Next Man Up

by John Feinstein

  Ethan got the message. He called several of his friends to tell them his father wanted him to choose Williams. They all agreed with his father. He chose Williams.

  He started out in premed, thinking being a doctor was a good backup plan if he didn’t make the NFL. A couple of Cs in biology convinced him that psychology would be a fine major. He became a good player at Williams, in part because he was much bigger than most Division 3 players at six foot six and 270 pounds. He played on the defensive line on very good teams—the Ephs were 15-0-1 his last two years, the tie coming in Brooks’s last college game against Amherst. The game was played in a driving rainstorm and ended 0-0. “To this day I think of that as my worst loss,” Brooks said. “It was a tie, but it felt like a loss, especially against Amherst.” By the time he played that last game, he was getting attention from some NFL scouts. It is not unheard-of for D-3 players to make it in the NFL, although it is certainly unusual. He was drafted in the seventh and final round by the Atlanta Falcons (the 229th overall pick) and was thrilled just to have a shot to make it in the NFL. He had been told by all the scouts who came to work him out that his future was as an offensive lineman because of his size. But halfway through training camp the Falcons moved him back to defense because of injuries. “It was okay with me because it meant I was going to be on the team,” Brooks said. “I had gone into camp hoping to make the practice squad.”

  He ended up on the active roster on defense. “When I realized I had a chance to get drafted, I got all these NFL game tapes and began watching them all the time,” he said. “I was just amazed by the size and the speed of all the players.” He laughed. “It was a long way from the NESCAC [the league Williams plays in]. “To find myself competing with guys like that so quickly was almost a shock.”

  During that first year in Atlanta, one of his teammates, Chuck Smith, asked him if he would go with him to dinner one night. Smith had a date who wanted to bring a friend with her, and Smith wanted Brooks to ride shotgun to engage the other woman. Reluctantly, Brooks agreed. Because of his size and shyness he hadn’t dated a lot in college and he was way too busy trying to keep his head above water as a rookie pro to worry about a social life. As soon as the two women walked into the restaurant, Brooks was happy he had said yes. Jacqueline Smith was petite (five foot two, 115 pounds), pretty, smart, and funny. She had grown up a tomboy in a tiny Georgia town, had come to Atlanta to go to college at Morris Brown, and loved to talk about sports. Brooks felt comfortable with her right away. A romance bloomed quickly.

  “It was one of those things where, when you haven’t ever been serious with someone, you kind of know right away that this is it,” he said. “She worked [as a paralegal] right near where I lived, so most nights we would get together.”

  By the spring of 1997 they were engaged, and that summer they were married. The NFL is not a sentimental place. Dan Reeves had replaced June Jones as coach of the Falcons, and one week into the season he cut Brooks, replacing him with someone who had played for him in Denver. Six weeks into his marriage, Brooks was unemployed. The St. Louis Rams picked him up with five weeks left in the season and, although he didn’t get into any games, signed him for 1998. He played that season in St. Louis as a backup offensive tackle and on special teams.

  It was during that fall when Jackie first began experiencing back pain. There was a knot in her back that she and Ethan both assumed was caused by some kind of muscle pull she had suffered while exercising. Except that it kept getting worse. One doctor told her to stop exercising for a while and the pain should abate. It didn’t. Finally, she went to have tests done. Ethan was in Connecticut visiting his family for a few days when the results came back. “They think it might be cancer,” Jackie told him on the phone.

  “At first, I didn’t really panic,” he said. “We went to see a specialist and he told us it was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is one of the more curable forms of cancer. They didn’t want to operate, but she had to start chemo.”

  As luck would have it, the Rams released Brooks soon after he learned his wife had cancer. Both the Cardinals and the Cowboys called, offering him contracts to come to training camp. He turned them down. “I just thought I was supposed to be with her at that point,” he said. “Certainly I didn’t want to be away from her.”

  After Jackie endured four months of painful chemo, the doctors told Ethan and Jackie that they thought they had it, that the cancer was gone. For a while they were encouraged and were ready to get on with their lives, the scare behind them. Ethan accepted a free-agent contract to play for Arizona in 2000. He and Jackie agreed that he would go to training camp alone so she could stay in Atlanta near her doctors and her job until they saw whether he made the team. On the phone, she told him all was well, but something didn’t sound right to Brooks. He made the team, and Jackie came out to join him in Phoenix.

  When he saw his wife again, Brooks knew she wasn’t healthy. She was weak and depressed. Soon after she arrived in Phoenix, she woke up in the middle of the night in so much pain that Ethan had to take her to the emergency room. That was when he found out that the cancer had come back. It was in her lungs and now, according to the doctors, in her kidneys. She had kept it from him while he was in training camp.

  “From that point on, it was a fast slide downhill,” he said. “It was a nightmare for me, but much, much worse for her.”

  Jackie needed dialysis two days a week. There were more trips to the emergency room. Brooks told only a small handful of people on the team that his wife was sick, never letting on how dire the situation had become. Soon after the end of the season, a doctor quietly told Ethan and Jackie that there really wasn’t much more that could be done other than trying to make her as comfortable as possible.

  “I’ll never forget the look on her face when he said that,” Brooks said. “I didn’t realize it, but she had been in denial about how sick she was. She said to the doctor, ‘Are you telling me I’m going to die?’ It was heartbreaking.”

  A couple of weeks later the Cardinals told Brooks they were going to release him. He hardly noticed. On March 3, 2001, Jackie died.

  Everyone told Ethan he needed to keep as busy as possible once the funeral was over. He agreed to sign with the Denver Broncos, which turned out to be a major mistake. “My agent and I didn’t understand that they basically just wanted me as a camp body,” he said. “They drafted some linemen that they liked and I never really got a chance to even compete for a job. I got into one series of the first exhibition game and that was it.”

  A camp body, in NFL vernacular, is just that: someone brought into camp to fill a uniform during early practices and exhibition games and to be around in case a slew of injuries hits a team. Brooks was cut after the third exhibition game, a relief, because he was miserable and just wanted to get out of Denver.

  He went back to Atlanta, to the town house he had bought soon after Jackie died. “It was right across from the apartment where we had lived,” he said. “We had talked about buying a house there and, on the spur of the moment, I bought it. Somehow, I thought it might make me feel better, to live where we had talked about living. I was wrong.”

  He began drinking heavily, hanging out in Buckhead, the same section of town that had brought Ray Lewis so much grief. “I can remember a few times just walking down the middle of the street, shouting at people, hoping someone would start a fight,” he said. “Some nights I think I was just hoping someone would run me over. I was lucky. I never got in a fight, never got arrested. One night I drove home absolutely drunk. That’s when I realized I had to get out of there.”

  He went home to Connecticut and began to piece his life back together. He worked out with his brother, a strength and conditioning coach, and found solace in his boyhood home. He thought he wanted one more chance to play again but wasn’t sure. No one from the NFL called when the season ended. In March he went to Boston with his brother for a clinic being conducted by a trainer. Afterward, he talked to the trainer about ne
eding a regimen like the one he was talking about. “If you want to work with me, come to Arizona,” the trainer said. “But be there by Wednesday.”

  That was in four days. Brooks thought about it. He wanted to go. “That told me I still wanted to play,” he said. “The fact that I was willing to make that kind of commitment to work on the spur of the moment.”

  It was June before anyone called. The Ravens had gone through their salary-cap purge and were searching for experienced players, especially experienced players who wouldn’t cost a lot of money. He worked out for Jim Colletto and signed a contract at the start of training camp. He went to camp hoping to make the team as a backup and ended up starting thirteen games because of injuries on the offensive line. That was a mixed blessing. Being back in the league was great, getting to play certainly an opportunity. But there were times when he felt overmatched by getting extensive playing time. Even so, the Ravens gave him a $250,000 signing bonus and a two-year contract for $1.25 million before the start of 2003. Not exactly Jonathan Ogden money, but more than Brooks ever dreamed of making as a football player when he was at Williams. He played less in 2003—starting three times—but felt more confident when he did play.

  Most important, perhaps, he felt very comfortable in the Ravens’ locker room. The other players enjoyed his dry sense of humor, and on an offensive line full of talkers, his quiet demeanor fit in well. The other O linemen had nicknamed him Big Swede, after a huge, silent character in an Eastwood movie (Eastwood was very big among the Ravens players and coaches), and he took to the nickname. He even asked Kevin Byrne if it might be possible sometime when he was introduced as a starter to be introduced as Big Swede. Byrne told him that was unlikely. He had finally reached the point where he was dating again, seeing a woman from Atlanta who worked as a flight attendant.

  “I don’t like to talk about things like finding perspective,” he said. “But I wake up every morning and realize how lucky I am to be alive and to be completely healthy. When I hear people talk about tragic losses, I just kind of laugh to myself. A lot of people in this sport have no idea what a tragic loss is.”

  Like it or not, Ogden’s injury meant Brooks would spend the week back in the spotlight, something he had never been comfortable with. The Browns had an outstanding right defensive end in Courtney Brown, and Brooks knew he would be under pressure all day. The coaches, he knew, would adapt the game plan to the fact that he was playing instead of Ogden: they would run right more often than usual, and Boller would frequently be limited to three-step drops when passing in order to get the ball off more quickly.

  “Swede will be fine,” Ogden said after going through some light agility drills apart from the team on Wednesday. “My question is, how will I do having to stand there and watch? I just hate that.”

  The first week of the season is always fraught with issues, some major (Ogden’s absence), most minor. As Billick had expected, the Browns were talking—which was exactly what he wanted. One of their linebackers had predicted that Jamal Lewis wouldn’t come close to gaining 100 yards in the game. One of their offensive players had called Ray Lewis overrated. Those two comments appeared under the dictionary definition of bulletin board material—great to post on the locker-room bulletin board to get the players riled up.

  There were also logistics to be dealt with. Each week on Wednesday, every team is required to file an injury report with the league and with its opponent. Any player who has any kind of injury is supposed to be listed. Those who are nicked and virtually certain to play are officially listed as “probable.” A player who is missing practice time but may play is listed as “questionable.” If a player is too hurt to practice but might somehow play on Sunday (usually meaning he will take some kind of painkiller to get on the field), he is listed as “doubtful.” Those on the injured list or who are definitely out of a game are listed as “out.”

  NFL teams constantly play mind games with injury lists. If there is any doubt in an opponent’s mind about the status of a key player, coaches never list him as out or even doubtful, because they want the opponent to have to prepare as if it might have to face him. Ogden would be listed as questionable even though he was almost certainly out. The Browns would not know for sure until 11:30 A.M. Sunday—ninety minutes before kickoff—when each team has to submit its list of eight inactive players. As with all things, the NFL attempts to be vigilant about the use—or abuse—of the injured list. If a team lists a player as out or doubtful and he plays, the league may request practice tape from the team. If the injured player shows up practicing on tape, then the team may be subject to a fine for listing a player who was healthy enough to practice as doubtful or out. The flip side occurs if a player not listed on the injured list doesn’t play. If the practice tape shows that he didn’t practice and the team didn’t list him, a fine is also likely.

  There’s no doubt that the league monitors the injured list closely in the interest of fairness, so teams can’t simply lie or even hedge too much about injuries. Of course, the injury list is also important to gamblers since knowing who will and won’t play affects betting lines and who bets on whom. The league would love people to believe that its popularity is based solely on the wonders of the game, the competition, and the remarkable athletic ability of the players. The fact is that a large chunk of the league’s popularity is driven by the fascination people have with betting on the games, both legally and illegally.

  On Wednesday afternoon the Ravens and Browns were playing injury-list chicken with each other. The Browns said that their list wasn’t quite ready and that they would fax it to the Ravens at any minute. The Ravens responded by saying theirs would be ready just as soon as the Browns’ was. “We won’t show you our list until you show us yours,” Kevin Byrne said, mimicking a taunting first-grader. “It all gets a bit silly at times.”

  The lists were finally exchanged, the fax buttons pushed at almost the same instant. The only real question mark among the Ravens was who would start at running back for the Browns. Lee Suggs, normally the starter, was listed as questionable. If he didn’t play, William Green, who had been a starter before off-field problems had benched him, would play in his place.

  The other issue was the production meeting. Every week NFL teams are required to produce coaches and players as requested for a meeting with a crew from the network televising that week’s game. Every NFL game is on network television, either CBS or Fox for Sunday afternoon games; ESPN on Sunday night, or ABC on Monday night. One of the things the networks demand in return for the billions of dollars they pay the NFL—hundreds of millions per network—is the right to sit down alone with players and coaches on either Friday or Saturday prior to a game.

  The networks hope to get a number of things from the meetings. First, perhaps foremost, is the opportunity for the announcers to say, “You know, when we talked to Ray Lewis yesterday, he told us . . .” They’re also seeking information: confirmation on injuries, who is out and who is not, who may be playing a little bit gimpy. Game plans: are any surprises planned, is there someone who may be more involved than the other team might think? There are technical questions about offensive and defensive schemes, almost always asked by the color commentator so he can reference those things during a broadcast. Frequently you will hear color commentators say things like “The Ravens are a team that doesn’t like to play cover-two very much,” without ever explaining what cover-two is. (Cover-two, for the record, is when the safeties play a deep zone, designed to cut off any long passes.)

  Frequently, the network production teams arrive on Friday in the city where a game is being played and hold their production meeting with the home team’s coach and players on Friday afternoon. Occasionally they do it on Saturday morning. The visiting production meeting is almost always held in the team hotel as soon as the team arrives on Saturday afternoon. The network generally sends four or five people to the meeting: the game producer, director, and the “talent”— play-by-play man, color commentator, and,
if there is one, the sideline reporter.

  CBS did not consider Ravens vs. Browns a marquee matchup, so the network’s number three crew would work the game. The announcing team would be Kevin Harlan and Randy Cross, the ex-49er. The producer was Ross Schneiderman and the director was Suzanne Smith. On Wednesday, as was standard procedure, Schneiderman called Kevin Byrne with his request list for the production meeting: Billick, Ray and Jamal Lewis, Deion Sanders, Kyle Boller, Todd Heap, Terrell Suggs, and Ed Reed. The standard was to request between four and six people.

  “That’s a lot of people,” Byrne said.

  “It’s the first week,” said Schneiderman. “We have a lot more questions now than we’d have later in the season.”

  Byrne didn’t think that was unreasonable. He had two concerns: one was Sanders, whose parting with CBS over the issue of how much the network was willing—or not willing—to pay him had been quite public. The other was Suggs. Three times during his rookie season, Suggs had been requested for production meetings; twice he had been a no-show. Since the team had been in Baltimore, Byrne had had only one player miss a production meeting once. In one season, Suggs had tripled that number.

  Byrne knew that Suggs wasn’t being a bad guy. He was just a kid, still adapting to the responsibilities of being a professional football player. Even now, in his second year, he would not turn twenty-two until almost halfway through the season. Suggs could say things in the locker room that might have started fights if he were older. Instead, everyone just laughed and said something like “T-Sizzle [his preferred nickname], when are you going to grow up?”

  Byrne had decided it was time for Sizzle to start growing up when it came to media responsibilities. He told him that CBS had asked for him for the production meeting in Cleveland and that he had better be there. “You already hold the record for no-shows,” he told him. “Don’t extend it.”