Gunslinger

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Gunslinger Page 31

by Jeff Pearlman


  Holmgren shrugged. “That’s all I can tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Beebe stormed out. He never learned, for a fact, why he was deactivated (though others in the organization insist Wolf was never a fan and didn’t want him in the game—an idea Wolf denied), but he retreated to his room and stewed for an hour. His roommate, a receiver named Bill Schroeder, walked in. When Beebe told him the news, he lost it. “That’s such bullshit,” he said. “That’s not how you treat people.”

  Word spread. Teammates knew how hard Beebe worked. He was a beloved grinder who brought savvy and experience and integrity to a relatively green wide receiver corps. Anderson, meanwhile, was a marginal NFL talent—“I loved Ronnie,” said Beebe, “but he was not going to play in the league.”* At that moment, something inside the Green Bay locker room changed. Coaches spoke of “family” all the time. We’re a family. Together, as a family, we can overcome. Don’t forget your brothers. But, as Don Beebe illustrated, it was nonsense. “Stuff like that opens your eyes,” said Beebe. “It opens everyone’s eyes.”

  It hardly helped that no one seemed to take Denver particularly seriously. Many of the players—Favre included—were drinking and partying the nights away, either inside the resort or somewhere downtown. “The way some of the guys handled preparation that week was awful,” said John Michels, a second-year offensive lineman. “If you were a Packer you knew about Max McGee, and how hung over he was before the first Super Bowl. Well, it seemed like our guys were trying to replicate that. Our mentality wasn’t the same as it had been in New Orleans. It was very disappointing.”

  Favre was a split personality. On the practice field—determined, focused. With his guy pals—a teenager seeking out dirty fun. With his family and friends—loving, kind, decent. During the 1995 season, Favre had struck up a kinship with Peter King, the Sports Illustrated football writer who came to Green Bay to profile the young quarterback. King was immediately mesmerized by Favre—“one of the most unique and interesting athletes I’ve ever covered,” he said. In particular King was moved to near tears by a moment from a Friday during the ’95 regular season, when the Packers staff held a 41st birthday party for Leo Yelle, the developmentally disabled man who worked in the mailroom and whose name Brett used to check into hotels. Practice had ended, and all the players were invited to attend. Only one did. “Not a single coach, staffer, player came, but Brett was there,” said King. “He probably spent an hour at the party, and he was really present. The secretaries who put the party on were crying. It was beautiful.”

  Now, more than two years later, Favre and King were tight enough to start a tradition. If the writer was covering the Packers that week, he and Favre would share a Friday-night dinner. “It began with a win, so Brett saw it as good luck,” said King. “They kept on winning, we kept eating together.” King would be covering the Super Bowl, so, naturally, Favre insisted they dine. He called the writer and said, “There’s gonna be 19 of us. Can you find somewhere we can eat in San Diego?” Then, a pause. “Do me a favor. Can you find a girl you might know, around Brittany’s age? Maybe 9 or 10? She’d hate it, being the only kid at a dinner with all the adults.”

  King is from New Jersey. He was a writer who spent the majority of his time in press boxes and locker rooms. He knew no 10-year-old girls in San Diego. However, this was no ordinary request. When you’re covering the Super Bowl for Sports Illustrated, and the league MVP wants to dine, you find a way to dine. So King called Dan Squiller, his closest friend dating back to their days at Ohio University, and asked whether his daughter Brooke (age: 10) would enjoy eating with Brett Favre two nights before the Super Bowl.

  Come again?

  “My best friend was Annalisa, and her birthday party was the same day,” said Brooke, who is now an attorney. “I wasn’t a Packers fan, but I sort of knew who Brett Favre was. I mean, I knew he was important and famous. For a kid, how do you pass this up?”

  They ate at George’s, a fancy La Jolla restaurant. Brooke was terrified. She wore a new lime-green dress, just as bright as Favre’s neon-orange T-shirt. The quarterback complimented her on the wardrobe choice.

  “Hey, Brooke,” Favre said, “what’d you do in school today?”

  “Studied Spanish, I guess. Lots of Spanish,” said Brooke, who attended a bilingual magnet school. “Everybody’s talking about the Super Bowl, though.”

  “What do you want to do with your life?” he said.

  “Be a marine biologist, I think.”

  “You have a boyfriend?” he said.

  Brooke’s cheeks turned bright red. “I actually had two boyfriends at the time,” she said. “But I denied it, and everyone laughed because it was so obviously a lie.”

  The evening was wonderful (“A top-five life moment,” Brooke said). Brooke thought Deanna Favre was beautiful. She found Brittney to be charming. As the evening came to an end, Brooke asked King for a coin. He dug a penny from his pocket, and she proceeded to kiss it, then hand it to the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. “This is for good luck,” she told him. “In the Super Bowl.”

  According to pretty much everyone, the Denver Broncos were in San Diego to serve as Packer roadkill. By Sunday, the betting line had increased to two touchdowns, and only one major football writer—Adam Schefter of the Denver Post—predicted a Broncos triumph. “I was around that team a lot,” he said. “And they were good. People didn’t seem to see that.” It hardly helped Denver’s cause that the AFC had lost 13 straight Super Bowls. Its teams were considered soft, passive, weak.

  “But that was nonsense,” said Terrell Davis, Denver’s star halfback. “We were built like an NFC team. Everyone talked about John Elway, and rightly so—he’s a legend, a great man, everything. But, really, we were a team that ran the ball and played physical defense. There was nothing flamboyant about us.”

  In the week leading up to the game, the Broncos were everything the Packers were not—focused, happy, relaxed. Just as Favre liked to dine with King as a regular good-luck charm, Davis had his own weekly ritual. Every Wednesday or Thursday he would check in with Ray Crockett, the Broncos’ standout cornerback, and ask how he felt about the week’s defensive game plan. “Sometimes Ray would say, ‘It’s some raw bullshit. I don’t like it,’ and I knew we were in trouble,” said Davis. “But he was convinced we were gonna beat up Green Bay.”

  Sports Illustrated’s Michael Silver spent the week following the Broncos, and he developed a rapport with Mike Shanahan, the head coach. During an off-the-record sit-down, Shanahan told the writer, “Just between you and me, we’re going to win the game. With all this hype Green Bay’s getting, the whole AFC inferiority thing, how Denver has played in the Super Bowl and how the Packers played against the 49ers, everybody will be stroking them. It will all work in our favor.” Each morning in San Diego, Shanahan devoted 45 minutes to finding disparaging articles about his team and meticulously clipping them from the newspapers. On Saturday night, he presented the players with one derogatory story after another.

  The game was slated to commence at 6:30 p.m. eastern time, on a manicured field with the air warmed to a delightful 60 degrees. Shortly before kickoff, when the teams were introduced, enormous banners featuring the likenesses of Favre and Elway were unfurled. Up in a Qualcomm Stadium luxury suite, Bonita and Irvin Favre beamed. “The two of them looked at each other and I saw pride across their faces,” said Mark Kelly, a family friend. “I wish I had a camera, because it was a look of, ‘All that hard work paid off.’ It was beautiful.”

  As opposed to New Orleans, where Packers fans outnumbered Patriots fans by a solid 10:1 ratio, the divide in San Diego was fairly even. When Favre trotted out to the field for the opening series, he received a standing ovation from half the crowd. Moments later, when he beat Denver’s blitz to hit Antonio Freeman with a 22-yard bullet for a touchdown, the roar was loud—but hardly volcanic. “No one said it was over on our sideline,” Favre recalled, “but in the back of our minds everyone was t
hinking that this might be one of those 52–17 deals like Dallas and Buffalo a few years back.” Five minutes later, though, Denver countered with Davis’s 1-yard end zone plunge to tie the game, and an equally loud sound overtook the stands. “You could tell pretty early this wasn’t going to be a repeat, where we controlled everything,” said Michels. “The Broncos were a lot better than the Patriots.”

  Toward the end of the first quarter, Davis was leg-whipped by Santana Dotson, the Packers’ enormous lineman, and slammed his head into the ground. The blow was firm and direct, and Davis knew trouble was likely. Beginning when he was seven and growing up in a small house on Florence Street in (of all places) San Diego, Davis suffered from crippling migraines that could last as briefly as an hour or as long as a few days. The first one occurred as he was waiting in a parking lot for his mother to pick him up from Pop Warner. “I was seeing things in pieces, looking at players on the field but I could no longer see them,” he said. “I could barely find my way to the car, it was so bad.” The headaches followed. “I wanted to kill myself,” he said. “It was that bad—I actually wanted to commit suicide. And it lasted until the next morning.”

  On the morning of the Super Bowl, Davis had somehow forgotten to ingest Indocin, the preventative migraine medicine he used before every game, in a timely manner. “I took it right before introductions, which wasn’t enough time,” he said. “It didn’t kick in.” When a whistle marked the conclusion of the first quarter, Davis’s vision went out. “I could see nothing clearly,” he recalled. “Not the colorful Super Bowl XXXII banners hanging all around Qualcomm, not the Bronco trainers trying to fend off my migraine, not my teammates asking me if I was alright. All I saw was a kaleidoscope of pain.”

  The second quarter resumed with the Broncos sitting on the Green Bay 1-yard line. Shanahan knew Davis was living his own private hell, but begged him to return to the field for the upcoming play, a quarterback keeper after a fake handoff. “If you’re not in there,” Shanahan said, “they won’t believe we’re going to run the ball.”

  Davis could barely see. But he could hear. When the ball was snapped, he charged straight ahead and plunged into Green Bay’s Bernardo Harris, a blob of white, green, and gold, as Elway snuck into the end zone.

  Davis retreated to the sideline and vomited. In all the hype of returning home to play in his first Super Bowl, Davis spent the remainder of the half on the bench, and the Broncos entered halftime with a 17–14 lead. The pain finally cleared, and he returned for the third quarter, and promptly fumbled on his first touch. The turnover resulted in a 27-yard field goal from Green Bay’s Ryan Longwell. The game was tied at 17.

  The Denver defense was strong. Against the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI, Favre enjoyed endless hours of sitting in the pocket, waiting for receivers. This time, the Broncos disguised blitzes and coverage schemes. Steve Atwater, an All-Pro safety, was unstoppable, at one point destroying Favre with a backside blitz that caused him to fumble. “We found out how good they really were,” said Bob Kuberski, the Packers’ defensive tackle. “They were anything but pushovers.” Denver scored on a short Davis run to hold a 24–17 lead at the end of the third quarter, but Green Bay again bounced back, and Favre’s 13-yard dart to Freeman in the corner of the end zone resulted in another tie. With 13 minutes remaining, fans were witnessing one of the all-time great Super Bowls.

  As the game wore on, Denver’s offensive linemen retreated to the sideline to report that Green Bay’s defense seemed exhausted. Reggie White, the greatest pass rusher on the planet, had torn his hamstring earlier in the week, missed two days of practice, then returned to explain to his dumbfounded teammates that God had healed him. The religious Packers players found this inspiring. The others were skeptical. “I don’t give a shit what he’s saying,” Wayne Simmons, the linebacker, said in the locker room, “God don’t reattach hamstrings.” He was right. By the third quarter White was a Division III lineman in No. 92 clothing, leaning and pushing with no trace of power. His stat line for the game: one tackle. The team’s second-best lineman, Gilbert Brown, wasn’t hurt, but also turned in a mediocre performance. “I had Gilbert [as a rookie] in Minnesota,” said John Teerlinck, Denver’s defensive line coach. “We let him go because he was unwilling to work. He was a lazy player. You saw it in the Super Bowl.”

  “He was lying down out there,” said Tom Nalen, Denver’s center. “We thought he was hurt, but he was just tired.”

  Holmgren had to place his hopes in Gabe Wilkins, a fourth-year defensive tackle whose six-foot-five, 304-pound frame made him as easy to move as a fire hydrant. The year had been a breakout one for the former Gardner-Webb standout, who recorded a career-high 50 total tackles and five and a half sacks. Wilkins, however, was in the final year of his contract and playing on a slightly injured right knee. “He changed his mentality,” said Travis Jervey, the reserve running back. “I sat and watched him argue with coaches on the sideline, screaming, ‘Shit! I’m not ruining my knee for this!’” Jervey couldn’t believe it. He turned to a teammate and said, ‘Holy shit, Gabe basically said, Fuck it. I’m not staying in.’”

  “If you ask Gabe today, hopefully he’s man enough to admit he didn’t step up,” said Kuberski. “We needed him, because we were battered and out of breath.”

  Shanahan recognized a wounded opponent. Denver ran 20 offensive plays over three fourth-quarter possessions. Twelve were handoffs to Terrell Davis (two were nullified because of penalties), who gained 51 yards and carried the Broncos to the Green Bay 1-yard line with the score tied and 1:47 remaining. By now, the Packers defense was a pile of slop—huffing, puffing, hands atop knees. “They were all totally exhausted,” said Teerlinck. “The field was super wet, super soft, and super slow. We always substituted players to keep everyone fresh. Green Bay did not.” Steve Bono, the smart backup quarterback, noticed time ticking away and the Packers down to only two time-outs. He ran to Holmgren and screamed, “Let them score! Let them score!”

  On the next play, Davis took the ball from Elway and the seas parted. As he walked into the end zone, the Bronco players leapt into the air, fists pumping, screaming, hollering, exulting. “So much for the pushover AFC,” said Davis. “That was put to rest.” With Jason Elam’s extra point, the Broncos led 31–24. There was 1:45 remaining. “Too much time to give Brett,” said Chamberlain. “Way, way too much time.” Favre began to warm up along the sideline, and Freeman returned the kickoff to the Packers 30.

  This was the type of moment Brett Favre embraced. He wanted the ball late, with the stadium packed and the lights bright and everything on the line. On first down, he threw a screen to Dorsey Levens, who scampered 22 yards to the Broncos 48. The next play was another screen to Levens, who was immediately tackled for no gain. There was 1:11 left, and the Packers called a time-out. “I don’t think anyone on our team didn’t believe we were about to win the Super Bowl,” said Michels. “Brett’s marching us down the field, they can’t really stop us.” The next two passes went to Levens, who gained a combined 17 yards. It was now second and 6 from the Denver 31. The Packers needed a touchdown to tie.

  Favre dropped back and fired a pass up the middle to Freeman, who dropped a catchable ball. His next throw, on third and 6, reached Robert Brooks at the same moment Atwater bulldozed the receiver. Incomplete. A time-out was called. The clock read 32 seconds. Favre walked the cocky walk and talked the cocky talk. Inside, though, he was doubtful. “I didn’t give up,” he recalled. “Believe me, I wanted it worse than anything. But they had played well in those situations all day long and I didn’t think it’d be any different now.”

  The play call arrived from the sideline—“All Hook.” Derrick Mayes, the wide receiver, lined up wide left and ran a square out route. Freeman, standing in the left slot, and Brooks, wide right, ran hooks. And Mark Chmura, Favre’s close friend, lined up across from John Mobley, the Broncos’ excellent linebacker. “When I came to the line I could see that they were going to blitz,” Favre recalled. “Which
means I had to pick a side. You don’t have time to look all over the field.”

  Of the four options, the one Favre trusted least was Mayes, whose flair for making acrobatic catches in practice was offset by an injury-ravaged body. Favre didn’t have many pet peeves, but one was teammates who couldn’t stay on the field. Mayes was always hurt.

  This time, as Favre took the snap from Frank Winters, Mayes ran the perfect route, darting through the secondary and into the end zone, where he stood all alone. “Uncovered,” he said. “Nobody near me.” Maybe it was the hugeness of the moment, or his mistrust of Mayes, or a simple misread, but Favre failed to spot the receiver. What he did see was Chmura—tall, strong, dependable—8 yards away. Favre threw the ball his way, and as the tight end crossed the middle he seemed in perfect position to make the catch. At the last moment, however, Mobley—running along with Chmura—stretched his arms and knocked the ball to the ground.

  Game over.

  The Broncos sideline turned into a New Year’s Eve bash. The Packers sideline turned into a funeral procession. Mayes fell to his knees. Super Bowl glory had been one throw away. Everything would have changed had Favre found him in the rear of the end zone. “We fucking lost,” Mayes said. “How? All of a sudden you hear nothing but crickets, and you feel like the lowest thing on earth.”

  “I played with Cleveland one season when we went 3-13. That was awful. but I’d rather go 3-13 than lose in the Super Bowl,” said Holland, the defensive lineman. “It’s the ultimate insult, the worst feeling you can possibly have on the earth. You’re inches away, and you get nothing.”

  Favre met with Elway on the field, hugged and congratulated his friendly rival. “I know you feel bad and everything,” Elway said. “But imagine what I’ve been through to get where I am right now.” Favre smiled and retreated to the gloom of the locker room, where he greeted the inevitable onslaught of reporters. King let his peers ask their questions before approaching for his own one-on-one. Favre was pulling off his uniform when King reached his locker. The quarterback removed both socks, then ripped a piece of tape off his ankle and snatched a small object from the sticky side. “Here,” Favre said. “Give this back to Brooke if you see her, and make sure to thank her. I’m sure it’s good luck to her. It just wasn’t for me.”

 

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