by Mark Bowden
So, particularly after Vai’s thirty-eight-yard runback to open the half, Larry decides to go for the long shot, a blocked punt. It’s risky. The Giants are kicking from their own forty-yard line, so if Sean Landeta, their punter, gets off a good kick, Vai will probably have to call for a fair catch deep in the Eagles’ territory.
In runback formation, the team receiving the punt usually assigns two men to block the speedsters (Larry calls them hawks) who line up split wide to either side of the punting team’s formation. The hawks are the first tacklers downfield and pose the first threat to the return man. So a punter needs only glance to either side before calling for the snap of the ball. If his hawks are facing two blockers, he doesn’t have to worry unduly about an all-out effort to block his kick. When a punt-receiving team is desperate for field position, usually late in the game, they’ll line up just one blocker on each of the hawks. If a punter sees that formation, he knows he’ll have to hurry his kick, because they’re coming fast.
Larry has devised a deception. He lines up his punt-receiving team in runback position, with two blockers lined up wide, facing the hawks. But just before the snap of the ball, each of the inside men split wide in this formation creeps in toward the middle and makes a dash for the punter. Frizzell works the play to perfection, waiting for Landeta to check the formation, and then edging in just before the snap. He’s unblocked at the line of scrimmage, so the fullback, lined up halfway between the kicker and the center, has to shift over to pick him up. Meanwhile, on the line, the tackle assigned to block Ken sticks out an arm and hurries downfield toward Vai. Ken races right by him for the punter, and with the fullback shifting over to block William, there is no one to pick him up. He leaps in front of Landeta, feels the ball carom off his chest and sees it bounce hard back down to the turf. Ken scrambles to his feet, scoops up the ball, and stumbles into the end zone—blocked punt, recovered ball, touchdown! The first touchdown of Ken Rose’s pro career. Good things always happen to Ken in Giants Stadium.
The Eagles now have a 34-20 lead, and, shortly, they improve on it—again because of special teams.
The logic of a football game is fluid. It builds upon what happened before. Teams enter a game armed with plans based on analysis and stats of what their opponent has done in past games, but by midgame each contest develops its own logic. And just as failure breeds failure, success breeds success. With the Giants now back on their heels to protect against a blocked punt, Pasquale reverses the strategy. He lines up his team in punt-block formation, and has them creep back into a runback formation before the snap. This buys Vai all kinds of time to do his thing. Landeta booms a towering punt, which Vai grabs back on the Eagles’ thirteen-yard line, and thus has (with New York’s renewed emphasis on blocking upfield) about ten yards or more to pick up steam and read the field before any Giants tackler is near him.
In the week before each game, Vai memorizes all the numbers of his opponents’ special teams players. He knows how big and, more important, how fast they all are. Usually, there isn’t enough time to use this information. You either call for a fair catch or rely on instinct when you catch the ball and tacklers start banging in. But when he has time, as he does now, he’s one of the most dangerous return men in the game. He can pick out the lumbering bigbodies among the would-be tacklers, big men whom he can dodge, and structure his return accordingly. After about five steps forward, Vai picks his angle of attack, breaks suddenly to his right, and runs right around number 99, linebacker Steve DeOssie, who (as Vai well knows) doesn’t have a prayer of cutting as quickly as the diminutive return man. Downfield, Vai steps inside of Landeta, who makes such a clumsy lunge that he injures his knee, and Vai completes an eighty-seven-yard punt-return touchdown.
The game has become a rout. Seth turned things around, but this is one game that everyone knows was won by special teams—final score, 47-34. It had been seven years since the Eagles won a game in which they allowed the other team more than thirty-four points. Randall played reasonably well, the defense came up with a few big plays, but the game was won by Larry, Ken, and the rest of the ragtag crew of bit players on this temperamental squad. There’s a lesson in this win for the whole bickering stable of superstars, one that Richie will not fail to hammer home.
For Ken, it’s bliss. On the bus ride home down the wet interstate, the team watches a videotape of the movie Deep Cover, cheering on the violence, laughing at the melodrama. Ken’s still got the ball in his hands. His old college teammate Randall may have nearly 150 of them, but Ken’s first and only is arguably more satisfying.
MUCH OF THE POISON in the Eagles’ locker room seems to have dissipated in the following week. It’s Thanksgiving, and a lot of the players have family in town. There is a loose, confident air. The team is preparing to play the San Francisco 49ers, one of the legendary teams in the NFL. It’s a chance to prove something to themselves. With the Niners’ 9—2 record, they are, as usual, one of the most imposing teams on the schedule. If the Eagles can beat them, or even play them close, some of the lost luster of the first month of the season will be regained.
Wes comes limping out of the training room on Wednesday.
“How is it?” a hound asks.
“The same,” he says with a shrug. Against the Giants the week before, he’d taken himself out in the third quarter.
“Wes,” interrupts another hound. “The stats say that the 49ers are the best offensive team you’ve faced so far.”
Wes smiles. He has an easy rapport with the Pack. “Yeah? Well, the films say it, too,” he says.
“Wes, Thanksgiving is this week,” a TV reporter asks—he’s walking around the locker room asking everybody this question. “What do you have to be thankful for?”
“My health,” he says, and hesitates. “And my family.” The Pack nods appreciatively.
Randall is sitting alone before his stall, lacing up a shoe. Tomorrow he will present Felicity with an acorn-sized diamond and ask her to marry him. He has flown in his entire family—his three brothers and their families, his Aunt Nettie from Las Vegas, and even Felicity’s sisters from Johannesburg for a Thanksgiving meal—and, if he gets the answer he expects, the announcement.
But here in the locker room, he seems glum. It’s rare to find him alone like this. One of the veteran newshounds, who has watched the mercurial quarterback’s ups and downs over the years, wanders over to chat.
“Chin up, Randall, you’re about ready to explode with a big game.”
“You think so?” he says.
“I do. You’re due. You’ve played enough of them in your career, and you haven’t had one in a while.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Probably partly because of the way you’ve been used.” “You guys write that?”
“I have.”
“How would you use me?”
Long pause. “I think I would encourage you to have more fun, use your own judgment more on the field.”
“That doesn’t do it, man.”
“I don’t claim to be a football coach.”
“I respect that,” he says. “Man, I like to go out there and just be exciting, that’s all. I hate it when I’m not doing that. Joe Montana and I are a lot alike. But in this kind of system, he’s had a a lot more experience. He’s been able to prove himself with the Super Bowls and all. I haven’t been able to achieve that yet. We’ve made the play-offs, but … that problem is deeper than just me.”
“If you make a big play out on the field, even if it isn’t the one called, whose going to give you grief?”
“You’ve got to be allowed to make big plays. What do you think the best blocking scheme is for me? To get everyone out of the backfield and have five linemen in front of me? Or to leave people in the backfield, extra blockers to protect me?”
“What do you think?”
“Get everybody out of there. Give them all a route, clear them
out.”
“What’s the advantage for y
ou?”
“The advantage is there’s a gap, and—shooo!” he makes a sudden motion with his hand shooting forward. “Nineteen-ninety style.”
“And you can’t do that now?”
“Take a look on Sunday,” Randall says. “See it for yourself.”
Down the room, Mike Golic, the amiable defensive lineman, is cheerfully bemoaning the fact that the league, on reviewing the tapes of the Giants game, took away one of the two quarterback sacks he had been credited with making—the one that sent quarterback Jeff Hostetler to the hospital. These were Mike’s first two sacks of the season, and, given that his line mates, Reverend Reggie and Clyde, are always among the league leaders, they were especially prized.
“When they looked at the film, on the one it showed Clyde came around and made the hit,” says Mike. “I say, yeah, right, like Clyde needs another sack.”
His small audience laughs.
“He did get it. But, hey, they had me with two in USA Today, so that’s what people think, and that’s what counts, right?”
“Do these guys rib you about not getting your share of sacks?” a hound asks.
“Hell, yeah,” says Mike. “They always tell me, ‘Don’t embarrass yourself, Mike. When you do get one, don’t celebrate or anything.’”
“Were you ever even close before this? I mean, was there ever any chance of their, like, throwing a charity sack your way?”
“Naah. At least I’m not a virgin anymore!”
The TV reporter has made it down the line of stalls to Andre.
“Andre, Thanksgiving is tomorrow,” he says. “What do you have to be thankful for?”
“My life,” says the young man from Pahokee, without hesitation, like he’s been sitting here for a half hour waiting to be asked just this question.
“Really?” the TV guy says, looking surprised. “Despite the ankle?”
FOUR DAYS and one successful wedding proposal later, the Eagles lose to the 49ers by one inch.
“No, less than one inch,” corrects center Dave Alexander, who’s naked and furious. “We’re talking about the width of a piece of paper!”
It’s particularly galling because the disputed millimeter depends on where an official decided to spot the football in the final seconds of the game, and because it’s the 49ers.
Whenever the Eagles’ players get to complaining about Norman Braman and what they perceive to be the money-grubbing, low-rent style of their organization, they always cite the San Francisco club as the way things ought to be. The 49ers are like the older brother Mom always liked best. Closely held financial data revealed in filings during the players’ antitrust suit that summer confirmed two crucial things about the storied franchise that many people suspected, but few knew for certain:
1. They lose money every year—$16 million in ’89.
2. They have the heftiest payroll in the NFL—$27.5 million in ’89.
See, club owner Eddie J. DeBartolo, Jr., isn’t all that interested in making money. That was Eddie, Sr.’s, forte. Eddie, Jr., is interested in winning football games, preferably championship ones. That, and hanging around with pro football players, taking them out to dinner, vacationing with them in Hawaii—face it, Junior is living his fantasy. His players report for work to a fifty-two-thousand-square-foot state-of-the-art training facility, with its players’ lounge, indoor swimming pool, racquetball courts (Eddie, Jr., likes to bat it around with the boys), glistening modern weight-training facilities, carpets, windows, artwork on the walls, dining facilities (the team employs its own chefs), two natural-grass practice fields with underground drainage facilities (keeps the field dry, which cuts down on practice-field injury). When the 49ers travel, the team assigns each player two seats on the plane (they’re big guys, see?), and everybody on the roster gets his own hotel room. In short, the San Francisco 49ers are run exactly the way a football player’s dream franchise would be run.
And there is more than just anecdotal evidence that the 49ers’ way is the right way to build and nurture a winning team. Even though a thorough statistical analysis shows that, overall, spending more money is no guarantee of winning championships, the Niners are an exception. Four Super Bowl trophies are displayed in the lobby of the Santa Clara training center. Over the last eleven seasons, the 49ers have averaged thirteen wins a season. They’ve captured eight division titles and four conference trophies. The team has fifteen assistant coaches on the payroll and eight full-time scouts, and the club’s management is racially well integrated. It is a luxury care-and-feeding system for football players.
Compared with the 49ers, the Eagles are the NFL version of Bargaintown USA. There are no Super Bowl trophies to display in Philadelphia and no training facility to display them in. The Eagles employ ten assistant coaches, and only one of them is black—Dave Atkins, assigned a nominal role as tight ends coach. The team employs just two full-time scouts, the smallest scouting crew in the league. Players report to work every day in the musty gloom of the Vet Stadium basement, contend with Rusty for extra socks and jocks, and practice in conditions they consider primitive. The turf inside the Vet in ’93 will be declared unfit for use in the NFL by George Toma, the league’s official groundskeeper. They travel one to a seat, thank you, and share hotel rooms on the road. The Eagles don’t scrimp on players’ salaries; their total payroll is among those of the top teams in the league, as befits the number of accomplished and experienced players on their roster. But very little is wasted making these players feel appreciated. There is a blind spot in the organization, a failure to nurture or even notice the intangible assets of an institution like this football club. The franchise has the look and feel of something stripped down, efficient, and ruthless. It has no warmth.
In San Francisco, players belong to something, something tangible. The training center is like a shrine to the club’s thoroughbred heritage. It is named after Junior’s mother, for crying out loud—the Marie P. DeBartolo Sports Center. Sentiment and memory matter here. Players don’t arrive, perform, and depart feeling like chattel; they feel like part of something lasting and worthwhile. Even if he weren’t paying the highest salaries in the league, Junior would be doing something right.
The Eagles’ way of doing things is more typical of the NFL than San Francisco’s, but most Eagles players don’t know that. Most have never played for another team. From their perspective, the charmed San Francisco franchise is Oz, with Eddie, Jr., as the benevolent wizard, and when you fly out to meet them in Candlestick Park, it’s hard not to feel like visiting Munchkins.
Today, for instance, the 49ers’ win clinches them another playoff spot—the sort of thing that’s become almost automatic out here. And they start out, as usual, by making it look easy. Jerry Rice, the league’s most heralded receiver, opens the game by catching his one hundredth career touchdown pass from Steve Young, the league’s top passer. The elegant receiver trots effortlessly past poor hobbled Wes on a simple post pattern, and as the Eagles’ safety waves frantically and in vain to his teammate, Rich Miano, for deep help, the perfect pass arrives. Rice doesn’t even have to trouble his stride—nobody so much as touches him on the play. The catch ties an NFL record, so the action stops for a moment while the stadium and national TV salute the achievement—it feels as if you’re playing against royalty, the whole world rubbing the go-ahead touchdown in your face. Then John Taylor, the 49ers’ other Pro Bowl receiver, catches a short pass, shrugs little Mark McMillian off (like a Munchkin!), and races downfield for a fifty-one-yard gain that sets up a field goal. The Eagles finish the first half down 10-0, without so much as a rumor of offense—eleven yards rushing and just eighty-three yards passing (Randall looks like Dorothy lost somewhere out there in the poppy field).
Wes takes himself out early in the third quarter. The knee he’s been struggling to keep intact all season is finally too far gone. He had gotten Dr. Vince to shoot it with Novocain for this game, and it had felt okay for the first half—he’d even made a few big hits—but he t
wists it on a play early in the second half trying to stay with the tight end on a pass route. He stays in for two more plays before conceding to himself that he can no longer run. He comes limping off and tells Bud, “I hurt it again.”
But something remarkable happens for the Eagles in the second half: Randall wakes up! He completes two crisp eleven-yard passes to move the team into field-goal range and then drops a perfect twenty-three-yard lob into Fred’s sure hands in the back left corner of the end zone, laying the ball through the smallest of windows, over the outstretched hands of two trailing defenders, just inside the end line. With the extra point, the score is 10-7.
The 49ers come back with another field goal and then open the fourth quarter with another touchdown, but Randall seems totally nonplussed. It’s hard to believe this is the same disgruntled, indecisive performer Eagles’ fans have been watching for two months. He throws seven passes, completes six, the last an eleven-yard touchdown toss to Tank.
With the Eagles down now 20—14, Cunningham is the picture of poise and confidence as he leads the offense downfield in the final four minutes of the game. The sixty-four thousand fans in Candlestick watch in tense silence as the quarterback methodically marches the offense toward the winning touchdown. Randall pulls in the ball and races upfield for eleven yards. He zips a sideline pass to Calvin for two yards, then again for seven more—Calvin is flattened after this catch right in front of the Eagles’ bench by cornerback Eric Davis, who delivers a blatant illegal forearm shot to the receiver’s helmet, which brings Seth howling out to the field in protest to the official, who stands alongside without throwing a flag. “I can’t fucking believe it!” Seth screams, storming back toward the sidelines, where another official runs up to caution him. Just after the two-minute warning, Randall completes another pinpoint fastball pass to Herschel, which moves the team down to San Francisco’s twenty-yard line. The Eagles use the first of their two remaining time-outs. Another pass to Herschel gains three yards, and with fifty-nine seconds remaining, Randall can’t find a receiver and is sacked for an eight-yard loss. The Eagles use their last time-out.
