by Mark Bowden
“All I can say is we’re sure happy to have the win under the circumstances,” says Richie. “Any time you make seventeen penalties and give the other team one hundred and ninety-one yards and still win a ball game … well, the only thing you can feel is damn lucky.”
Richie won’t say it publicly, but he blames the referees for the flagfest. He’s beginning to buy into the notion that the league’s officials have it in for his team.
“The officiating in this league is high school, strictly high school,” he says afterward, away from the Pack. “It’s a disgrace.”
Larry Pasquale has his own theory. Many of the penalties today were on his boys, and those annulled runbacks of Vai’s … well, suffice it to say, they would have done more than propel the return man’s stats to the top of the charts; they would have put his special teams squad up there, too. Larry is bitter, and he has a theory: he thinks the Seahawks were doing it on purpose.
“It looked like, sometimes, when our own man was in a position to hit them, what they were doing was, they were diving to the ground, on their stomachs,” he explains to one or two startled newshounds. They’ve heard many a postgame rationalization, but this reaches a new imaginative height. “So that when our guys hit them, it gave the impression of a clip, a push from behind! It’s a terrific trick, I just have never seen it used before!”
“So you think they were trying to draw penalties?” one of the hounds asks, giving Larry a chance to back in off this ledge. But the coach is fired up.
“I think they were,” he says. “Because twice there were calls for clipping where we never hit the man. James Joseph [a backup ballcarrier who plays mostly on special teams] got called for clipping one time and he never even hit the man. The man was already down and sliding on his stomach when James came up.”
“The guy took a dive?”
“Yeah”—the look on Larry’s face says Why aren’t these guys getting this?—”because he realizes he’s blocked. See, our man has position on him, and just as our guy approaches, their guy just dives on his stomach. So the refs gets the impression it’s a clip or a push. See, at that point, their guy can’t make the tackle, but he can still draw the penalty.”
Richie later says, “You can’t take Larry seriously some of the time; he gets mad, he goes a little crazy.”
Seth is angry, too. He’s seen the article, and he knows the timing is atrocious. He’s going to catch holy hell for this one. The vow of silence is out the window anyway; he’s going to have to talk his way out of this. Sitting shirtless before his locker, he’s a man who has been run over by his own truck.
“The interview was supposed to be more of an interview on Seth Joyner than an interview about Randall Cunningham, Richie Kotite, and Norman Braman,” he says, with the Pack crowding around, delighted to have the infamous mouth roaring once more. “So, once again, I make myself accessible to the print, and this is what happens. Another big deal, something being blown all out of proportion, because someone has been misquoted. And then, here we go with this situation all over again, man. I should learn my lesson … not to just say anything [literally, this would be good advice, but what Seth means to say here is “to say nothing”], because it’s amazing how you guys take little bits and pieces out of what I say and piece it together the way you want it, man. I ain’t doin’ any more interviews, man.”
Of course, far from being misquoted or having his remarks distorted, all Seth had done was share with the public an opinion held by many of his friends and teammates on defense. It’s fair to say that they all wished he’d keep it to himself, but the sting in Seth’s remarks comes from this body of silent agreement in the back end of the room. Buddy had attended a team function honoring Jerome the previous week, the former coach’s first visit with his team since the firing. Richie and Harry avoided the former coach. “All that son of a bitch has done since he left is run me down, and all I’ve ever done is say nice things about him,” complains Richie. There was no proving it, but Richie is convinced that Buddy’s visit with his old crew has prompted Seth’s illtimed remarks. It smells like sabotage. Richie has been laboring mightily for two years now to bridge the divide between his offense and Buddy’s defense, and just as Richie has the team on the verge of going to the play-offs for the first time in his tenure, Seth lobs another grenade into the fault.
Richie reads the remarks on the bus on the way to the airport. Through the long flight home he fights the urge to confront the linebacker right there on the plane. But he’s torn. Personally, he’d like to take a swing at the guy, but he’s also got the team to think about. Next Sunday’s Redskins game is the most important one of the season. It’s his job to hold things together, not tear things apart.
But, Christ, it makes Richie mad. Especially that part about him being a puppet. And the stuff about Randall? It’s all fiction! But what’s he going to do? Seth is a vital part of the team. A college coach will sit a defiant player down, figuring his authority is more important in the long run than any particular game. But in the pros, as St. Vince said, winning is everything. Especially now. Sitting Seth down just now, on the doorstep to the play-offs, just cuts everybody’s throat.
The plane deposits the team back in Philadelphia at about 3:00 a.m., and Richie drives home to sleep on it for a few hours. He doesn’t feel any better when he wakes up.
“I wanted to kill that motherfucker last night,” he says, venting confusion and frustration in his office early the next morning. “Nobody in this league has the fucking authority I have, except maybe Shula and a couple of guys like that, the authority without interference. I don’t go around telling people I’m in charge every fucking second like that asshole Ryan did. Did you hear what I said? I’m sick and tired of it! Especially when it takes the focus of the team away. I mean, come on! He’s supposed to be a team guy? Come on! What’s going on here? The whole thing is … look how many people aren’t here from last year [he’s lost Jerome, Wes Hopkins, Andre Waters, Ben Smith, and Keith Jackson]. And we’re still 9-5! Against one of the toughest schedules in the league! How many teams have a tougher schedule than us? This is disgusting. And I bit my tongue last night. I’m gonna say something to him, obviously. But I’m not going to make a big public show of it. I have the team to think about.”
Gusts of words pour out of Richie, who typically spends very little time reflecting on things. He’s strictly an action guy: problem— boom!—solution. But not with this one. Seth’s dark aura has spread over everything … it’s poison, but how do you get rid of a Seth Joyner when you can’t afford to lose a football game?
“What’s going on here?” Richie is thinking out loud. “He has this distorted view! How can they perceive this shit? Because of that son of a bitch Ryan, that’s how…. I’m sick and fucking tired of it. And he [Seth] had four penalties on him yesterday! And I’m trying to hold this together…. But I’m not going to ruin this football team. I’m just trying to get to the play-offs. You know what the weird thing is? I know Seth Joyner. I don’t know what it is that’s motivating him right now, but, basically, one-on-one, he’s a good fucking guy! I don’t know what’s doing it. I don’t know if it’s Buddy, who was here last week, or what. But I’m telling you something … this is too, too … he [Seth] won’t let go! Buddy’s been gone for two years now! I mean, how many times do I have to get hit by a falling piano walking out the door?”
Richie is still asking himself these questions the next day. He’s in conference with Harry, as a matter of fact, kicking around ideas for what to do about Seth, when the loose cannonball rolls in the door on its own. Seth presents a wholly unexpected solution. He apologizes. He admits he crossed a line, and at the worst possible time. He says he really didn’t mean those things he said, the reporter twisted his remarks, that was how he felt, way back when, right after Buddy got fired, but no more (never mind that much of what he said had to do with this season). The reporter had gotten it wrong. He says he’ll hold a press conference and apologize publicl
y.
“I wouldn’t hold a press conference,” advises Norman when he’s consulted by phone.
But Seth wants to go ahead, and Norman says, “Suit yourselves. I still think it’s a bad idea.”
And that afternoon, the surly linebacker who has vowed not to give another interview again this season, and vowed to never apologize, sits in front of the assembled and somewhat amused Pack on his day off and does both (the former for the third time).
“It’s really important for my teammates to understand that I’m not trying to stir up anything,” he says. “I wanted to come forward and let my teammates know—and I will speak to them—let them know that… hey, I want to be a leader. And I mean a leader in a positive way and not a negative way.”
He is somewhat less abjectly apologetic in public than he had been in private (in private, he had been abject).
“Is this an apology?” Seth is asked.
“No,” he says, but he is sorry that the whole thing happened.
As for the business about Richie being a puppet and Norman being a cheapskate and Randall being a Judas Iscariot punished by God Almighty … well, Seth falls back on the old standby.
He scowls into the cameras and invokes the mantra: “That’s in the past.”
And who’s gonna argue with him?
15
THE EMPIRE
Giant, weary Reggie White’s brown biceps and forearms are etched with nicks, scrapes, cuts, and scars. There are fresh red gouges, pink turf burns, scabs from burgundy to ashy gray, and random knots of shiny black scars, especially around the elbows, where the accumulated ravages of nearly two full decades of football have left a mottled collage of tormented dermis.
Reggie doesn’t need the 92 on his back to be recognized on the football field anymore. His frame alone is famous, the shoulders, arms, hands, and barrel chest start thick and broaden down to sloping abdomen, horselike haunches and hams. He is knock-kneed and splayfooted enough to look almosy clumsy, until he moves. His face seems small outlined by all this size: a straight nose with widely flared nostrils; small, wide-set, searching brown eyes; thickly protuberant brow, low hairline. The mouth is his most prominent feature. It’s wide and full lipped, with an underbite accentuated by a goatee. From behind the bars of his face mask, a smile emerges so broad, big toothed, and beatific it’s like the chrome grill at the front end of a custom-styled eighteen-wheel interstate cruiser.
Reverend Reggie turns thirty-one this week, in December, the week of the ’92 season’s biggest game. On his birthday, Saturday, he shows up for the final walk-throughs and meetings, lingers to give the usual taped interviews to the CBS sports staff that will televise tomorrow’s game, and then politely cuts out early to be home for a celebration with his wife, Sara, and his children, Jeremy, six, and Jecolia, four. Jeremy and Jecolia are excited because they have baked Daddy a cake—a big cake.
He is such a big man, six-five and about 300 pounds, and so amazingly muscular and athletic, that Reggie inspires heroic and biblical comparison. He is surely descended from the race of Philistines that produced Goliath—And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron —and it isn’t hard to imagine, standing alongside Reggie, how deadly he might have been as a warrior on some ancient battlefield, leveling whole ranks of men with one swing of a broadsword too heavy for many men to lift. And in his modern arena, Reggie is as formidable as any Goliath or Achilles. He looks born to play the game. He believes he was born to play it. Those who can match his build are smaller and those who can match his size are pudgy or wooden by comparison. Ron Heller, the onetime wrestling champ, comes the closest on the team to matching Reggie’s size and physique at six-six, 280 pounds, but as athletic as Ron is, his moves on the football field are robotic by comparison. Reggie runs the forty-yard dash in 4.6 seconds. He deftly hurdles blockers who dive low, spins and dances away from those who try to knock him off balance, and for those who try to meet him head up … well, the mighty minister has a whole assortment of methods for handling that, his favorite being just to run right through the poor soul. Reggie preaches loving New Testament values, but on the football field, his God is Jehovah, the God of vengeance, power, and might.
He goes about his business untroubled by the petty travails of his teammates and tiny tempests of public interest. Reggie had kept mostly silent during the Week of the Great Benching, uttering his usual pieties, and has kept his thoughts to himself through the selfinflicted trials of his troubled friend Seth. Not everybody is happy with the way Reggie responds to these things. Richie is heard to sometimes lament that the team’s six-time all-pro defensive end is not a more “verbal leader.” But those who think Reggie isn’t leading aren’t paying attention. He’s leading all right. Whether the others choose to follow is their decision. He’s learned that.
Reggie’s dimensions spill out of the ordinary frame of star athlete and celebrity. He is larger than life. Even to call him the greatest defensive lineman who has ever played the game is nothing particularly new or remarkable for him. He has been an athlete of legendary stature now most of his life, ever since he first stepped on a gridiron and basketball court back at Howard High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He became the first high-school athlete ever to be named all-state in both sports, and at the University of Tennessee, they had already voted him a member of their all-time team. There’s such a thing as being so good at what you do, so naturally gifted (Reggie would say “blessed”), that it becomes hard to lead. His nearly $2-million-per-year salary, not counting endorsements and other incomes, is second on the team only to Randall’s, and next year, when he becomes a free agent, everybody knows Reggie’s going to redefine the upper limit of earnings for the sport. He’s the only player in the room who is definitely going to the Hall of Fame, Super Bowl ring or no Super Bowl ring.
But Reggie’s stature separates him from others on the team, even its coaches and other stars. How can you coach the greatest defensive end ever to play the game? How can you expect to play up to his level?
Reggie works to bridge that gap. He goofs around with the best of them in the locker room, battling to dunk a wad of masking tape over the top of a teammate’s locker, or launching into his spirited impressions of Elvis, Muhammad Ali, John Wayne, and barking dog—his nickname is “Big Dawg.” He is humble and kind to a fault. There is hardly a person who knows Reggie to whom he has not, more than once, offered a sincere apology, sometimes for things barely worth mentioning, like momentarily losing his temper with an offensive lineman for hanging on to his shirt for dear life. More than one shamelessly holding offensive tackle has felt a quiver of panic as the Minister of Defense came striding straight for him after a game, only to have Reggie offer a pained expression and one giant hand and say, “I had no business criticizing you out there, you’re just doing your job.” Like a giant who must always worry about breaking chairs or banging his head on the chandelier, Reggie is cautious with people. He treats those around him (except on the football field) like pieces of fine china.
In the same way, he’s cautious about taking the lead. Despite his size and other heroic proportions, Reggie is not a born leader. He works at it. He studies the preachers he admires and the natural leaders he encounters. Take Jerome, for example. In some ways, Jerome stood for exactly those things Reggie preached against—living only for the moment, lusty and reckless pursuit of sinful pleasures—but Reggie not only loved Jerome, he admired him. He loved him for the natural virtues Jerome possessed in rich measure, his devotion to his parents and community, his joy in living, his natural affection for others. Reggie admired Jerome for his leadership. In some ways it was a mystery: How could Jerome, who seemed so careless about so many things, be such an effective motivator of men? Why were Jerome’s teammates (including Reggie) so devoted to him? The answer, at least part of it, was that Jerome didn’t preach. He made no effort to hide his faults or advertise his virtues. He lived large and drew others alon
g in his wake. He was thoroughly and always himself. That was the key. Basically, Jerome was so damn good at being himself he made other people want to be like him. Reggie, on the other hand, had spent most of his young life preaching aggressively to people, whether they wanted to hear his message or not. He made a public show of his virtues.
But Reggie has changed—and Jerome is no small part of it. Not that his beliefs have wavered. Not one bit. But Reggie’s learned that thrusting a well-worn Bible in someone’s face sets them looking around quickly for an exit. Whether leading people to Christ, or leading a football team to a championship, Reggie has learned that speeches, accusations, boasts, bluffs, insults, urgings, and clever quips will not get the job done. He is, frankly, weary of it all. Sometimes he’s even weary of football itself. He might have stopped playing years ago were it not for his religious beliefs and his wider personal ambitions. After all, how important can a game be in a modern world beset by Satan? In a godless city where young black men are murdering one another nightly, selling drugs, living out doomed lives in a perpetual cycle of poverty, crime, and prison, egged on by an evil culture glorifying racial hatred and violence in rap music, TV, and graphic movies, and where young black women, enslaved by social stereotypes, poverty, ignorance, and a welfare system that destroys families, line up for the privilege of allowing white doctors to kill their unborn babies? No, Reggie’s mind is wrestling with things far bigger than Seth’s philosophical differences with Randall, the quarterback’s moody persona and quasi-heretical Cult of Self, or even Richie’s blindered obsession with the Game. There are times when Reggie feels like telling the whole lot of them to grow up. But he checks himself. He mustn’t put himself above them, or anyone. He can understand all the tugs on his teammates, the pressures, jealousies, and temptations. He, too, loves the game. Richie should be grateful for Reggie’s nonverbal posture, because, truth is, he agrees with most of what Seth has to say—Norman is a money-grubber, Richie is a puppet, Harry is an amateur—although he cringes at his teammate’s methods. Reggie leads by example. His devotion is not to the Philadelphia Eagles, it’s to Team, this fraternal family, and to his own aspirations. The message conveyed by his calm silence in the locker room and ferocity on the field is Let’s get this done.
