Collision Low Crossers

by Nicholas Dawidoff

  When Pettine met with the defense, he told the players that Antonio Gates would play and Mike DeVito would not. The Chargers starting quarterback, Philip Rivers, was six-foot-five, but he threw from such a low release point it was possible, Pettine said, to swat down his passes and make him very frustrated.

  During practice, Bart Scott fondly remembered a Bengals lineman who’d been holding him on play after play during a game. Finally Scott said, “You keep holding me, I’ll poke your eyes out.” The lineman replied, “But Bart! I’m old and fat and slow. I have to!”

  Because of DeVito’s injury, Kenrick Ellis would see more time in the game. So at practice Tannenbaum strode over to him and asked, “Hey, Kenrick, what are San Diego’s top three runs?” The rookie was unsure. Tannenbaum told him, “They’re on a plane right now watching movies and eating snacks. Take advantage of this time.”

  In that morning’s special-teams meeting, Westhoff had called Aaron Maybin Andrew, and when Maybin didn’t respond, Westy gave him hell: “Andrew! I’m talking to you.” Throughout practice, from deep in the scrum, you could hear, “My name’s Aaron!”

  Ryan yearned to innovate, and in that frame of mind, he fixed on LaDainian Tomlinson. In his prime with the Chargers, Tomlinson had become one of the NFL’s highest career rushers, a football fusilier behind his famous dark-visored face mask. Although Tomlinson was now finishing his career with the Jets as a part-time back, he remained a stunning athlete. At practice Ryan could see the way Tomlinson still accelerated almost instantly to his fastest gear. He could see that Tomlinson retained his keen, instinctive spatial understanding of himself in relation to the mass of players around him. Ryan had also noticed that Tomlinson could backpedal at a rapid shimmy. Running backs didn’t need to backpedal, but defensive backs did. Ryan envisioned a safety with rare closing speed. When he mentioned this to Tomlinson, the running back was game to try defense against his old team. So whenever Ryan saw Pettine, he brought up his idea. Pettine always refused.

  After practice, in his office, Ryan hosted an “ice-cream social” for Holmes, Burress, and Sanchez, an informal chewing of the butterfat with the players. Sanchez’s after-ice-cream report was “It’s like therapy in there!” The offensive linemen, meanwhile, wanted to know why they didn’t get to eat ice cream with the head coach.

  At the hotel on Saturday evening, Tom Moore walked into the quarterbacks’ meeting, and immediately everyone seemed happier. After the offensive guru received embraces, back claps, and felicitations, Sanchez told him, “Coach, you should stay! I’ll rent you a room in my house!” Moore gave the (handsome, young, model-dating) quarterback a slight raise of the (bushy, wizened, white) eyebrow. “I don’t think I could stand all the traffic I hope is coming in and out of there,” he said.

  Holmes arrived, saw Moore, cried, “Coach! How are you?” and buried him in a hug.

  Waiting for the rest to arrive, Moore regaled the players, in his deep, warm voice, with yesteryear stories of Terry Bradshaw on the ice at Rockefeller Center with his girlfriend, the figure skater JoJo Starbuck, and how this had played with Steelers head coach Chuck Noll. “Chuck about had a heart attack. Terry won four Super Bowls in six years. Course, a rouge could have won the first two, the defense was so good. In one Pro Bowl, eight of the eleven defensive players on the field were Steelers.” The present irony of this as it related to the Jets was not remarked upon.

  In the defensive meeting, however, the offense’s struggles were very much on the coordinator’s mind. It was another week, another declaration that the D would have to win it for the O. The experts were favoring the Chargers, Pettine told his players, doubting them on their own field without BT and DeVito. Give me a signature game, he requested.

  Tom Moore would watch the game from Tannenbaum’s box. Up there as well this week was Terry Bradway, man of a million past and present protégés. He had one of them on his mind—Schotty. “Ultimately,” Bradway said, “coordinator is a thankless job.”

  The larger-than-usual cohort in Tannenbaum’s box also included Don Martindale and Brendan Prophett, as well as Tannenbaum’s doppelgänger. When things were going against the Jets, Tannenbaum took it out silently on his yellow legal pad. Today the pages suffered, as the Chargers led much of the way. The game turned in the second half when, off a Cromartie tip, Revis made yet another big interception. As that welcome event happened, Tannenbaum erupted into his other self. He bull-rushed Martindale, embracing him in a simultaneous tackle, noogie, and fist-pound. “You all right, Don?” he yelled at the astonished coach. “If it’s too big for you, we can get you to Newark Airport before the end of the game.”

  When Tannenbaum went to the restroom, everybody expressed concern for Martindale, who, embarrassed, brushed it off. “No problem,” he said. “It’s because he can’t do anything to help.” Soon Tannenbaum was back; the Jets continued to thrive, and Prophett absorbed a heavy shot to the shoulder. By now I myself had bravely taken permanent cover beyond Bradway. It was a tense, close game, and the GM remained at full Watusi as Burress caught three short touchdown passes and Greene ran well, in part because he received crucial blocking from Holmes. Revis and Cromartie were far better than good, holding the Chargers fine receivers Vincent Jackson and Malcom Floyd to two catches combined. (Gates caught five, one for a touchdown.) After Tannenbaum headed downstairs to the locker room to greet the players, Bradway smiled ruefully at his departing disciple. “I tried to train him,” he told Moore and Martindale. Bradway supposed some people might object to a GM behaving that way, but, really, this wasn’t a boardroom, it was a box in a football stadium. Football was the national passion, and Tannenbaum was a passionate guy. He was being true to himself or, maybe, as Prophett had it, “He’s not himself. He’s in an altered state. Another person. He’s Mikey, not Mike!”

  The Jets won, 27–21. Ryan said he had hankered “in the worst way” to play Tomlinson at safety for one play against his old team, but LT had the flu, and, anyway, Pettine was incredulous at the idea of putting the great running back out there in harm’s and reputation’s way. If a player hadn’t repped something, Pettine wasn’t going to allow him to try it on an NFL field. “Rex!” he howled, as he’d been doing for so many years, and that, finally, was that.

  In the morning DT walked into the dining hall, spotted Cromartie eating breakfast, and went over to him. “It ain’t magic,” he said. “That’s the best game you’ve played with your hands and feet since you’ve been here.” When the coaches watched the film, Pettine noted that “Cro’s putting on a clinic.” There was much talk about what foul epithets the Chargers receivers had been yelling at their quarterback Rivers as the game went awry for San Diego. “Gates was hot!” reported O’Neil. Martindale watched the film with them and pointed out how quickly Revis could find a ball already in flight when he looked back at full speed. For Revis, that was three picks in six days—and three since his bout with Turner.

  The coaches began to discuss some of their opponents coming up after the bye week. One would be the Broncos, whose quarterback Tim Tebow they considered “the world’s best-throwing fullback.”

  At the Monday team meeting, Ryan announced—to applause—that Tomlinson was now the fourth back in NFL history to catch six hundred passes. Then Ryan congratulated them all once again on owning a winning record (4 and 3), told them to get a lot of sleep, drink plenty of water, and enjoy their days away.

  When Pettine reviewed the game film with the defensive players, he paused on a hit Pace made to the side of the lowered helmet of San Diego guard Kris Dielman. Because Dielman had delivered many a staggering blow at the whistle in his time, nobody was sorry that Pace had “ear-holed him.” Dielman returned to the game, and eventually he went low on Pace, a dirty move that Pettine called “the ultimate sign of respect.” The Jets would learn that Dielman had suffered a grand-mal seizure on the airplane home. He would miss the rest of the season with a severe concussion, and the lingering symptoms were such that he retired from football. N
obody said much about this. Such things happened in football.

  Only some final Tuesday meetings separated the coaches from a few bye-week days off. At noon the senior coaches and the front office met in the defensive-coaches’ conference room for the “self-scout” midseason reports. Thick binders containing the team’s internal evaluations were distributed. The cover of each one said “Good vs. Evil” and had a photograph of Schotty looking patiently off toward the horizon while Pettine glowered at him. Everyone considered this to be some inspired artwork.

  The Jets players were all ranked best to worst at their positions relative to their teammates, and then each man’s performance was reviewed individually. The defensive coaches were especially pleased with Wilkerson, felt he was a future star, and were very happy as well with Calvin Pace, who was quietly having a dominant season. Maybin amused Ryan because “obviously there’s issues, but the guy makes plays and we lack playmaking ability.” Nick Bellore, Tannenbaum said, was the player he received the most calls about from other teams. “Every year you get me one Nick Bellore, and we got it made,” said Westhoff. Revis, they agreed, had won them three games all by himself. “Best player in the league not named Brady,” Ryan said. Everyone applauded the reserve cornerback Ellis Lankster’s enthusiasm, and they all worried about Cromartie’s consistency. Posey they thought had been “scared straight” and was, as Westhoff said, “heading in the right direction.” It was crisp, efficient, and nothing was said that wasn’t completely consistent with the opinions that had been expressed day by day.

  Westhoff went through the special-teams personnel in rapid order, and then came the offense. The big concern remained the quarterback. The coaches and front-office people worried, as they always did, about Sanchez’s poor decisions and his ability to lead. The strength coach, Bill Hughan, who’d been with the Falcons, was asked how Sanchez compared with Atlanta’s quarterback Matt Ryan. “Matt’s more focused,” he said. That word, Schotty said, summed up what Sanchez lacked. He was plenty smart, but didn’t yet have a brain for professional football. They discussed how badly they missed the complement of Brad Smith. It was clear they thought that Sanchez still had too many ideas of who he was supposed to be, didn’t yet have football self-knowledge.

  Santonio Holmes they predicted would have a terrific second half. Schotty thought the receiver wasn’t a bad kid and was “wow! A great player.” As he said this, I thought, Wow! There is a man incapable of bearing a grudge. Brandon Moore was still recovering from surgery and should now steadily improve the line at guard. Wayne Hunter was the Cromartie of the offense: immensely talented but a different player every week. Scotty McKnight’s name never came up.

  And with that, they scattered. Tannenbaum was off to surprise his wife with a lavish birthday party and to turn away more inquiries concerning the availability of Nick Bellore. Schottenheimer visited his family in Nashville. David Harris headed for Grand Rapids, Michigan, lugging an ice machine with him so as to heal his bruised body while drinking a little family-recipe restorative. Cromartie flew to the Bahamas and forgot about it all. Pettine went to see his children in Maryland. Aaron Maybin visited his child in Maryland too—he had a daughter—and said upon his return, “If I don’t see another diaper, it won’t be too soon.” Only one player continued to come every day to the facility. That was Mike DeVito, whose sore knee benefited from the daily treatment but whose pleasure in football was such that had his knee been well, he would have come there anyway.

  Eleven

  SOFTNESS

  First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.

  —Emily Dickinson, “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes”

  Like most members of the organization, Bob Sutton returned from the bye week with the belief that the Jets had momentum and that momentum in team sports was real. “What do you say,” he greeted the younger coaches, “let’s get after it!” Pettine was reviewing film of the week’s opponent, the Buffalo Bills, who’d defeated the Patriots in September by scoring and scoring. Watching the film damped down Pettine’s own sanguine post-holiday mood. He said often that he believed in “farming my own land,” and he knew that he could not allow his discontents to rend the bonds between offense and defense. Yet the recent memory of seven three-and-outs from his own offense against the very Patriots defense that he was now watching the (modestly accomplished) Bills pick apart could aggravate a man and turn him away from his better agricultural angels.

  Out on the practice field, Scotty McKnight fell untouched to the ground with a loud scream. He pulled off his helmet, cradled his knee, and was surrounded by Ryan, Tannenbaum, and Sanchez. In football, there are said to be more noncontact knee injuries than tears caused by hits. Sanchez was nonplussed. “ACL?” he asked a medical staffer. After a couple of minutes, with McKnight still lying there, all the other players and coaches moved to the opposite end of the field and resumed the practice. Eventually McKnight was carried off.

  Dave Szott, the player-relations director, told me that Sanchez and McKnight’s relationship wasn’t unusual in the game. It was common, said Szott, the designated players’ confidant, for players to develop a best football friend forever. DeVito and tight end Matt Mulligan, fellow fundamentalist Christians and former University of Maine roommates, wore matching T-shirts, each imprinted with the same line of scripture, to the Jets pregame Saturday-night meetings; they made up new shirts for each game. The two were so close that they’d seek each other out for a hug following a fine play. Szott said that after a game in which a player had been injured, Jets would call the player-relations director to ask if their buddy was okay, “even when it’s not a bad injury.”

  Such as a dislocated little finger. Strickland was now absorbing sideline ribbing from Revis after he’d been caught consulting a trainer about his pinkie. Revis was like DT. He was friendly with his teammates, and he treated Kyle Wilson as his advisee, but that was because Wilson sought him out. Rev didn’t seem to require close football friends. Everything about him, including his position on the field, made it clear that privacy was his nature.

  And then there was McElroy, a position-group loner, though not by choice. Of the other quarterbacks he said, “They don’t like me but I like them.” It was more that he was a rookie third-stringer and injured, two qualities that, in such a brisk business, the others couldn’t see past to notice that he’d do anything to help them. “All of us work really hard, and we want Mark to be successful,” McElroy said. “It’s so fun when he has a great week.” I was reminded of a factory job I’d had during my college summers. The first summer, I was a college boy, beneath the other workers’ contempt. When I came back the next year, I was one of them. As for McElroy, when he made the Jets team again a year later, he would seem different to the others, they’d treat him differently, and he would be different.

  Drafting the Buffalo Bills game plan on Tuesday in Pettine’s office, the coaches came up with several brand-new calls, which then needed to be named. The goal of new call names was to make them instantly memorable. First, Pettine named a blitz call after Strickland. They were playing the Bills, and Strickland had attended the University of Colorado, whose team’s nickname was the Buffalos, so, easy!—Buffalo. Then Brodney Pool was the source for some call etymology Pettine considered a little more inspired. People often thought Pool’s first name was Rodney. This annoyed Pool. That annoyance naturally led Pettine to drop the occasional “Rodney” on Pool after he made a mistake. Now came the pièce de résistance—Bug Rodney!

  Looking up from his laptop, at his usual Tuesday-night place across Pettine’s conference table from O’Neil, Smitty said he’d been thinking all day about the Chargers lineman Kris Dielman. “He played on the verge of a seizure? That’s tough.”

  In between these reflections, the three coaches worked as hard, O’Neil said, as they’d ever worked on a single game plan. That was because they were adjusting their calls for nine different personnel groups, protecting against mismatches, taking care that J
im Leonhard wouldn’t be isolated one-on-one with a fast receiver and that David Harris wouldn’t have to cover Bills running back Fred Jackson all by himself on pass plays out of the backfield.

  The most substantial work of this kind was undertaken to keep Aaron Maybin from doing anything but pass rushing. The new Niner personnel package, for instance, had been created to counteract the Bills’ penchant for spreading out four wide receivers in formation with Fred Jackson also in the backfield. If a defense responded to that spread with a package featuring extra defensive backs, the Bills would run Jackson. If the defensive coordinator chose not to supplement his secondary, the Bills would throw. So Niner reinforced the backfield, with four cornerbacks and two safeties, and reinforced the line—four down linemen with only one linebacker.

  As the defensive coaches built their game plan, Mike Devlin came by Pettine’s office, as usual taking everything in with one penetrating glance. He told the defensive coaches about one of his early coaching superiors, who’d informed him, “Mike, you know how to use computers and that’s good and bad. Means you’ll always have a job, but also means you’ll be up all fucking night.” Dev looked meaningfully at O’Neil and Smitty and left. Start to finish, the plan took them eighteen hours to complete.

  In the team meeting, Ryan said that everyone had to contribute if the Jets were to have success because “this is the only sport with a one hundred percent injury rate.” He compared the Jets to the St. Louis Cardinals, who’d just won baseball’s World Series because unheralded understudies like Jason Motte and Allen Craig had stepped forward when their teammates faltered. Then he reviewed the Bills. Fred Jackson was, he said, “the real deal,” but the starting quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, had gone to Harvard and “you know what that means. Number one, he can’t play. He’ll throw a book at you.” Number two, said Ryan, Fitzpatrick had married his Harvard girlfriend, another devastating mark against his football. In the defensive meeting, Pettine referred to Fitzpatrick as Big Brain.