The Best American Sports Writing 2018

by Glenn Stout

  “It’s probably been my toughest year of football,” he said.

  The final tally for this season: the Giants started 0-5; lost 21 players to injured reserve, including their three top receivers; briefly benched Manning in favor of Geno Smith; and fired their head coach and general manager. They began the day tied for third in the NFL in dropped passes, 31st in scoring offense, and 32nd in total defense. Manning absorbed it all, as he usually does, with those slouching shoulders and that falling, self-effacing voice and kept coming back for more with that easy temperament of his. Which was why after it was all over, interim coach Steve Spagnuolo waited on the field to catch him as he jogged off and hugged him for a long moment.

  “We’ve both been through a lot and none more so than him with this season, but he never changed,” Spagnuolo said. “He’s had the highest of highs, and this was certainly very, very low, but he’s a tremendous competitor, and I appreciate him greatly.”

  If there is a silver lining for Manning, it may be that he finally gets some credit for his grit, which is continually underestimated but allowed him to start 210 straight games. Over the years his shambling, nonchalant-seeming body language has made it easy to misread him; he can seem passive or easily defeated.

  “I always heard them say Eli doesn’t care,” his father, Archie, said once. “Eli cares. But Eli doesn’t worry.”

  This season, though, there was worry. The injuries mounted around him: he lost every member of the starting offensive line, and when Odell Beckham Jr., Brandon Marshall, and Dwayne Harris all had to undergo surgery, there went 1,342 catches and 128 touchdowns. He was left with some talented but unrehearsed young strangers at the receiver positions. “Hard to be on rhythm and on time,” he said. It made everyone look bad—and Manning picked up the tab for it.

  Manning will turn 37 years old this week, and the sand is running out. But he insists there still is enough in him to compete. “I think I still have good football in me,” he said earlier in the week. “I don’t want to stop playing football. This is all I want to do. I don’t have a backup plan, I don’t have something I’m looking forward to doing when this is done.”

  Whether the new Giants management believes that remains to be seen. The Giants have the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft and may well look for their future quarterback in it. Though newly appointed general manager Dave Gettleman has suggested publicly the Giants want to keep Manning, nothing is promised, as Manning noted. “I think we’ve just got to see what happens,” he said. “I always think the talks in person are more important than what’s said in the media.”

  It would be a mistake for the Giants to let him out of the building.

  Even in one of his worst seasons as a pro, Manning defined professionalism and resilience. He never wavered in the face of criticism, still exercised his devotion to craft, still found a way to throw for more touchdowns than interceptions. He regained the starting job after the indignity of his benching. And after all that, he managed to win an unlikely game. A meaningless one that somehow meant everything to him.

  “I believe he’s got some football left—a lot of football in him,” Spagnuolo said. “He’s a competitor. Competitors—they last in this league. And you need them.”

  Lars Anderson

  The Death of a Teenage Quarterback

  from B/R Mag

  The mother walks through the midnight darkness of the upstairs hallway in their New Jersey home, pushing open the door to her only child’s bedroom. She checks his closet—sometimes she’ll put on his clothes to feel close to him, to smell him, to be with him—and then examines his books on a shelf. Her boy had a way with words and wanted to become a writer, and now the mother is looking for a message from him, a clue, even though she knows she’ll never really find one.

  The coach ambles onto the football field in western New Jersey where it all went so terribly wrong two autumns ago. He comes here now, in the rolling green foothills of the Pocono Mountains, to be close to the spot where he last saw the quarterback who was unlike any other player in his 37-year coaching career. He’s still trying to understand the cruelness of it all, the meaning of that last game, even though he knows he never really will.

  The best friend sits on a wooden bench in the park where they played together and dreamed together. He closes his eyes and replays it all again on the grainy film of memory: the basketball games in this park, the football, the soccer, the skinned elbows, the laughter. The bench is the best friend’s favorite place in the world, and on many summer nights when he’s home from college he’ll come here and, alone in the pines, rehash the final hours of the life of Evan Murray, wondering if football is to blame, trying to make sense of his best friend’s death at age 17, even though he knows he never really will.

  The last day begins when the alarm on Evan Murray’s bedroom nightstand buzzes at 5:45 a.m. It’s September 25, 2015. He lifts his 6-foot-2, 190-pound frame out of his bed and touches his size-13 feet to the carpeted floor. Already, the high school senior is excited by the promise of this Friday: it’s game day between Warren Hills Regional High—where Evan is the starting quarterback—and Summit (New Jersey) High. Kickoff is 13 hours away.

  He presses on his iPod and blares Chance the Rapper, the beat so loud it practically shakes the upstairs windows in the four-bedroom house on this quiet street with lush lawns and soaring oaks. He showers, slips on his blue-and-white No. 18 jersey—he wears it in honor of Peyton Manning, who he had recently profiled for an English class—and slides into his 2010 Volkswagen Passat. It is now 6:30 a.m.

  He swings by the house of a teammate, Shane Plenge, and the two drive to Muheisen’s Bagel & Deli. Evan orders his usual French toast bagel with cream cheese and a plain bagel with cream cheese. He washes them down with a tall carton of chocolate milk. As the teammates eat breakfast in the car, Evan seems quieter than usual, but Plenge chalks it up to game-day anticipation.

  The two drive to school, with Evan steering the silver Passat through the cloudless early morning. Evan’s father, Tom, had given him the Volkswagen only two weeks earlier, replacing the family minivan Evan had been driving. Oh man, Evan’s friends loved to mock his “middle-age mom’s minivan,” as they called it, but he embraced how uncool he looked behind the wheel, always motoring into the school parking lot with his sunglasses on, windows down, rap music thumping, and the slyest of smiles lighting his face. That was Evan being Evan, a goofball’s goofball.

  He guides his Passat into the high school parking lot and turns into stall No. 287—his assigned spot. The starting quarterback for the Blue Streaks then grabs his backpack and strides into school, his gait steady and strong, the easy glide of a star athlete. Evan had once considered quitting football if he wasn’t named the starting quarterback—he had no desire to ride the bench and could be as impetuous as any teenager—but now was living his halcyon days. A student tells him to “kick some ass” against Summit High.

  Kelly Murray, Evan’s mother, is in St. Clair, Michigan, moving her own mother into the hospice care wing at a nursing home. Kelly hasn’t seen Evan for eight days. She sends him a text message early in the morning.

  “Good luck bud,” the text reads. “Be safe. I love you.”

  Evan texts back: “I love you too.”

  She always grew so terrified on fall Friday nights as she approached those lights, some 40 feet tall, that cast an amber glow onto the football field. Before home games at Warren Hills Regional High in Washington Township, Kelly Murray paced in the school parking lot as other parents tailgated and talked. Then, once the game began, she’d continue pacing across the walkways and stairs in the grandstands, unable to sit still.

  “Evan, you know I’m not in favor of you playing football,” Kelly told her son five years earlier, when he first signed up to play in a youth league. “I won’t stop you, but I’ll never feel good about it because it’s so dangerous.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” replied Evan, then 12 years old. “I can get hurt playing ba
sketball and in other sports too. Trust me, I’ll be just fine.”

  Kelly took every precaution. Six weeks before Evan’s final season, she drove him to a doctor’s office for his annual precamp physical. She watched intently as the physician pushed on his stomach, listened to his heart, and flashed a light into his eyes.

  Evan never complained about being sick. As a toddler, Kelly would realize he was ill only when he vomited. But then again, Evan’s deal-with-it demeanor was evident right away: born 10 weeks early, he spent the first six weeks of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit, fighting for breath, rarely crying even then.

  From then on he’d been a textbook overachiever; as a teenager, for instance, he’d read novels when most of his classmates were watching television, not just for the pleasure, but also because he understood it improved his writing and his relationship with words.

  “Tell me if you’re not feeling well,” Kelly said on numerous occasions.

  “Mom,” Evan would reply, “I’m good just like always.”

  The doctor pronounced Evan fit to play after his 15-minute physical before his senior year, assuring Kelly that her son was a healthy young man.

  Still, six weeks after that exam, Kelly is a mess of nerves as game time ticks closer. She tells a friend in Michigan, “I should be there with my son.”

  Seven hours before kickoff, Evan Murray is sitting in his government class, his head bobbing. Evan’s big hazel eyes usually flash with curiosity, but now he has trouble keeping them open as he rests his head on his right hand, which is propped up by his elbow anchored to the desk. Evan is an A student—in his junior year he recorded the school’s highest PSAT score in the English comprehension section—and no one in the class is accustomed to seeing him doze during a lecture.

  The bell rings to signal the end of the period. The brightness in Evan’s eyes suddenly returns. In the hall he nods at virtually every student he passes, his chin held high. Evan was named the starting quarterback late in his sophomore season, and now he knows how to play that role, projecting confidence and strength to every curious glance shot his way. This is what his hero Peyton Manning did, and this is what Evan does now.

  Even when Evan was 15, he organized players-only practice sessions and tutored older players in the nuances of the playbook, which Evan seemed to memorize after one reading. Now he is usually the last player to head to the showers after practice. He lingers on the field, staying late with receivers and launching long, spiraling passes through the twilight. From their cars on Jackson Valley Road, locals driving home from work can see the silhouette of No. 18 striving to get better.

  “I coached for over 35 years, and Evan was one of the hardest-working players I ever had,” says Larry Dubiel, the longtime head football coach at Warren Hills. “A dream player—an absolute coach’s dream.”

  Piloting a pro-style offense that features sprint-outs and bootlegs, Evan is a dual-threat quarterback. He has a strong arm—he consistently throws a 90-mile-per-hour fastball as a starting pitcher on the Warren Hills baseball team—and is a capable runner. In the season opener, Evan threw for 209 yards and a touchdown in Warren Hills’s 24–23 loss to Cranford. Eight days later, he passed for 290 yards and three touchdowns in the Blue Streaks’ 28–21 win over Rahway.

  Now six hours before kickoff against Summit High, Evan spots his head coach in the school hallway. They talk about an opposing cornerback they think they can beat on deep routes.

  “I can’t wait,” Evan says. “This is going to be so much fun. We got this, Coach. We got this.”

  Evan knows his grandmother is sick. So three days before his final game, he sits at the desk in the study of his house and writes a letter, the love pouring from his pen.

  Dear Grandma Margie,

  It’s Evan, your favorite Grandson (of course)! . . . Football is going well so far, even though we lost our first game 24–23. It was a great game, back and forth the whole time, and it came down to the final seconds. Even though we didn’t come out on top, I was encouraged because I had over 200 yards passing, and the other team was favored by about 30 points. The next week we won 28–21, and I had another great game . . . School is challenging because I have lots of highlevel classes, but I’m doing well! Keep being strong Grandma, I love you so much!

  Love,

  Evan

  The next morning, before driving to school, Evan addresses an envelope and affixes a stamp. The letter is mailed 36 hours before kickoff.

  Five hours before kickoff, with classes out for the day, Evan drives a few friends to QuickChek convenience store—and they buy subs for themselves and teammates.

  They return to the school cafeteria, where the players eat and the entire team watches a movie. At one point Evan leaves to use the restroom. When he sits back down with his friends, he remarks on the strange color of his urine.

  The team holds a walkthrough practice on the Warren Hills basketball court, reviewing plays and formations and game strategies. Evan is his usual self, correcting mistakes by his teammates and explaining how important it will be to be precise in everything they do in just three hours out on the football field, across Jackson Valley Road from the school.

  The players pull on their uniforms in the school locker room and, with kickoff 70 minutes away, walk toward the field. Evan leads the way.

  Three nights before his final game, Evan sat down in the family study to tackle his English homework. The assignment was to write an essay for a pretend college application answering the following question: Choose a community to which you belong and describe that community and your place within it.

  His head buried in a circle of lamplight, Evan tapped the keys on his computer for two hours, distilling his thoughts onto the computer screen. “The group that I am most proud to be a part of . . . is the football team,” Evan wrote.

  I believe that I help bring all these groups in the Warren Hills community together for a short time. I play quarterback and am charged with leading the team on and off the field. Being in this position really puts my life in perspective and emphasizes what it means to be a Blue Streak, because I find myself being a spokesperson for our team everywhere I go.

  . . .

  There is nothing like playing on Friday nights in front of the whole Blue Streak community, with all its groups and members coming together to cheer us on. After games, I talk to countless people about how the game went, and I find that so many people take a special interest in what we do, and that makes me truly feel like I make a small difference in the community. Bringing everybody together for one night in the week makes me proud to be a Blue Streak, and to be the leader of the group makes me feel even prouder.

  Thirty hours before kickoff, Evan hands the essay to his teacher. He plans to send it along with his application to the University of Michigan.

  The father takes his seat on top of the tiny wooden press box, papers and pens spread out before him on a table. Tom Murray, purchasing director for Bed Bath & Beyond, is a statistician for the Warren High football team. He does this not out of his love for numbers but to be closer to his only son. A stoic man, Tom can’t suppress his pride in Evan.

  With kickoff 20 minutes away on this sparkling fall night, Tom watches his son warm up from his perch above the field, a thin smile stretching across his face. With each passing week this summer and fall, the frontiers of what is possible have expanded for Evan, and no one is more aware of this than his father. His friends know not to bother him during games.

  The stands begin to fill with about 1,500 fans, most clad in blue and white. Evan is hitting his receivers in stride during his pregame throws, the passes rarely touching the field turf. “We’re expecting a big night from you,” Coach Dubiel tells Evan. “You’re our leader.”

  Tom Murray continues to watch his son. Six days earlier, the two had driven together to Pittsburgh, where Evan pitched for a baseball coach at the University of Pittsburgh. The Panthers are recruiting Evan to play baseball, but during his informa
l “tryout,” Evan struggled with his velocity and control. When pressed by his father if he felt okay, Evan insisted he was fine. “Just a little tired,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  From his metal folding chair atop the press box, Tom studies his son carefully, analyzing his pregame movements and throws and mannerisms and countenance.

  Evan looks absolutely wonderful.

  Minutes before kickoff, 615 miles away in St. Clair, Michigan, Kelly Murray glances at her watch. A familiar feeling grips her—the queasiness of knowing her son is about to step between the white lines.

  Kelly has always enjoyed the sleepy pace of life in St. Clair (population: 5,802), the town near where she grew up that now offers her a nice escape from the hustle of East Coast living. Located in the eastern “thumb” of the state, St. Clair is home to the longest freshwater boardwalk in the world, and Kelly has always enjoyed losing herself by taking leisurely, lovely strolls along the St. Clair River, gazing across the water into Canada. Here she feels safe.

  She joins two friends at the River Crab restaurant on the St. Clair. She looks at her watch again. It reads 6:58. Two minutes later, she looks again.

  “What’s the matter?” a friend asks Kelly after they are seated at a riverside table. Outside the window, the evening sunlight dances on the water and glitters like diamonds. “Why are you so serious?”

  “It’s game time,” Kelly says. “I’ve just got a funny feeling.”

  She wishes to be with her son.

  Evan jogs onto the field for the Blue Streaks’ first offensive possession. He looks to the sideline and receives the play call from his head coach. He’s alert in the huddle, his eyes gleaming, and before the first snap he tells his teammates that this is their time, their moment, their night.