Since there are no preseason games in the UFL, the Nighthawks are forced to hold two intrasquad scrimmages. They are announced via the team’s website and Twitter account, and through the Omaha World-Herald, which is the only press outlet that’s covering the team. (The beat writer is a bearded man named Steven Pivovar, who, deep in Cornhusker territory, wears a University of Texas hat. “I like to swim upstream,” he says.)
Joe is sure that Virginia, the first opponent the Nighthawks will be facing once the season begins, will have scouts at both scrimmages, even though it’s technically against league rules. But Joe sees this circumstance as a chance for a bit of subterfuge. In the press and on blogs and websites, the Nighthawks’ new offense has mostly been characterized—wrongly—as a true option offense, akin to the old Wishbone attack, where the quarterback runs and either keeps the ball or pitches it to a back running parallel to him. Joe wants to play up that perception so that Virginia might use up valuable practice time preparing for it. He draws up two plays for the scrimmages, “UFL Option Pitch,” in which the quarterback will pitch the ball to the running back, and “UFL Option Keep,” in which he will keep it and run. “Let the defense know when either play is called,” says Joe. “We want the runners to gain some serious yards before they are tackled.”
Olivadotti, who wants to remain the alpha dog of his defense and not call a soft play, says, with a serious laugh: “You tell the defense and you make that call for them, Joe.”
On the day of the first scrimmage, which is held at the Kroc, it’s ninety-five degrees outside. The blustery prairie wind offers no relief and instead feels like the breath of a dragon. A smattering of fans gathers, draping their arms over the fence that encloses the field, like railbirds watching the racehorses. Four of them are wearing overalls, looking like they just stepped off the tractor. Joe calls the first play, “UFL Option Keep.”
Masoli, who has just returned to the team after being cut by the 49ers, receives the ball in the shotgun formation and rolls to his right. He fakes a pitch to the running back, Shaud Williams, then turns upfield, no doubt expecting to gain an easy fifteen yards before being gently taken to the ground.
But there’s a problem. A new guy had come in late the night before, a rookie safety named Mike O’Connell. He’s a bit undersized for the position, but he is known for his ferocious hits and total lack of regard for his own body (he had once perforated his bowel while blocking a kick in high school). Someone forgot to tell O’Connell about the special plays.
So instead of a leisurely run through the defense, Masoli is met at the line of scrimmage and violently popped into his back by 200 pounds of eager white safety.
O’Connell jumps to his feet and pumps his fist, turning to what he believes are the welcoming arms of his new defensive mates. But his teammates are actually throwing their arms up in the air. “What the hell is wrong with you, kid?”
Later on in the scrimmage, during a kickoff, O’Connell—on the coverage team—makes a classic tackle on the returner, wrapping him in his arms, picking him up off his feet, and driving him into the turf. This time his teammates return his backslaps. Joe turns to Olivadotti and raises his eyebrows. “I like that kid,” he says.
Otherwise, the scrimmage is putrid. The special teams are completely disorganized. The offense is worse, committing four turnovers that the defense returns for touchdowns. And the stifling heat turns what Joe envisioned as a crisp, energetic scrimmage into more of a slow-walking death march. Joe gathers the team at midfield after the final whistle. “This does not cut it!”
Later, at the coaches’ meeting, Joe first addresses Andrus and his offensive staff. “We are focusing on too much stuff that doesn’t matter. I’m starting to get worried about time. We have one more week of camp, then it’s game week. There really is no time. I would rather run one play, and run it really well, than run fifteen crappy plays.”
Then he turns his gaze on Kent, the special teams coach. But before he can get a word out, Kent speaks. “I’m sorry, Coach. That was chaotic out there. I’m really embarrassed.”
Joe’s message to him is similar to the one he had for Andrus. “Don’t be embarrassed, but let’s fix this. Don’t do too much yourself, or you’ll just keep spinning your wheels. Be phenomenal at the things you have to do, cut back, or ask for help.”
In the week leading up to the second and final scrimmage, Mueller springs some surprising news on the coaching staff. He has signed Troy Smith, the 2006 Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback who started six games for the 49ers in 2010, and was named the NFL’s offensive player of the week after one of those starts. The 49ers had not re-signed Smith. He had nowhere else to go. Joe tells the coaches that Smith will be the third-string quarterback, at least until he learns the offense. Some coaches and players express concerns that Smith, who is known for being willful and vocal in the locker room, will not accept that diminished a role on the team. But Joe has spoken to him at length on the phone. “I told him if he’s trouble, we’ll cut him,” says Joe. With Smith the Nighthawks now have two former Heisman-winning quarterbacks. He will be making the UFL-mandated salary for a third-string quarterback: $2,000 a game.
The three Nighthawks quarterbacks are a study in contrasts. Crouch is clean-shaven with a boyish shock of brown hair, the All-American kid. He wears a white towel around his neck at nearly all times, giving the impression of a boxer who has just finished a training session. Masoli has big, curly, unkempt hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He has a body more like a running back’s: short and squat, with calves shaped like bowling pins. He’s nearly a dead ringer for the Vincent Chase character on the former HBO show Entourage. (To perfect the resemblance, Vince would need to stand in front of one of those funhouse mirrors that make you look shorter and wider.) Smith, the only one with NFL experience, has a neatly trimmed Afro and Fu Manchu, and he wears diamond studs in his ears. The other two may run a bit better, but Smith throws the best deep ball of the trio, by far. But he has weeks to go before he will completely grasp the playbook. And anyway, despite his credentials, he’d have a tough time cracking the starting lineup right away. Joe has a virtue that can sometimes become a fault: he is intensely loyal. Crouch and Masoli have been with the team for most of the season, starting in minicamp. They have proven their loyalty to Joe and the team. Joe, in return, will reciprocate. If Joe and the team lose because of that loyalty, then so be it.
The second scrimmage, to be played in the Nighthawks’ home stadium, TD Ameritrade Park, will be a true dress rehearsal. (The park got its naming rights in 2009, after Joe left TD Ameritrade, and before he joined the Nighthawks.) Joe wants the team to do exactly what they will do on game day, from wearing their actual jerseys, to performing the pregame warm-ups, to going into the locker room at halftime. The day before the scrimmage, he even has the team practice standing for the National Anthem. These details may seem trivial, inessential. But they do matter. John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, used to have his players practice putting on their socks. “Details create success,” Wooden once said.
The details matter for Joe personally, too. As much as he wants his team to go through the motions, he also wants to simulate the experience for himself so that he will be more comfortable on game day, so it will all be less of an unknown. After all, he hasn’t actually been responsible for leading a team on the field for nearly thirty years.
The scrimmage will also be the last act before final cuts. The roster of 70 will need to be trimmed to 51 (the NFL has rosters of 53; the UFL slices off two from that total, presumably to save some money).
Joe is still worried about the offense. He does a spreadsheet. By his count, a redshirt freshman college quarterback will have taken 6,440 snaps in a particular system before he starts in his junior year. Crouch and Masoli will each have taken 659 snaps by the end of camp. And Andrus still hasn’t fully installed the powerball portion of the offensive scheme. “I think I’ve put an unfair burden on the offense,” says Joe. “It’s haunting me.”
He’s not terribly worried about the defense even though, with the offense’s struggles, it’s hard to know just how good the unit is. Olivadotti will miss the second scrimmage. His mother has died and her funeral is on the same day. Her death caps off a very tough year for Olivadotti, who has also lost his father and stepfather (the latter to a suicide) and learned that his four year-old granddaughter has leukemia. (On the night of the scrimmage, Olivadotti will go to a beach in New Jersey to fulfill his mother’s last wish to have her remains spread in the surf. But when he tosses the ashes, his Super Bowl ring comes loose and is flung into the ocean. It has escaped the “safe” that is his finger. The next morning, knowing that it was a long shot, he went back to the beach to look for it. He didn’t find it, but he did meet a rotund, mustachioed man with a metal detector who was walking the beach. He offered the man $1,000 if he found and returned the ring, which is about $9,000 less than it takes to replace it. The guy actually did find it. He sent it back to Olivadotti along with a few pictures of him and his friends—Giants fans, it turned out—posing with the ring on.)
Marvin Sanders, the secondary coach, and Pete Kuharchek, the linebackers coach, will fill in for Olivadotti. Football teams essentially become large, overnight families, where wins and losses—personal and on the field—are shared, and responsibility is picked up when needed.
Just before the scrimmage the Nighthawks get a few more players back from NFL camps, most important among them George Foster, a Brinks-truck-bodied left tackle who was with the Saints until their final cuts; and Greg Orton, a wide receiver who’d been in camp with the Broncos and whom Joe calls “cross-country” because of his spindly lower legs. Greg Ryan, an offensive lineman from Western Kentucky, is signed on the day of his wedding. He and his new bride leave their reception and drive overnight to camp. “Let’s give them the honeymoon suite at the hotel,” says personnel man Matt Boockmeier.
In the second scrimmage, the offense finally shows some signs of life. Crouch and Masoli take the majority of the snaps, and they each toss a touchdown pass. Smith gets in for the last ten minutes, and looks confident at the line of scrimmage. Maybe 1,000 fans show up for the free intrasquad game. Joe gets a microphone at the end of the scrimmage and thanks them for coming. He has his players sign autographs in the stands for half an hour after the game.
Then it’s cut day, which is always brutal, but perhaps more so in the UFL. This is pretty much the end of the line (the CFL and the indoor leagues being alternatives that few of these men would accept). The UFL is a cruel twist on the Liza Minnelli/Frank Sinatra song: If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. The former NFL players all have horrible stories from cut days, of players openly weeping or falling to their knees and begging to stay. One cut player was found at a pawnshop attempting to purchase a gun. There really is no right way to go about telling players that they didn’t make the team. But there are some wrong ways to do it—namely, out in public, in front of everyone else. Noble, the defensive line coach and former NFL player, remembers one cut day with the Dallas Cowboys when the personnel guys walked around practice as the players were stretching and tapped guys on the shoulder for the ride to the airport. The person who delivers the news to a cut player goes by a few different names. One is “the reaper.” The other is “the Turk,” a name derived from the Ottoman Empire, which at one time apparently led the world league in beheadings.
The unspoken truth in professional football is that the players are, ultimately, commodities. Once vigorously pursued and wooed, if they don’t deliver on expectations they are dumped. This is the part of the pro game that Joe hates. It’s something he wouldn’t have had to face in the college game. But he has to play the part now.
Shockley and Clark are let go to make room for Smith. Shockley is a tough cut because he is very well liked and respected by his teammates. Clark takes to Twitter to voice his displeasure, charging the Nighthawks front office with leading him on. Linebacker proves to be a difficult position to trim down. In the end, Matt Wenger, a solid rookie—but still a rookie—goes while Steve Octavien, who has the name of a Roman Caesar and the body of a gladiator, stays. O’Connell makes the team, pretty much based on his two hits in the first scrimmage. Punter Tom Mante from Yale—the only Ivy Leaguer in the UFL—is kept.
The only real conflict comes with Clarett. The offensive coaches believe he’s had a terrible camp. He hasn’t run with any burst, and he’s had trouble catching the ball out of the backfield, an essential skill for a running back in Andrus’s offense. There is also a sense that he’s been a bit of a malcontent.
But there is something else in the coaches’ voices as they talk about Clarett, something that sounds a bit like fear, as if they are wary of him, the way one would be around a stray pit bull. That he could snap at any moment. They tell Joe they want to cut him.
Joe dances around the issue for a few minutes, asking if they are sure, if there’s really no room for a power back (the team has no other running back as big as Clarett). But they say they don’t want him.
But Joe knows something they don’t. What Clarett had left out of his introduction speech was his relationship with his new coach. After the 2010 season with the Nighthawks, Clarett wasn’t sure he wanted to keep playing football. But when Joe was hired to coach the team in early 2011, they talked on the phone multiple times. Clarett told him his story. “I told him I wanted to turn my life around,” he says. Something about Clarett hit Joe right where it counted. He saw a man looking for help, something he thought he could provide. He asked Clarett to try out for the 2011 team, promising to help him during and after the season.
Late that spring, before minicamp, Joe remembered Clarett’s interest in finance and his reading about a certain famous Omahan. He got an idea.
“Want to meet Warren Buffett?” Joe asked Clarett.
On a Saturday afternoon, Clarett walked in the doors of Berkshire Hathaway and there stood Buffett, paper come to life, and a man whose circumstances could not have been more different from his own. “It was overwhelming at first. I had no idea what we were going to talk about,” Clarett says, looking back on that day. “I’m young and black. I don’t get many opportunities to get access to a man like that.” But the two men got along splendidly. Buffett says they talked about “life and chasing your dreams.”
Joe had tried to help Clarett even further, calling Father Steven Boes at Omaha’s Boys Town, hoping to secure a job or internship or anything for Clarett after the season. “I’m really sorry, Joe, but we can’t take convicted felons,” Father Boes had told him.
Joe listens to his coaches talk about Clarett for a while, then suddenly stops them. “Look, I have confidence in your decisions as coordinators and coaches. That’s why I hired you. But Maurice is different,” he tells them. His face, which reddens easily, is doing so now. “This guy’s been in friggin’ jail. I visited his mother. He moved his family here. I had to talk to his probation officer. He wants to do better. We are not turning our back on this guy. This is not an excuse, however. He still has to live up to his commitment to us.
“When I hired you, I asked you if you bought into this program. You all said you did. This goes right back to our core values. We’re in the business of motivating and inspiring people. People continually remind me that this game—pro football—is a business. I gotta say, I’m sick of hearing that. I know this game is a business. I think I know a thing or two about business. And the most important thing to know about business is that it’s about people. That was true at TD Ameritrade. That’s true in football. This is a people business. We will never turn our backs on that.” This is the lesson he learned from his mother.
Joe has taken responsibility for Clarett. He intends to live up to it. Clarett is on the team. He will get only a handful of carries in actual games, and will primarily be used as a cover man in special teams and as a scout team running back in practice. He will accept this role on the team with the eagerness and gratitude of a drowning man who has been thrown a lifeline.
And at precisely the moment when Joe needs him the most, Clarett will richly reward his loyalty.
The team of fifty-one is set for its first game, against Schottenheimer’s Virginia Destroyers. Leading up to the game, there are reports that Hurricane Irene has damaged some of Virginia’s practice facilities. Some coaches believe that’s a good thing. Joe’s not so sure. “If we’re going to beat someone, I don’t want it to be because God interfered with something like a hurricane,” he says. “Now, if He wants them to lose an untimely fumble, that’s a whole other thing.”
On a chilly and wet night in Omaha, the Nighthawks win the coin toss and decide to kick the ball. The kickoff coverage team takes the field, wearing the team’s imposing all-black uniforms and helmet adorned on each side with a stencil of a flying F-115 fight plane (known as the “Nighthawk,” of course). On the back of the helmet, just above the player’s number, is the acronym “B.A.M,” the same three letters found all over the walls of the team’s practice facility, the locker room, and at the bottom of every piece of paper printed for the organization. It stands, of course, for Joe’s daily reminder to each member of the team to “Be A Man.” Two of tonight’s referees would have a difficult time doing that: they are female. Just before the opening whistle, the scoreboard reads “VD vs. ONH” momentarily, until someone wisely changes it to “VA vs. OH.” Then the ball is kicked off.
Omaha forces a punt on Virginia’s first drive and takes over possession at its own 18-yard line. The offense, the primary source of concern in the Nighthawks two-week camp, takes the field.
But Crouch, in his first live game since 2006 (then with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts), eases that anxiety somewhat on the team’s first drive, quickly moving the offense into Virginia territory with four pinpoint passes. But the drive stalls, and the Nighthawks punt.
The first quarter goes back and forth like this, with Olivadotti’s defense holding against his former boss’s offense, and the Virginia defense doing just enough to keep Omaha’s offense—which is moving well behind both Crouch and Masoli—from scoring. Omaha’s biggest problem is itself: on offense, there are dropped passes and numerous penalties for false starts, holding, and illegal formations. The special teams are having penalty problems of their own, flagged for being offside and for having twelve men on the field.
Schottenheimer spends the game expertly working the refs—jawing, cajoling, smiling—particularly one of the women, who is on his sideline. Joe is calm on the sidelines. He talks into his headset and occasionally huddles with Andrus and Kent. (Olivadotti coaches from a box high above the field from which he feels he can see the action better.) Joe spends a few minutes early on standing away from the players and coaches, near the 20-yard line, observing his team from a distance, striving, it seems, for some perspective. The light rain continues to fall, turning the stadium’s grass a luminous green. The crowd of sixteen thousand is very attentive and very loud.
The first quarter ends in a scoreless draw.
Early in the second quarter, Omaha’s offense reveals its potential weakness, the reason that coaches in the pro game have shied away from it. Crouch throws a short incompletion, then his receivers drop two passes. The offense is on the field for less than a minute, in real time. The problem with these short possessions is that they result in the opposite of the offense’s intended effect: they tire out their own defense.
After the punt, Omaha has its first lapse on defense. Chris Greisen, Virginia’s veteran quarterback, completes a 73-yard pass. Two plays later, Dominic Rhodes—who gained 113 yards and scored a touchdown in the 2007 Super Bowl for the victorious Indianapolis Colts—rumbles in for a 3-yard touchdown. (In 2011 Rhodes was suspended by the NFL for his third violation of the league’s substance abuse policy. He was free to play in the UFL, though, and would end up the league’s offensive MVP.)
But Masoli responds, leading the team on a 70-yard drive, using both his arm and his legs. The drive ends with his beautifully rainbowed, 20-yard touchdown pass to Chad Jackson.
The ballgame is tied at seven.
But another special teams penalty gives the ball to the Destroyers at their own 40-yard line with eight minutes left in the half. Joe purses his lips into a scowl on the sidelines, the first sign of his mounting frustration with his team’s mistakes. Behind short, effective passing from Greisen and punishing runs from Rhodes, Virginia drives for another touchdown, leaving 1:30 on the clock before halftime. Omaha has the ball. Crouch is under center. Many NFL coaches would have taken to the ground and bled the clock, content to go into halftime down by only seven. But the Nighthawks offense has no other gear. In theory, time on the clock is nearly irrelevant because they essentially run a hurry-up drill for the entire game.
Crouch begins the drive with a twenty-yard pass down the sideline, which moves the ball to near midfield. An Omaha field goal attempt, at the very least, looks plausible. A dropped pass on the next play leaves one minute on the clock. Crouch takes the snap from the shotgun. On the left sidelines, Jackson has sprung free from his defender, and begins to veer toward the middle of the field, near the Virginia 20. Crouch sees him just as a Virginia linebacker, who has shed his blocker, trucks right at him. Crouch fails to set his feet before he lets the pass fly. The ball slips a bit in his hand. The pass is high and wobbly. All heads on both sidelines gaze up into the lights and raindrops, watching the ball reach the apex of its ascent, then come falling back to earth. The ball is well behind Jackson, who tries desperately to stop his forward momentum to get back into the play. But he can’t. Jerome Carter, the Virginia free safety, places his body under the ball and lets it nestle into his hands and chest, the catching motion of a punt returner. He runs the interception back to near the original Omaha line of scrimmage at the 50.
After one long completion, Virginia kicks a field goal as the first half ends. The Destroyers have a ten-point lead, but it somehow feels much larger than that.
Early in the third quarter, Joe’s emphasis on aggressive special teams pays off. Ricardo Colclough blocks a Virginia field goal attempt. But on the ensuing drive, Masoli throws an interception. In the second half, Omaha’s offense stalls. There are several quick three-and-outs, a Crouch fumble, and another Masoli interception, this one giving Virginia the ball at the Omaha 8-yard line. Olivadotti’s weary defense holds Virginia to a field goal. But the Destroyers now lead 23–7 with three minutes left on the clock.
The Nighthawks have one more burst in them. Masoli leads the team on a ninety-two-yard drive that culminates in his two-yard touchdown run, to pull them within ten points with a minute to play. But, after a botched two-point conversion and a failed onside kick attempt, the game is over.
Joe and Schottenheimer meet at midfield for the postgame handshake. Schottenheimer’s face appears even more relaxed than it did before the game, perhaps from the relief of not losing a professional football game to a former Wall Streeter. His team had perfectly executed his preferred style of play, known in football circles as “Martyball”—polished and conservative play calling that lulls the other team into mistakes, then takes advantage of them. Schottenheimer will admit after the game that preparing for Omaha’s offense “gave me some nightmares.”
This is just what Joe intended, but the words offer little solace. Though the Nighthawks outgained the Destroyers both on the ground and through the air, and had six more first downs, they lost both the critical turnover (3-0) and penalty (11-2) battles. With few exceptions, the offense had been herky-jerky all night. The special teams had been plagued by mental gaffes. And even the defense had given up a backbreaking big play. Joe had lived his life based on the mantra that mistakes happen, but they should only happen once. In the short time they had all been together, Joe had drilled this into his team. But the Nighthawks lost the game because, ultimately, they failed to live by this creed. “That’s my fault,” Joe would say later.
After the game, in the funereal Nighthawks locker room, Joe addresses the team. “I feel bad that in our first game together as a team we played badly and made mistakes,” he says in a low rasp. His voice then rises, the words becoming more distinct. “I feel good, though, that we never let up. We have a good team. Let’s correct our mistakes. Let’s have a great season, men.”
Joe leaves the locker room and retreats into the silence of his coach’s office, out of sight from his players and staff. There, the pain of losing begins to manifest itself physically. His eyes are bloodshot. His red hair shoots out from his head at odd angles. He looks totally spent as he sits down in his chair, stares into middle space, and, with a deep sigh, seems to sink into himself.
At this moment, he seems to forget his admonition to Bo Pelini about this just being a game, about being able to handle defeats. This loss hurts.
The Nighthawks suffer two big injuries in the game. One of the team’s best linebackers, Pat Thomas, tore both a knee ligament and a hamstring on the opening kickoff. Somehow he managed to play the rest of the game. But he is done for the season.
And Crouch tore the meniscus in his knee on a routine running play on which there was no contact. Though he, too, played for the game’s duration, he will also be out for the remainder of the season. His football career is very likely over. He had set out to play this season to prove that he could be a professional quarterback. His stat line wasn’t pretty: while sharing snaps with Masoli, he completed 9 of his 24 passes for 124 yards and one interception, and ran for 32 yards on six carries. But he had moved the team well. And he had been a leader since day one.
Because of scheduling quirks created by the new UFL schedule, the Nighthawks now have a bye week immediately after the Virginia game. “Nothing like having a whole extra week to stew over a bad loss this early in the season,” grumbles Olivadotti. Joe gives the team the entire week off because, well, he has to. The UFL does not pay its players a cent during a bye. Though most of the coaches stick around to prepare for the next game, against the Sacramento Mountain Lions, most of the players go home for the week.
Bye weeks are generally fairly mellow by design, a chance to catch up on sleep and heal the body and mind. Not for Joe, however. He intends to use the week not to sleep, but to try to figure out ways to avoid another disastrous loss. The pressure is building on him. The season—his trial run, and perhaps his dream—has only five more games left.