Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  After thirtysome fruitless charges at the quarterback, Reggie spots the opportunity instantly. Middleton is big for a tight end, and a good blocker, but Reggie’s got him by three inches and thirty pounds— Make ready, Jesus is coming! The Reverend charges straight upfield about five yards at the snap, plants his big left foot, and clubs Middleton, whose momentum is backward, with his right arm. The tight end goes flying in the direction of the mothballed fleet of navy warships downriver from the Vet. Reggie folds Rypien in a hardy Christian embrace and escorts him to the turf. It’s another four-yard loss, and, more important, it reasserts the imperative of blocking Reggie with more than one man. Washington kicks a forty-one-yard field goal and leads at halftime 13-7.

  But this is looking more and more like the Eagles’ day. Randall comes out after halftime and leads a seven-play, eighty-yard touchdown drive that gives Philadelphia a one-point lead. They improve on that in the fourth quarter when Vai Sikahema returns a punt fortyseven yards, all the way down to the Skins’ twenty-five-yard line, which sets up a field goal.

  So with three and a half minutes left in the game, Washington now needs a touchdown. If they fail, the Eagles make the play-offs. The Skins will still have a backdoor shot at postseason, but it will depend on their winning next week and the right teams’ losing—their destiny will no longer be in their own hands.

  Forced into a cautious deep-zone defense to prevent a big-play disaster, Bud leaves open the middle of the field, and Rypien chips away expertly, notching gains of ten yards, eight yards, twelve yards, eight yards, and then a nineteen-yard catch and run by Ricky Ervins that puts the Skins on the Eagles’ thirty-one-yard line with just over a minute remaining.

  Richie’s offense is standing on the bench waving white towels at the crowd, trying to notch up the noise level a decibel or two, which doesn’t seem possible. Reggie is still setting up and charging into his blockers, driving one backward and off balance, only to spin into the bulk of another. It’s a study in frustration and heart.

  The Skins get another first down, and with thirty-five seconds on the play clock and no more time-outs, the game has come down to two or three final shots at the end zone. All of the hope, energy, and excitement of an entire season in this football-crazed city is focused now on these final plays. The noise has achieved the level of a constant horrific roar.

  The Skins have to throw, because a running play would eat up the remainder of the clock. So Bud has his linebackers dropping, and his pass defenders in five zones, Eric, Booty, and Miano inside, and Mark McMillian and Otis guarding the outside:

  First and ten on the Eagles’ twenty (thirty-five seconds): Byron Evans takes a lunging slap at a Rypien pass to Ervins, and the ball skitters on the wet turf.

  Second and ten on the Eagles’ twenty (thirty-two seconds): Near disaster. Otis is supposed to line up on the ten-yard line and protect against a pass route to the left corner of the end zone. He has Booty sliding over deep, so if Clark turns and heads for the corner, he’ll be sandwiched—Otis in front of him and Booty behind him—with almost no chance of catching the ball. Only, Otis screws up. Instead of staying with Clark as the veteran receiver begins his cut toward the corner, Otis hesitates, watching the quarterback. By the time he pivots and chases Clark, Rypien has an open receiver in the end zone. He lays the pass out in front of Clark, who dives, his body parallel to the turf, and for a brief instant he has the winning catch in both hands. But he drops it. Otis leaps for joy (as well he should), and Clark sits cursing his hands in the end zone.

  Third and ten on the Eagles’ twenty (twenty-six seconds): The Skins try the same pattern on the other side of the field, only McMillian, the rookie, plays the coverage to perfection. Rypien sees his receiver sandwiched and throws the ball out of the end zone.

  Fourth and ten on the Eagles’ twenty (twenty-one seconds): This is it, or so it seems. The roaring continues like a bottled hurricane. Settled back in their zones, the Eagles’ defenders figure Rypien has to throw for the end zone. With no time-outs, any running play will eat up the clock. Reggie mounts his charge one last time, bull-rushing back into the wide frames of Simmons and Middleton—and this time breaking through. Rypien quickly flips the ball to Ervins, who crashes upfield five yards, ten yards, fifteen yards … until he runs into Seth, who flattens him five yards shy of the goal line!

  Victory!

  The bottled hurricane comes uncorked, and an army of hearts leap for joy along with the Eagles’ players and coaches. Booty, in the heat of the moment, scoops the game ball off the turf and runs upfield with the trophy, only … the refs are waving their arms wildly. They want the ball back! Players look up to see the clock stopped at seven seconds.

  The rules say that with the first down the clock stops just long enough for the officials to spot the ball. There wouldn’t have been enough time for Rypien to reassemble his offense fifteen yards downfield and run another play, except for Booty’s exuberant gesture. By picking up the ball, he’s forced the refs to stop the clock for five, ten, fifteen seconds, long enough for the Redskins to line up and snap the ball.

  First and goal on the Eagles’ five (seven seconds): Rypien flings it at the turf and stops the clock with just two seconds remaining.

  Second and goal on the Eagles’ five (two seconds): There’s no time to be disheartened, to chew out Booty or curse fate. Washington is going to get one more shot. Right now. There is a sinking feeling in the Vet. The Redskins are so close. The Eagles’ season has come down to this one play—keep Rypien from completing a pass into the end zone.

  Reggie assumes his three-point stance one last time, again summoning every ounce of energy for the charge. Bud calls for complex man/zone coverage. Seth has the tight end. Eric has Art Monk, the NFL’s all-time leading receiver. Miano has the deep end of the right side of the end zone; McMillian has the right side flat, so any receiver heading for the right corner will be sandwiched between them, and McMillian will have anyone in the flat in front of him. On the left side, Otis has Gary Clark, who dropped the game winner just a few plays back. Rypien is right-handed, and he’s got most of his receivers to the right, so Reggie knows the ball is most likely coming to his side.

  What happens next takes all of three or four seconds to unfold. At the snap, Monk runs to the right corner, which frees up Eric (he knows Miano and McMillian will pick him up in the corner). Sanders goes to the right flat, in front of McMillian. On the left side, Clark heads upfield, and then slices to his right across the end zone—meanwhile, Reggie has hurdled the attempted cut block by Middleton and swooped down on Rypien, who had wanted to roll out to his right. Instead, the quarterback has to duck Reggie and step forward, abandoning the original design of the play, and is now looking frantically for someplace to throw the ball. Rypien knows he’s got just a split second before Reggie clobbers him, and in that instant he sees his favorite receiver, Clark, squatting in the end zone, toward the front, in line with the goalpost.

  Clark has gotten open. Otis is a step too far behind him, and Booty is two steps too deep. The smart receiver drops to his knees in front of Booty, giving Rypien a clear low target. Rypien hurriedly releases the ball, which wobbles slightly in its trajectory—Clyde leaps and brushes it with one finger (not enough to deflect it)—and it is at this precise moment that the entire six months of hard work by fortyseven pro players, twelve coaches, all the confident orchestrations of multimillionaire Norman Braman and the club’s management staff, the emotional urgency of Jerome’s sudden death (the Eagles had invited Jerome’s dad to say a few words in the locker room before this game), not to mention the cheerful dreams of millions of Eagles fans all over Philadelphia and the nation, come to turn on the well-oiled, highly paid synapses of twenty-seven-year-old Eric Allen.

  In that same split second, having been freed by Monk’s corner route, Eric makes a instant, all-pro calculation. Years of experience and hours of film study have taught him that, in a pinch, Rypien will always look for Clark. When he sees Rypien thrown
off balance by Reggie’s rush, Eric breaks toward Clark. There’s no thought process involved here; it’s all reflex. The fact that Rypien is going to throw the ball to Clark is simply hardwired someplace deep in the cornerback’s motor cortex. And in the precise millisecond that the fluttery pass arrives at the fingertips of Clark’s eager reach, Eric’s right hand arrives to smack the ball straight to the turf.

  “Wow!” shouts CBS announcer Pat Summerall.

  Eric races downfield with both arms held high, soaking up the deserved loud approval of the home fans.

  In slow motion it’s a thing of beauty, as if choreographed by some benevolent angel (Jerome?). From the camera behind the end zone you can see it unfold all at once, Reggie throwing Rypien off pace, the hurried pass, Clyde’s outstretched hand, and, in the foreground, Eric streaking (you can actually see him break back toward Clark before Rypien lets go of the ball) right out of the frame. A side angle completes the view, the ball descending toward the kneeling Clark’s outstretched hands, Eric’s body hurtling toward the camera, his reaching, then slapping down the ball just as it arrives.

  Bud Carson breathes into his headset, speaking to his assistant Peter Guinta upstairs, “Did you see that?”

  All their planning, teaching, diagramming, and cunning—and it comes down to one great player making an instinctive play. Booty and Otis had both allowed Clark to slip in between them. If Rypien has time to throw the ball crisply, it’s a touchdown. Credit Reggie’s sixtysixth bull-rush of the afternoon with disrupting that. But the pass was still on target. Eric had to guess where Rypien would throw the ball and move towards it in the same instant—a split second later would have been too late. The photo on the front page of the next day’s newspaper will show Clark kneeling in the end zone, staring at his hands, the ball bouncing off the turf underneath his grasp, and Eric still airborne, hand outstretched.

  “And they say baseball is a game of inches!” shouts color man John Madden. “Rypien wanted to roll out, get outside, but Reggie forced him to stop there, and when he stopped he saw Clark … and Eric Allen comes up with one of the biggest plays of his life!”

  Winning cures all ills on a contentious football team. Today’s win can’t be credited to any one facet of the squad alone; all contributed, offense, defense, and special teams. Randall played well. Antone didn’t allow Charles Mann a single shot at the quarterback. “I had my experience that one Monday night,” he says, “and I’ll never let that happen to me again.” Vai Sikahema’s heroic punt return set up the winning points, Roger Ruzek’s field goals provided the margin of victory, and Reggie and Eric saved the game in the final seconds.

  “Lord, we thank you for the competition,” prays the Reverend immediately after the game, down on one knee on the field, hands joined with players from both teams. “We thank you for allowing us to do what we do. We thank you for the love you have given us.”

  Captured on camera coming off the field, Randall delivers his own postscript to the national TV audience.

  “This is what it’s all about, man,” he says. “Before the game I said, ‘Lord, when we win the game, I will praise your name.’ We got out of this one. God is always with us. Always remember that. God is with us.”

  As opposed, presumably, to the Redskins.

  THERE IS SAD NEWS waiting for Reverend Reggie when he comes home that night. His stepfather, Leonard Collier, has been found dead, beaten to death with a hammer in the front seat of his Ford Fairlane, outside the rec center in Chattanooga where Reggie got his start.

  “They don’t know who did it,” he says, talking to a hound the night after the game. “He wasn’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. They think he was robbed.”

  Reggie had never gotten along with his stepfather, a slender man with aviator glasses who married his mother when Reggie was just seven. Collier had battled the bottle all of his life.

  On the flight to Chattanooga the next morning, Reggie struggles with this new tragedy. It doesn’t touch him the way Jerome’s death did, but it stirs up old feelings of guilt, anger, and now remorse. The events in Reggie’s life, from the trivial to the profound, are perceived as lessons from above. Reading his feelings now, Reggie is at first surprised by the remorse, then saddened. He realizes that he has spent most of his life condemning his stepfather, looking down at him—how could he not? Reggie has become a success in life beyond even his own wildest imaginings, and here was this troubled, inadequate man who stepped between Reggie and his mother, who was supposed to assume the role of father. For most of his life, Reggie has been embarrassed by his stepfather, and because of that embarrassment and even contempt, he now realizes he’s never been able to connect with him. He’s never been able to show him the way.

  Reggie has learned not to condemn his teammates for their failings. He has been deeply concerned all this season, for instance, with what Wes and Seth have done to their wives and children. Erika and Sara have grown closer through the ordeal. Erika attends the weekly Bible study classes. They have reached out to Jennifer. But Wes and Seth aren’t interested in Reggie’s views on their personal lives. He can’t reach them, and he knows getting in their face and saying “Man, you need to get your life right and stop doing this!” won’t work. And his two defensive teammates aren’t the only ones. His Bible study classes are now littered with jilted wives and girlfriends. Randall’s exgirlfriend Rose still comes. Reggie feels surrounded by the wreckage of the Self-Proclaimed Athlete lifestyle. It is something he has wrestled with all season, and he has finally come to accept there is only so much he can do.

  Yet this wisdom had arrived too late for his relationship with Collier, his stepfather, now brutally slain. Reggie sees a divine hand in the coincidental events. At the very moment he is riding high with victory, being credited with a big part in saving the day, the Lord finds a way to bring him low, reminding him of a serious personal failing.

  In his days in Chattanooga for the funeral, Reggie resolves he will never again miss a chance to connect with a fellow human being. He will no longer judge people’s failings. He will accept even the lowest of characters with a full Christian heart, embrace the alcoholic, befriend the adulterer, accept the addict, the homosexual (Reggie considers homosexuality a grievous sin)….

  This is all weighing on the Reverend as he flies home later in the week to play what will almost certainly be his last game as an Eagle in the Vet. His stepfather, his personal failure, pending free agency, all this is on his mind. At a team meeting before the regular season’s final game, a now-meaningless contest against the Giants, Reggie starts talking about all these things, until he’s cut short by Eric.

  “Where’s your head at, Reggie?” the cornerback asks.

  Teammates don’t usually challenge him. It’s as if somebody has whacked him over the head.

  In two weeks, in the New Orleans Superdome, this group of Eagles players will have their last chance to make it happen. It’s no time to lose focus. The season, the JeromeQuest, the Christian empire, family dynasty, professional pride—all of it comes down now to a single-elimination tournament. Win three play-off games and you’ve made the Show. Win the Show, the Super Bowl, and you accomplish it all; you plant your flag on the top of the mountain.

  Football, man. Reggie thanks his teammate and puts the rest of the universe, swirling in his head, to rest—at least for the next few weeks.

  16

  MARCHING IN …

  No, Reverend Reggie decides against sharing the full range of his thoughts and emotions with his teammates now, down ten points at halftime in the New Orleans Superdome.

  It’s the same old story. All the emotion, all the energy, all the hours of preparation, the pain and frustration of five losses, the joy of eleven wins, all of it was expended just to get themselves here, at the starting line, and now they’re playing poorly against the Saints, a team they can beat. The offense has made one big play, Randall’s touchdown bomb to Fred, and that’s it. They’ve earned just three first downs (the Saints have
14). And the defense … well, today, once again, they haven’t done enough.

  It could change, though. They had all seen it happen, seen their fortunes in a hapless contest suddenly turn. It didn’t have to come on a touchdown or interception or even a big play. It might happen because of something one teammate said at precisely the right moment, or some gesture one of them made, or some inspiring extra burst of desire—the burners would ignite, and off they’d go. You couldn’t make a moment like that happen, although you could see guys all around straining to do so. Right now, Reggie is listening to Andre, standing in his gray wool parka in the center of the room raising the roof in an effort to whip the bird into flight, begging for that chance to take a shot at Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys (Andre’s broken leg will be healed enough to play next weekend, when the winner of this game will meet the Cowboys in Dallas for the NFC semifinals). Reggie hears Richie pound through the usual exhortations, knowing these things are important but won’t do the job, and then he falls back on what to him is the most reliable source of inspiration and inner strength—he quietly prays, “Lord, give us strength …”

  • • •

  As THEY HEAD back out, Richie’s not praying, he’s thinking.

  The problem on offense, aside from a few wrinkles in the blocking schemes that Dave Alexander had effectively diagnosed, is that they haven’t been able to keep the ball long enough to develop any rhythm or confidence. They’ve barely scratched the surface of his game plan, and it’s a good one.