by Mark Bowden
Richie enters the game with a laminated sheet of plays broken down by situation—first down, second and short, second and long, third and short, third and long—and color coded, so that he knows which play to call first, second, third, et cetera, in sequence, according to down and distance. Based on the computer-aided study of his own team’s tendencies (you have to stay unpredictable) and his opponents’, the play list literally scripts the entire contest before it starts. Players, especially quarterbacks and receivers, are always eager to depart from it, based on their observations in action, and sometimes their ideas are good (you at least have to humor them), but compared with the indepth reasoning behind every move on the game plan, spur-of-the-moment play calling is like feeling your way around with your eyes closed. Of course, there’s a big measure of coaching pride on the line here, too. Dissecting opponents and discovering weak spots are what coaches do. If the players could just trot out every weekend and make it up as they went along—à la Randall—then what good is the whole lousy Pigskin Priesthood? Richie, the old special teams grunt, even more than most coaches, places his faith in the spadework done in the weeks preceding the game. There was a photo on the front page of the Inquirer sports section once, a stop-action shot that showed an Eagles ballcarrier frozen in the midst of an awkward tumble out-of-bounds before his own bench, and every face along the sidelines, all the players, coaches, linesmen, spectators, were watching with their mouths O’d and eyes wide—except Richie. There in the middle background, as the furious action unfolded, the coach’s ample Levantine nose is bent to his laminated, color-coded play list, oblivious, already plotting the next call, like a man working a crossword puzzle in his living room. Richie isn’t completely inflexible; he’ll make changes on the sidelines to take advantage of opportunities as the game unfolds, scrapping plays that clearly aren’t working and returning to ones that are, but the credo he lives by is Stick to the Game Plan.
Only in this opening play-off game, he’s used only about onetenth of the plays on his list. They haven’t even gotten to exploit the crowning insight gleaned from their hours and hours of preparation. Reviewing New Orleans game tapes and studying the computer data, they noticed something about the Saints’ all-pro right outside linebacker, Pat Swilling. Ordinarily the idea would be to stay as far away as possible from Swilling, one of the game’s dominant players now for six seasons. But the computer data reveals a surprising nugget of information—lately, sweeps and screens run at Swilling, toward the right side of the Saints’ defense, have been surprisingly successful. Studying the videotape of Saints games this season, they can see why. Few players in the league have a reputation as fearsome as Swilling’s, but you don’t game plan against players by their reputation. You plan according to what’s current. (This, incidentally, is one of the common shortcomings of media pundits and the game’s growing chorus of charlatan prognosticators, who judge teams and players on the basis of yesterday’s news—it’s like trading stocks with last year’s listings.) The so-called best linebacker in the league may be playing only mediocre ball this week if he’s got a sore knee or broken finger, or if he’s at the tail end of his career and doesn’t have the explosive strength he had, say, five seasons ago. Pro Bowl honors and lifetime sack and tackle totals are good enough for the Pack, the fans, and the archives people in Canton, but smart coaches scout each player anew every time out. Pat Swilling two seasons or even two weeks ago may not be the same Pat Swilling you’ll face this week. Zeke prepares a brief abstract about every player on the defense, gleaned from close study of their play in recent games (for this game, the Eagles broke down and studied their season opener against New Orleans, and the Saints’ games against the Dolphins, Rams, and Jets, the three most recent opponents who favor the Eagles’ offensive style of two-back, one-back sets). Turns out that the very current Pat Swilling, ferocious reputation aside, is not particularly good at fighting off a block and moving laterally, he tends to dance away from cut blocks (he seems inordinately skittish about getting hit down around the knees), and he has a tendency to charge upfield so fast in his hurry to get at the quarterback that he leaves open his entire side of the field. Armed with these insights, Richie has a whole package of left-side screen passes and leftside sweeps behind pulling guards designed to attack Swilling. It’s the Eagles’ secret weapon in this contest, something Richie had planned to pull out as a surprise after lulling the Saints with more traditional modes of attack—only, half the game is gone and they have yet to spring the trap once.
When Richie tells his coaches and the offense Let’s get back to our game plan, this is in part what he has in mind.
Back out in the reverberant indoor arena, draped with cheery homemade signs urging the Saints on—PROJECT PASADENA; THE SAINTS WILL MAKE THE EAGLES SORE; HERSCHEL WILL DROP, RANDALL WILL FLOP, SAINTS ARE THE TEAM THAT WILL COME OUT ON TOP— filled with raucous anticipation of a long-awaited postseason victory.
Rookie return man Jeff Sydner waits alone in the end zone, watching the second-half kickoff tumble down from the darkness of the upper Dome, catching the ball and then dropping to one knee.
And the contest resumes.
First and ten (Eagles’ twenty): In the Eagles’ self-analysis, a breakdown of all their offensive plays this season, the computer revealed that they infrequently throw on first down, and, beyond that, when they send a receiver in motion before the snap, they rarely, if ever, throw the ball to him. Richie knows, of course, that the Saints are looking at the same data, and predictably, the Saints have been playing off the Eagles’ receivers on first down, giving them plenty of room, especially the motion receiver. So Richie signals in his tenth first-down play of the game, a pass play, sending Calvin Williams in motion from the left slot to the right and naming him as the primary receiver. It’s a quick two-step drop for Randall, and he drills the pass cleanly to Calvin for an easy six-yard gain. Sometimes things work exactly as planned.
Second and four (Eagles’ twenty-six): Here the Eagles can afford to waste a play by trying something fancy, or throwing deep. Saints coach Jim Mora plays it safe, dropping his pass defenders into a deep zone, so Richie plays it conservative, too; he sends Heath Sherman crashing into the middle of the line to pick up the first down. The Eagles’ first goal here is to hang on to the ball for more than just three plays, find that rhythm with a first down or two, build some confidence, and plunge a little deeper into the game plan.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty): Richie sends Herschel Walker on a sweep to the right side (the way teams usually like to run against the Saints, away from Swilling and toward the left outside linebacker Rickey Jackson, the same Rickey Jackson who was a star at Andre’s Pahokee High. Richie is still setting things up for a run at Swilling, like a boxer throwing lots of quick rights, holding back the surprise powerhouse left. This play almost works. Right tackle Antone Davis locks up Jackson for a moment, but then lets him slip off the block and flatten Herschel after just a two-yard gain—anything fewer than four yards on first down is a failure. Antone flings his huge arms in disgust. There was lots of open space if Herschel had gotten by Jackson.
Second and eight (Eagles’ thirty-two): Randall hits Keith Byars over the middle for a four-yard gain. Keith had been so wide open so many times in the first half, and Randall had so consistently overlooked him, that the tight end and the coaches had harangued the quarterback at halftime to get him the ball. Voilà!
Third and four (Eagles’ thirty-six): Richie sends in receiver Roy Green, a cool old-timer with fourteen years of playing experience, with a nifty option route. Green is the primary receiver on this play, which is designed to employ his shrewd eye for getting open. Roy goes in motion before the snap, trotting from the right-side slot to the left side, which matches him in man-to-man coverage with right corner Reginald Jones. If Jones is lined up inside Roy, he’ll break outside. If Jones is lined up outside, Roy will break in. Jones is inside, so Roy turns out. Randall’s pass reaches him fourteen yards upfield. Academic.
First and ten (fifty-yard line): Now the Eagles finally have something moving on offense, two first downs in a row, matching their total for the entire first half. The crowd inside the Dome grows quiet.
Richie’s ready to try one of his left-side plays, a counterscreen designed to fool the Saints (and Swilling) into thinking the play is sweeping right. Randall is supposed to roll to his right (the best way to avoid Swilling) and then, once the linebacker pursues, dump the ball over his head to Heath, who has slipped into the left flat. Only Antone misses his block on Rickey Jackson again. The big right outside linebacker charges straight at Randall, who instinctively abandons the play, sidesteps Jackson as neat as you please, and then fires the ball fourteen yards straight downfield to Calvin, who leaps between two defenders and somehow snares the ball with both hands. Nobody in the NFL makes this play except Randall, and it’s all reflex. The move he puts on Jackson is so smooth and artful it could not have been thought out in advance. The pass is thrown like a bullet, high, so if Calvin can’t reach it, the ball falls harmlessly about thirty yards downfield. But Calvin hangs on, and the Eagles have another first down. He hops up pointing back downfield at the quarterback, saluting the play.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-six): Now the Eagles’ offensive motor is finally running. You can feel the hum in the huddle. Success breeds success. A touchdown and extra point here will put them only three points away.
Finally, Richie gets to spring his trap on Swilling. He sends Heath on a sweep to the left side, right at Swilling, a play on which Herschel’s specific assignment (based on the tape review) is to launch himself low and hard at Swilling’s knees—and it works like a charm. The linebacker leaps to avoid the hit, both arms fully extended to help fend off Herschel’s lunge, and Heath scoots right around him for an elevenyard gain before the Saints catch him. A third first down in three plays. Things are proceeding exactly according to plan. The Superdome has grown almost still.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): Switching things up again, Richie goes back to a simple running play, sending Heath into the right side of the line behind bigbodies Pink and Antone—only Antone executes what the coaches will later call a “Mark Spitz block,” lunging forward into empty space, completely missing linebacker Vaughan Johnson. Johnson smothers Heath at the line of scrimmage.
Second and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): Again Antone screws up, only this time with potentially disastrous consequences. On their opening drive of the second half, the Eagles have now controlled the ball for almost five minutes and advanced fifty-five yards—the most consistency they’ve shown offensively all day. They’re already in field-goal range (they need a touchdown and a field goal to catch up), and they have real momentum.
But now Antone’s Spitz block has left them at second and long, a situation in which New Orleans loves to blitz, because the highestpercentage plays are all passes. Richie sends in a pass play, but Randall hardly completes his drop back after the snap before linebacker Jackson runs right around Antone’s right shoulder and smacks the quarterback unawares, dropping him and sending the ball skittering to the turf—where defensive end Wayne Martin falls on it.
The noise goes back on.
Antone comes off the field shaking his head and mumbling to himself. He’s feeling humiliated again. He’d been feeling so good about himself and his game in recent weeks, after his fine outing against Charles Mann in particular, but now the old demons have returned.
“Rickey Jackson is just too quick for Antone Davis,” comments CBS analyst Pat Summerall.
“Shake it off,” line coach Bill Muir tells his huge second-year charge. But that’s easier said than done. With expectations like those placed on Antone, there’s no such thing as small failure.
So now Buddy’s Boys trot out on the field, feeling more and more like they’re the ones—once again—who have to make something happen if they’ve any chance left in this game. At halftime, Bud Carson stressed that there was nothing in their game plan that was wrong; they just needed to stay with their assignments, play more aggressively, and eliminate the big plays.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-one): Big plays like … this one. Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert drops a little screen to rookie running back Vaughn Dunbar, who races right around right-side linebacker William “Willie T.” Thomas. Willie T. is just a second-year player and a bit overeager. He reads the screen perfectly, only instead of positioning himself to nail Dunbar for no gain or even a loss after the back catches the pass (he’s in perfect position), Willie T. decides to try to make something happen. He angles slightly inside, trying to intercept the pass, misses, and then gets outrun by the fleet Saints running back. Eric Allen underestimates Dunbar’s speed and, diving to reach him, winds up knocking the pursuing Willie T. off his feet instead.
Which frees Dunbar to sprint thirty-five more yards down the sidelines in front of his cheering teammates before safety John Booty can push him out-of-bounds. This is the last thing the Eagles need— another big play right out of the blocks. Suddenly, instead of the Eagles’ threatening to narrow the margin, the Saints are in position to widen it. The Superdome is again ringing with gleeful noise.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty-four): Seth wraps up Dunbar trying to slip around the other side, only he gets his fingers caught up in the running back’s face mask and is penalized. Seth storms around the field blowing off steam for a few moments, swinging his arms and shaking his head angrily from side to side. On TV the slo-mo replay clearly shows the infraction.
First and five (Eagles’ twenty-nine): The Saints can afford to play cautiously here. They’re up by ten, by one touchdown and a field goal. Even if they only get three here, the Eagles will need either two touchdowns or a touchdown and two field goals to catch up.
Mora sends his gigantic fullback Craig Heyward straight into the left side of the line. Bud has anticipated the play and has his linebackers charging up the gaps on the line—a run blitz—but they don’t call the rotund Heyward “Ironhead” for nothing. He’s met right at the line of scrimmage by both Seth and Clyde, a quarter ton of determined defense—and he still gains two yards.
“When you call a run blitz, that’s the perfect call,” says Madden up in the TV booth. “And when you blitz in the hole they run in, they shouldn’t make any yardage. But when it’s Ironhead Heyward, Bud Carson looks on saying, ‘What the heck do I have to do?’ “—shot of Bud looking annoyed and bewildered on the sidelines. The tone of the national CBS broadcast, which, of course, the players can’t hear, is growing increasingly resigned to a New Orleans blowout. “Bud Carson is doing everything he can to stop this drive,” says Madden, correctly sensing the desperation being felt on the Eagles’ sidelines. “If they don’t stop them on this one—they’re already down 17—7— they know they can be put away right here.”
Second and three (Eagles’ twenty-seven): Bud decided at halftime that he had to put more pressure on Hebert, so he’s running down his list of blitzes. It’s all-or-nothing time—so what the hell. He sends everybody on this play. They’re trying to drive the Saints backward, chase them out of even field-goal range. Hebert hands off to Dunbar again, and he manages to advance the ball two yards before Andy Harmon and Mike Golic drop him.
Third and one (Eagles’ twenty-five): Another first down here would be almost as disastrous as another touchdown. It would enable the Saints to eat up most of the remainder of the third quarter, time the Eagles now desperately need to score points.
The Eagles line up in what they call their jumbo-even defensive front, virtually forsaking their pass defense in an all-out effort to stop the run. They stack five big men on the line (instead of the usual four), send in Ken Rose to supplement their usual three linebackers, and instead of lining the smaller Booty up with strong safety Rich Miano, Bud sends in the team’s biggest healthy safety, William Frizzell. The Saints aren’t trying anything fancy here; it’s strength against strength. They pull guard Chris Port (290 pounds) to join Ironhe
ad (270 pounds) in a right-side sweep behind tight end Hoby Brenner (245 pounds) and right tackle Stan Brock (280 pounds). It’s like hitting the Eagles’ line with a small truck to clear a path for Dunbar. The mistake they make is running it at Reverend Reggie.
The mighty Reverend rises to the occasion. He hits Brenner and Brock with so much force that he drives them backward. Brenner is thrown so far back that he knocks into Port, who falls into Heyward. The whole mass of bigbodies collapses in a heap in the New Orleans backfield, and as Dunbar tries to dance his way around them, he’s flattened by Rose and Frizzell at the line of scrimmage.
Most fans can hardly make sense of the clutter of heaving bodies on the line—it looks like any other failed running play. But Madden, the crafty old coach, can sort it out. Apart from his genial gusty garrulity, Madden makes such an entertaining game analyst because although he sees and understands the game as a coach, he subscribes to the Great Man Theory of football—he’s less interested than, say, Richie, in the artful complexity of systems than in the heroic accomplishments of individual athletes. He invests the game with personality and emotion, things fans can readily understand. Madden believes a single player can, in certain instances, change the whole course of a football game, inspiring tectonic shifts in momentum with sheer strength and will. He has just seen such a moment.
“You always hear people talk about a dominant defensive player … what is a dominant defensive player?” he asks, nearly breathless with excitement. “Watch Reggie White on this play.” A slo-mo replay is shown. “He takes Hoby Brenner, knocks him backwards, and throws off the whole play. Brenner knocks into the pulling guard who falls into the lead blocker Heyward, and Dunbar gets stacked up behind the mess!”
