, of course you know the story. It’s been told a million times. But you don’t know the truth. What really happened.
Jesse wasn’t “rushed” to the hospital for emergency tests. I drove her there. I stayed at the hospital as long as I could, but it was the day before the Super Bowl. We were in Los Angeles and I had to get to the Coliseum by 9 a.m. I left Jesse there with Andre Brooks and Jimmy Kelso—two of our injured-reserve players, still a part of the team, who were attending the Super Bowl.
The doctors didn’t tell her she could die. No one suggested anything like that. They just told her they didn’t want her to play. She had an unexplained “mass” high up in her nasal cavity, apparently—just at the point where it bends down toward the back of her throat. They wanted to operate as soon as possible, and she told them they could have at it after the game.
But they kept her there a good, long time. As game time approached, she got more and more anxious. When they finally let her go, we were already in warm-ups. She had to race back to the hotel and get dressed, then make it to the locker room to don her equipment and her uniform.
She didn’t rise from a hospital bed at kickoff time and sneak out of the hospital, like in the movie. And she wasn’t forced to hail cabs and ride buses to get to the stadium. Brooks and Kelso were with her the whole time and they drove her to the game. But she couldn’t get there in time. She was fifteen miles from the stadium at kickoff.
Meanwhile, Spivey started. Everyone agreed the Oakland Raiders were the league powerhouse that year. At 16 and 2 they had scored 596 points, the most of any team in the history of the NFL, averaging a staggering 33 points a game. Only the ’98 Vikings, the ’83 Redskins, and the 2007 New England Patriots had ever averaged more, but that was in a sixteen-game season. The only teams the Raiders had lost to were the Giants and us. Our first game against them—one of the most thrilling contests I ever saw, and Jesse’s first start—felt like years ago. And the idea of duplicating that effort seemed impossible, certainly without Jesse.
It was bright and sunny—no wind, and no clouds. Cool as a fall day in Vermont. The Raiders kicked off and things sort of went down from there. Spivey couldn’t get anything going. Suddenly, the Raider defense, which wasn’t the best in the world—they’d given up 334 points during the year—was playing like the Giants. They didn’t even seem to care that Jesse was not in there; they used the same multiple blitzes and defensive packages that had been designed to put our quarterback on her ass. This was an all-out rush, mind you—with no quarter. The object was to knock the quarterback down, no matter if the ball was still in his hands or not.
Now, Spivey had gotten better with his temper, but, as I said about him in the beginning, he didn’t take kindly to being shoved or pushed around. He started to lose his cool, and his passes wobbled, sailed high on him, lost velocity. Or, on the short swing passes to Mickens and Jack Slater, our fullback, he’d throw it right into the ground.
The Raiders were quick to take advantage, but our defense was at full strength. Orlando Brown, Drew Bruckner, and Dave Schott played like madmen; and Talon Jones, who came in on passing downs, covered the middle of the field like an entire trio of linebackers. He was that fast and that unstoppable.
So we held on. It was nothing like the first game, though. Nobody scored in the first quarter. Both teams kept struggling to get first downs. There were six punts in the first quarter alone. About midway through the second quarter, the Raiders pushed the ball to our 10-yard line. They tried to run it in from there but gained nothing. On third down, their quarterback, a really great player named Darren McCauley, threw a looping pass into the corner of the end zone to their tight end and suddenly we were down 7 to 0.
Jesse still hadn’t come into the game, but by the time McCauley threw that touchdown pass, she was already at the stadium. She didn’t see the pass on television in the hospital, as the story goes. In fact, she was dressed and could have gone in on the next series, but Coach Engram would not let her on the field. He told Kelso and Brooks to keep her in the locker room, by force if they had to. He’d decided not to risk it; as he says in his book about Jesse, he was going with Spivey.
Spivey gave the ball to Mickens for two plays, but he only gained 4 yards. Then, on third and 6, Spivey missed Darius Exley on a crossing pattern and we had to punt again. We still had plenty of time in the first half, but we had to get the damn ball back.
This time the Raiders moved it a little more quickly. McCauley hit his best wide receiver, Jeremiah Stubbs, for a 31-yard gain on the first play from scrimmage after the punt. Now they were at our 33-yard line. He hit his other wide receiver, the great Aaron Crow for 15 yards. Then they ran a draw play up the middle that gained 11 yards. It was first and goal from our 7. The defense dug in though and held them to a field goal.
Now, it was 10 to 0.
On our next play from scrimmage, Spivey threw it at the feet of Rob Anders on a quick slant. Then Delbert Coleman, the Raiders’ superstar defensive end, slammed him to the ground and he fumbled. Dan Wilber recovered at our 15-yard line.
Our punter, Jack Clue hit a terrifice kick that put the raiders all the way back to their 28 with 4 minutes left in the first half.
Coach Engram paced the sideline. I couldn’t concentrate on the game knowing Jesse was in the locker room and that she wanted to play. But I didn’t say anything to him about it. I was worried about Jesse, about what was wrong with her. I couldn’t believe they’d let her leave the hospital.
We both watched as the Raiders marched the ball to our 17-yard line. They missed a third and 4 with a shuttle pass that dropped out of the running back’s hands before he could take it up the middle. He would have had a first down and a lot more, if he’d held on. They kicked another field goal and made it 13–0.
The stadium was quiet mostly. There were a lot of Oakland fans there, don’t get me wrong, but they just didn’t make that much noise. It was like they expected much better; despite the points the Raiders had racked up so far, the fans seemed disappointed in their team’s performance; and of course they didn’t like it that Jesse wasn’t playing. Boring and sad, it seemed like the whole game was being staged as a kind of retreat to a world where there was no Jesse. Hell, I was the offensive coordinator on a Super Bowl team and I could hardly focus on what was happening out on that field. It might as well have been a high school soccer game.
The fans knew Jesse was coming out before I did, and in no time the noise was deafening. You’ve seen the films of Jesse trotting out of the tunnel behind our sideline and approaching the bench. We wore white jerseys in that Super Bowl because that year the NFC was counted as the visiting team. That bright burgundy number 17 on her back glittered against the white jersey. She carried her helmet, her curly hair bouncing in the lights, and just as the offense was taking the field, she cut through the defensive players standing on our sideline and ran out on the field.
Spivey slapped her hand as she passed him and he came to the bench with a kind of wry smile on his face.
“What the fuck?” Engram snarled at him. “Get back out there.”
“It’s her play,” Spivey said.
That part of the story is true. Spivey was willing to let her take over. “I was having a lousy day,” he said later. “I knew she’d get it going.”
It’s also true that Coach Engram didn’t want her in there; that she took the field on her own. But she wasn’t spitting blood, or running a fever. She didn’t hide among the players on the bench and vomit into a bucket either. I don’t know how that story got started.
Here’s what she did do:
First, s
he settled the offense down. “This defense isn’t that good, all right?” she said when she got into the huddle. “And the way our defense is playing?—we should be kicking ass.”
Now, the Raiders were running those random blitzes, so some running plays would get stuffed pretty embarrassingly, but if you hit a hole where the lineman was pulling out to get into pass coverage, or where they might be stunting to let in a linebacker, you could break some things. Jesse called a trap play with Mickens going off tackle, and he gained 5 yards. Then she dropped three steps and hit Anders with a perfect strike for 8 yards. It was like watching a clinic on quarterbacking. She commanded the huddle, walked to the line surveying the defense, then leaned over center and called the play she wanted. I didn’t even bother trying to call things from the sideline. It was her game and we both knew it. She had practiced this offense for almost two weeks before she became ill. If this was going to be her last game ever, she wanted to make the best of it.
She hit Sean Rice for 15 yards and a first down at midfield. Then she ran a quick draw play with Mickens. He got 7. She ran him again off tackle for 13. She faked it to him and hit Darius for 22 yards. Then she hit Gayle Glenn Louis at the 2. Not one Raider laid a hand on her.
On first and goal she dropped back a second, faked a throw to the right, then took off up the middle untouched and scored a touchdown. The fans erupted. It was positively deafening. Even the Raider fans cheered for her. Could they, too, have sensed this might be Jesse’s last game?
She kicked the extra point just as the second quarter ended: 13–7 Raiders. When Jesse came off the field, blood was all around her mouth, running from her nose. She took a wet towel and wiped it off. She sat on the bench with her head back until the halftime whistle sounded. Then she trotted with the rest of us into the locker room.
Coach Engram tried only briefly to get Jesse to sit for the second half. I looked at her point-blank and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I got a bloody nose,” she said.
“Jesse.”
The other players gathered around her. I couldn’t stop them. It was so close in that room. I’ll never forget the feeling of oneness—a powerful sensation of being a whole person, all of us, with one aspiration, one will, one hope. All eyes focused on her, and she turned her baby blues away for a moment, caught up perhaps for the first time with true awareness of a shared soul. She was not a woman then, and we were not men. We were simply human, a collective of one. I put my arm around her and said, “We love you, Jess.”
The men cheered.
She wiped her whole face with a white towel. When she put it on the bench next to her, the image of her face captured in blood and sweat, it looked like the Shroud of Turin.
Coach Engram surveyed his team quietly a moment, and then said, “Let’s go out and finish this thing.”
But for all of the team’s renewed sense of purpose, and true game day fury, they left that locker room in silence, as if headed for an execution.
The Raiders took the opening kick of the second half and started down the field, playing with confidence and pride. They had no idea what they were in for. Our defense settled in after they let the Raiders complete a 12-yard pass for a first down. Then, like some sort of iron trap, the defense clamped down hard. When they tackled McCauley for a 10-yard loss, they didn’t make any demonstrations or do any dances. When, on the next play Colin Briggs, our right cornerback, flipped Isaac Crow head over heels and caused him to drop the ball, they did not jump for joy. On third and 20, when McCauley completed a short 6-yard pass over the middle and Talon Jones leveled the receiver before he could gain a single yard more, the defense trotted silently off the field. They were all business and the Raiders had to punt.
Jesse took over on our 22-yard line and handed off to Mickens four times in a row, with the offensive line pushing everybody out of the way. Mickens gained 8, 13, 11, and 22 yards. Then Jesse faked a handoff to Mickens, dropped back, and hit Rob Anders on a shallow post for a 24-yard touchdown. She kicked the extra point and we were suddenly ahead 14–13.
We kicked off and the Raiders kick returner cut through a break in our special teams and ran it back for a touchdown to make it 20–14.
After that, it was like watching something staged; something rehearsed. The defense just would not let that vaunted Raider offense stay on the field. Orlando played in a quiet fury. Drew Bruckner stopped the run, and Talon Jones broke up passes to running backs. Zack Leedom and Nick Rack, Elbert James, Mack Grundy—it didn’t matter who was in there—they played as if they knew in advance everything the Raiders were going to do.
Near the end of the third quarter, Jesse led the offense on a long march down the field, managing that team like a cardsharp. She’d walk to the line, look at the defense, then run the play with absolute precision. Short drops and dump-off passes. Handoffs to Mickens or Slater up the middle. Exact passes to the wide receivers just before they stepped out-of-bounds, or just as they turned on the post or on a buttonhook pattern. The Raiders tried to get to her, to knock her down, but they were almost helpless.
Twice she broke the huddle and walked to the line with blood on her chin. The players all noticed it. She’d spit through her face mask, and it, too, dripped blood. At the end of that long drive we were on the Raiders 16-yard line, first and 10. They still held on at 20–14. Jesse threw a quick slant to Gayle Glenn Louis and he caught it, charging toward the goal line, but he dropped the ball. The Raiders recovered inside their 5-yard line. Jesse came back to the sideline and grabbed another towel. I looked into her eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
Gayle Glenn Louis came over now and said, “I’m sorry, Jess.”
She was coughing blood into that towel. When she could talk, she said, “We’ll get it next time. You caught three balls to get down there.”
When he saw the towel he turned to me. “That’s a lot of blood, Coach.”
“Jess,” I said. “We got to sit you down.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
Our defense stopped the Raiders again near their 31-yard line and they had to punt. The third quarter ended and they still led 20–14.
Coach Engram called for Spivey to go in at the beginning of the fourth quarter, but Jesse ran out anyway. She went fast, as if she knew we were going to try and stop her.
“Goddamn it,” Engram said. “Spivey get out there.” But he was already moving out onto the edge of the field. A referee came over to Engram.
“Coach,” he said. “Your quarterback’s bleeding, did you know that?”
“Yeah, we know it.”
Jesse was already in the huddle with the offense. I yelled into my headset. “Jesse, get back here.”
Now only part of the story as presented in the movie is true. We did do everything we could to get Jesse off that field. Coach Engram called a time-out, and then we went out onto the field—Engram, me, even Coach Bayne. In the movie they play up the power of Jesse’s defiance, and they’ve got her ordering us off the field. Don’t get me wrong—she was a commanding presence most of the time, and I won’t say that if she had ordered us to leave her out there, we wouldn’t have done so. Certainly makes a better story. But Jesse was not defiant, right then. She was sad and her voice was less commanding, than, I don’t know … full of longing. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Okay? Just—please, don’t do this.”
“We’ll take care of her, Coach,” Dan Wilber said.
“I may never play another game,” she said. There were tears in her eyes—only the third or fourth time I’d seen that. But these were big, glistening tears.
Engram started to reach for her, then thought better of it.
“Let me do this. Just this one time,” Jesse said. “I know I can do it.” Blood dripped out of her nose.
Engram turned and started back for the sideline. Bayne and I followed. I didn’t look back at Jesse.
Bringing the offense to the line at the beginning of the quarter, Jesse started a
nother one of those long drives down the field: Short crossing patterns to Exley and Anders; a beautiful 15-yard pass to Gayle Glenn Louis on third and 12. She got them down to the Raider 9-yard line before the Raiders stopped us, knocking down a quick corner route to Exley. Mickens dropped a certain touchdown inside the 1-yard line. On third down, with nobody open Jesse had to throw the pass out of the end zone to avoid being sacked for a loss.
She kicked a field goal to make the score 20–17, but we still trailed by 3.
The Raiders got the ball out to their 32 with the kick return. Now it was really up to our defense, though the crowd kept chanting Jesse’s name. There were about 12 minutes left in the game.
Jesse stayed away from us when she came to the sideline, but she didn’t hide among the offensive players, like they had her doing in the movie. We knew where she was, and we knew what she was up to, too—sitting with them, talking strategy. The whole time she had that towel, and she was wiping her face with it.
Our defense once again stopped the Raiders on three plays and they punted to our 18-yard line.
Jesse ran back onto the field with the offense and put on one of those displays people still rave about. I know in the movie they have her driving us down the field and scoring the winning touchdown at the last minute, and it’s awfully dramatic that way, no question. But anyone who actually saw that game knows the truth of it.
Jesse completed eight straight passes as we marched down the field. Mickens caught one for 28 yards up the middle and was tackled at the Raiders 2-yard line. On the next play, Jesse faked it to Mickens then ran it around the right end herself for a touchdown. Eight straight pass plays. One run. When she faked that handoff, everyone in the stadium thought Mickens had the ball, until they registered Jesse herself waltzing around the end for that touchdown. We had the lead now, 24–20.
The Legend of Jesse Smoke Page 34
