Luck is the hand of God in football. Preparation, talent, momentum, motivation—all of which the ’92 Eagles had in excess five games into the season—can all explode in a moment. A great season is as fragile as a blimp in a field of flak.
As a coach or player, you do everything you can to be successful, and after that it is up to a higher authority. Nobody is more keenly aware of this than Andre Waters.
One thing you took with you, growing up on the Muck, was an abiding sense of the divine. Part of it was the culture of poor working black families, who practiced a Baptist brand of Christianity flavored by ancient African and island traditions, and part of it was just the all-embracing eminence of sky, a landscape that made you feel elevated and exposed, so that, on balmy days, you might feel like the coddled firstborn of creation and, on days when the tropical storms boomed, like a helpless offering on a grand ceremonial plate. If Reverend Reggie’s Baptist Bible taught a muscular evangelical Christianity, and Randall Cunningham’s offered an esoteric (one might even say chummy, you know, like, celebrity to celebrity) rapport with the Almighty, then Andre’s experience was more like Jonah’s— hie thee on that path to Nineveh or beware. It taught him to … watch out.
You couldn’t be too careful. Andre, with his shaved head and Fu Manchu mustache and wide-set squinty gaze, lives in a world where even the most minor of daily activities is fraught with significance and peril. Luck depends, of course, on God’s grace, and that depends on not only trying to live the right way, doing good works, resisting temptation, all that, but also getting dressed in the correct sequence, changing lanes on the expressway on the way to work at the right moment, invoking heavenly tolerance with the exact right words— keeping things regular. There are obviously no guarantees; you can do everything exactly right and God might still smite you—and that was for your own good, too—but you can minimize the chances by making the right moves.
It isn’t always easy finding them either. The Lord’s path may be plain to the righteous, but Andre makes no such claims for himself. God knows, Andre has slipped up now and then. There is, for instance, the fact of his being widely feared and reviled in the NFL for trying to hurt people on the football field.
This is true, certainly in reputation and partly in fact, and sometimes even Andre will admit it. Even as kid back in Pahokee, his unofficial assignment on defense was to rough up the other team’s star player. Playing safety in the pros (for Buddy) gave full license to this approach, since in many formations Andre’s job was just to move to the ball. And Andre would make it his business to get in one good hammer—late, low, unnecessarily high, it didn’t matter—sufficient to send a message. The message was You could get hurt out here.
He had perfected the violent alter ego he had begun imagining before games back at Pahokee High. It had started as a vague notion, an alter ego bigger, stronger, and faster than his poor undersized self. In college, when his teammates called him Batman, the vision was still just half formed. Now, in his ninth pro season, at age thirty, the creative visualization had become very real. When Andre suited up to play, he was no longer Andre Waters, the loving Christian gentleman who greeted callers on his answering machine with gospel music and a sweetly intoned “God bless you,” he was someone else, his Overman, someone known to him and his teammates as the Dré Master.
His friend Mike Flores, a second-year defensive end with a flair for comic-book artistry, had drawn the Dré Master just right, a brooding, Dr. Doom—like caped villain. To become this “Dread Master,” Andre has to work himself into the right mind-set, and he has an elaborate ritual to help. It starts days before the game, when he comes up with a motivational slogan for for the week, something like “Nothing nice” or “Let’s do it” or “I’m for real” or a phrase from the Bible, or maybe the name of someone near and dear. He writes the phrase on the pages of his game plan and meditates on it at every opportunity. On game days he arrives at the stadium two hours before kickoff, gets a massage and treatment for any aching muscles or joints, soaks in the Jacuzzi, anoints a troubled limb with some oil blessed by the pastor of St. Paul Church of God in Christ, Willie Ola’s church back in Belle Glade, pulls on his shorts before picking up his lucky shirt—a limp, lightweight cotton pullover with blue sleeves that doesn’t quite match Eagles’ green, but that Andre has worn for games ever since an ’88 victory over the Rams that triggered a season-saving seven-game winning streak. Then Andre inscribes this week’s slogan on a hand towel and on a piece of white masking tape. The towel gets draped from his belt, the tape he affixes to his forehead. Only then will Andre kneel to pray, not just as Andre anymore, but as the Dré Master, invoking God’s help for the game, to protect his opponents, his teammates, and himself from injury. He concludes with an incantation, tried and true, which goes, “and when the dust has settled, may the team that has worked the hardest and deserves it the most emerge victorious.”
Then, after invoking heaven, Andre primes himself to raise hell. He looks for reasons to hate his opponent. Say, if he had given up a touchdown against this team in the past, that would suffice, or if some player on the other team had taunted him, or said something in the newspapers. Before the Broncos game, for instance, that safety Tyrone Braxton had dared to compare his team’s defense favorably with the Eagles’— We’ll see about that! Andre could always find something. He enters the arena girded, anointed, sanctified, psyched, and … transformed!
In this mode, part hero, part villain, Andre plays possessed, so darkly focused that his own teammates will sometimes clap him on the helmet to make sure he doesn’t lose himself completely in the dark fantasy. When the game ends, all traces of evil and heroic excess fall off with the gear, and he becomes the sweet man he was before.
To Andre, the division between real self and Dré Master is so complete he’s startled when real people, in the real world, confuse the on-field antics with him. He’s brought some of this on himself, actually, like when he boasted that time—one of these things uttered in an instant to the Pack that assumes a life of its own—”I’m an animal, I admit it.” That had been a mistake. Because then the press box pontificators started keeping score, replaying Andre’s more questionable shots in slo-mo, where a third-degree misdemeanor looks like premeditated assault. In fact, the decision to hit or not to hit was made in an eye blink, often when running at full speed or airborne, and it was made, not by Andre, but by the merciless Dré Master. One of his most notorious shots was a low, out-of-bounds body chop in ’86, aimed at then-Falcons quarterback (now teammate) David Archer. Arch was unhurt, but the shot was so flagrantly late and out-of-bounds that it caused leaguewide uproar. Andre felt compelled to admit he was in the wrong and wrote a letter of apology to Arch—the first one the veteran quarterback had ever seen. But no act of contrition could undo what those slo-mo replays fed into gazillions of American living rooms had done. Andre became an icon of bad sportsmanship, a symbol and scapegoat for every pro player’s fear of the career-ending injury. When Pro Football Weekly had polled players in ’90, asking them to name the “dirtiest” players in the league, Andre topped the list— not the Dré Master, mind you, but Andre Waters—which, besides hurting Andre’s feelings, garnered still more scrutiny. Dan Dierdorf, the capable color man of “Monday Night Football,” leaped on the bandwagon during the Vikings game that year, singling out the safety for such a severe tongue-lashing that Andre was fined ten thousand dollars by the league—for plays that hadn’t even been flagged on the field!
But how is he supposed to jettison the Dré Master? How can he stop playing the game his way? It has brought him from a mud-stained shack on the Muck to annual earnings in the upper six figures. It has raised his hardworking mother from poverty. It has allowed Andre to do good works—unlike many of his teammates, Andre donates not just money to good causes, but his heart and his time. Besides, Andre’s mean streak is by now part of the Eagles’ mystique. “If the other team is afraid of you, your battle’s half-won,” says Seth, who knows a thing or two about intimidation.
Andre couldn’t change even if he wanted to. He is successful because of the Dré Master, not in spite of him. So no matter how much his agent Jim Solano polishes Andre’s off-field image, the Dré Master will undo it in games. Take the Saints game in ’91. The Saints were winning, and Andre was upset. Losing fired up the Dré Master like little else. Andre could feel himself getting sucked deeper and deeper into the vortex, so much so that it scared him. There was one play where he torpedoed the knee of tight end Hoby Brenner, trying to hurt him. Brenner had dived over a pile of players and hit Andre after the whistle on an earlier play, which often happened, no big deal, except he had then pushed Andre’s face into the turf. So when a spontaneous instant of opportunity presented itself later, the Dré Master did his thing (he made contact, but Brenner was unhurt). After he did it, Andre felt weird. He didn’t approve of what he had just done, but it really, totally, wasn’t him!
All that afternoon he’d been putting up with the taunting of Saints receiver Eric Martin. The Dré Master was just aching to take a shot at the guy, but the right opening hadn’t come along. When the gun went off, and New Orleans had the victory, and Andre was standing dejected on the field near the Saints’ bench and saw Martin trotting happily off the field, he felt himself crossing back over to the dark side.
“Eric, pull me in! Eric, pull me in!” he pleaded with his teammate, Eric Allen.
Actually, later, he wasn’t sure whether he had really called out to Eric or if it was just his good side crying out from deep inside. What happened next was … the dark side just took over.
Before the thousands remaining in the stands, and nearly every player, coach, and official on the field, the Eagles’ safety tore down the sidelines and leaped on Martin’s back, blue arms flailing. Martin fell, and as his teammates ran to his aid, his attacker fled. Minutes later, in the locker room, his Dré Master gear spilled at his feet and the spell broken, Andre looked incredulous when the Pack mobbed him and asked about the postgame assault.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
The Pack had lots of fun with that the next day, running Andre’s denial under the caption of the photo, the one showing Andre climbing up Martin’s back. There was no way Andre could make people understand, you know, about the Dré Master, and the trance. Certainly not the NFL, which slapped him with a $7,500 fine.
No, Andre knows the Lord’s path to be demanding and fraught with danger, so he is cautious. Like, say, with women. Andre enjoys the bounty on the Sis-Boom-Bimbo trail. He sees what happens to many of his teammates’ marriages, and he knows why, so he avoids serious commitment with women. He is living the life and enjoying it. Responsibility is waiting down the road, and he’ll be ready for it, but while he’s living the dream, not getting tied down is fundamental. Independence suits him. Sometimes Andre gets in a mood where he doesn’t want to be bothered. That’s what killed the one serious fling he had, with a woman from Atlanta to whom he had been briefly engaged. She kept getting upset—and Andre could understand this— about the other women in his life, even though he went out of his way not to rub her nose in it. But keeping things from her only fueled her suspicions. Then Andre got in one of his go-it-alone moods and didn’t talk to her for, oh, about two or three months. Women, he learned, were real touchy about that.
Marriage, he figures, is a way of taking one of the great and (with the proper precautions) relatively harmless pleasures in life and turning it into a sin. Andre knows that if he were married, it would only be a matter of time before his very own blow-dried sin came walking into some bar, and that would be that. Why tempt fate?
Because fate, for Andre, is not some abstract concept. Lurking in the waters out over the horizon is the whale, and you never know when it might swoop in on some divine current and swallow you whole. You have to be careful. There are just too many ways to screw up.
Take, for instance, the day he didn’t wear his lucky shirt.
It happened in the fourth game of the ’91 season, against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Andre arrived at the Vet at the right time, only to realize he had left behind his lucky shirt, the one with the blue sleeves. There was not enough time to drive back home and return to prepare himself properly for the game. Andre’s rituals were timed right down to the minute. No, he’d forgotten the shirt; now he was just going to have to deal with it.
Sometimes, when you screw up, you can derail the bad luck by taking some dramatic new step, but only if you can think of the right thing. He got a new pair of socks from Rusty, never an easy task, and the socks were okay. Then he paced through his ritual in the usual way. He wrote his slogan on his towel and on the tape—this week it was a recently deceased relative: “For you, Aunt Rosetta, I miss you.” He got the tape in place on his forehead, invoked heaven in the usual way and then hell—he’d missed a ton of tackles against the Steelers in a game three years before—and everything was ready except … the shirt.
He was trying to summon the Dré Master, but it wasn’t coming.
Andre confided his predicament to Eric, whose locker was next to his.
Eric understood immediately. His superstitions weren’t in the same league as Andre’s, but he did have his lucky, white long-sleeved undershirt, which his rules forbade him to wear two weeks in a row. With some misgivings, but seeing Andre’s fix, he offered it.
“But, look here, Dré. When you get two interceptions in this shirt, don’t ask me for it next week.”
This, Eric knew, was a serious concern. Andre promised.
But what a disaster! Three times in the first quarter Andre’s mistakes allowed big plays. He was mad as a stuck gator. Then on the Steelers’ second drive, with Andre scrambling to redeem himself, tight end Eric Green shrugged him off to catch a forty-nine-yard pass. On the next play, Green grabbed a slant pass and ran into the end zone with white-armed Andre, the obviously pseudo Dré Master, flapping helplessly on his back.
Andre came running off the field, muttering to himself, and headed straight for the bench. The network TV cameras caught the moment for posterity as the furious safety jerked off his jersey, ripped at the snaps on his shoulder pads, and in one contemptuous motion peeled off and flung the offending white shirt.
Eric watched with surprise.
“It’s the shirt, man! It’s the shirt!” Andre said. “I’m going to burn it.”
“You don’t burn my shirt, man,” Eric said. “That’s my lucky shirt.”
“I shoulda never worn this shirt,” he said. “You’re the reason all this happened.”
Eric shrugged. There was no reasoning with Andre when he was like this.
From that point forward, the Steelers not only could not score, they failed to move the ball into the Eagles’ territory. Late in the game, Andre forced a fumble.
“Look at me now,” he shouted to Eric midway through the fourth quarter, when the Eagles had the game in hand. “I can concentrate now! I’m doing good now. I can think like I’m supposed to think!”
Eric hid his shirt from Andre when the game was over.
“I don’t think it works for anyone else,” he said.
It had been a close call, but Andre survived the curse. He learned (1) don’t forget the shirt, but, of equal importance, (2) don’t try to replace the shirt. Trying to outguess God, it turns out, was blasphemous, sheer prideful folly. No, if you screwed up, you had to just cope, and hope Bud’s game plan pulled you through.
All of the signs and portents are good for Andre after the triumphant Dallas victory. His team is undefeated and on its way. He is tied for the team lead in tackles (twenty-seven), and, surprisingly, the evil rep caused by the untamable Dré Master is even getting a buff job in the press.
Even Dierdorf tosses him a bouquet during the Dallas game, saying “Dirty” Waters had cleaned up his act, that he was still hitting just as viciously, but now his blows were “clean.”
Andre isn’t buying it, and he isn’t in an especially forgiving mood either.
“I’m no different,” he tells the Pack, pugnaciously. “Everything I do ain’t perfect. Sometimes I make hits that aren’t good hits, but so do other people…. I’m not going to change. My mama told me to always forgive, but I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around, and I would hope that no one would ever criticize Dan Dierdorf’s kid in front of a national audience, or that his kid doesn’t become a victim the way I became a victim of his criticisms, and that he doesn’t have to hear things on national TV said about his kid that my mama had to hear him say against me.”
He gives the impression, however, that while not wishing it, Andre might not mind too much if some such trial were visited on the Dierdorf clan.
And out in the deep blue stirs the whale.
DESPITE HIS PROTESTS that nothing has changed, Andre’s supposed “reformation” becomes a hot topic before game five of the ’92 season, a matchup with the formidable Chiefs in Kansas City’s snazzy Arrowhead Stadium.
The NFL pregame show features a segment on Andre, showing him delivering a bone-rattling blow to that Emmitt Smith, then leaning over and shouting into the flattened running back’s face mask (just wishing the young man well, actually, advising, “Don’t get hurt out here.”).
Terry Bradshaw’s upbeat narration says, “While the Eagles are still flying, the yellow flags aren’t. That’s because Bud Carson has been playing a more disciplined game. Case in point: Andre Waters, who appears to have cleaned up his act.”
Andre makes an appearance, wearing his NO FEAR black cap, balling up his Fu Manchu in a scowl, and backs down not an inch— “I’m no angel. I do things sometimes that I’m not particularly proud of myself.”
Andre’s belligerence is part of a general Eagles’ defensive chest thumping prior to this game. Having led the NFL in stopping the run for several seasons now, having topped every defensive category in ’91, having won their first four games and just demolished the Cowboys, the Eagles have one foot planted on the platform of legend.
Finally, they’re getting respect. Now, facing the Chiefs, Buddy’s Boys are going on all week about “strength on strength.” Kansas City has the best head-on running game in the pros, with two huge effective running backs, 260-pound Christian Okoye and 242-pound Barry Word. Over the last two years, the Chiefs have been beating teams by using these two giants as battering rams, eventually just wearing down opponents. Their offense has become so predictable even the adoring hometown fans are impatient with it. Well, Buddy’s Boys can hardly wait. All week long they’re promising “big hits,” eager to put their toughness to the test. Wes and Andre are the keys. Bud needs them to step up from the backfield and plug gaps with some spit-splattering hammers. Even Richie tips his enthusiasm for the coming collisions. “Kansas City likes to keep pounding you, but they’re playing the best team in the league against the run, so it ought to be interesting,” he says on his TV show.
Well, Marty Schottenheimer, the Chiefs’ head coach, is no fool. A square-jawed veteran of the Pigskin Priesthood, he’s also a jet pilot in his spare time. Coaches are always saying you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the Game, but Marty … well, with his wire-rim glasses on, he even looks like a rocket scientist.
To Professor Schottenheimer, the Eagles are like a fighter so certain of his roundhouse right that he brags about it. Marty had coached with Richie in Cleveland when they were both monks in the temple, and he knows Richie is many things, but subtle and deceptive aren’t among them. If Richie and his team say they plan to meet the Chiefs’ big backs head-on … well, that’s exactly what they have planned. It’s Richie’s style.
So Professor Schottenheimer starts cooking up a lesson plan. All that week, to every microphone in earshot, he laments what a challenge the Eagles pose for his team’s running game, and how, with their homely little veteran Plan B quarterback Dave Krieg, they just unfortunately have no choice but to challenge these bad boys head-on— May God have mercy on our poor blasted hides. He has his running backs at it, too. Word provides the Dré Master’s hate motivation for the week when he tells the Pack, “I’m tired of hearing about the Eagles’ defense. We’re the runners, they’re the run stoppers. We’re very physical, so are they. Something’s got to give.”
The primal smell of barbecued beast wafts over the brim of Arrowhead Stadium, smoke from hundreds of grills set up in the vast parking lots where fans, some of whom drive for many hours from the prairie outskirts to this middle-of-nowhere city to attend weekend games, set up camp four and five hours before kickoff. When they fill the broad, sloping two tiers of the stadium, which holds upward of seventy-six thousand, the stands practically bleed the scarlet color of the home team, with all the Chiefs’ sweatshirts, jackets, hats, scarves, mittens, flags, pom-poms, face paint, et cetera. A Kansas City home game on a brilliant fall afternoon is a great, roaring spectacle of Americana. The upshot on the field is, of course, the opposing team can’t hear a thing.
And with one final intonation of today’s competitive theme by CBS commentator Dan Fouts—”The Chiefs want to run the ball with Barry Word between the guards today”—Professor Schottenheimer steps up to the blackboard.
First play (first and ten on the Chiefs’ twenty-eight): Krieg drops back and looses a sixty-yard bomb deep down the right sideline, where receiver Willie Davis is covered one-on-one by Izel Jenkins, who slaps the ball away at the last moment.
“Okay, no problem,” says Andre, “he got that out of his system, nice try but no cigar. Now we’ll get down to business.”
The Eagles aren’t wasting any man power deep. Why bother? Everybody knows K.C. plans to sledgehammer its way through the Eagles. Bud’s playing both safeties and all three linebackers up on the front line, and the boys are just itching for that first spine-jangling whack—why, on that first play, Wes had tackled Word in the backfield! Of course, he didn’t have the ball. But it was a helluva hit!
Second play (second and ten on the Chiefs’ twenty-eight): A fake handoff (play action) and pass, for a seventeen-yard completion to Davis, who does a little curl pattern covered one-on-one by Eric—the easiest way to come free in one-on-one coverage is to sprint downfield twenty yards, then stop suddenly and come back for the ball. It works like a charm … oh yeah, and the boys were all over that poor bastard Word again in the backfield.
Third play (first and ten on the Chiefs’ forty-five): Another play-action pass, this time, a twelve-yard gain, another curl pattern matching receiver J. J. Birden alone against Eric. Again Word is swarmed in the backfield, breaking some sort of record for getting tackled without the ball.
By now, the beauty of Professor Schottenheimer’s strategy is dawning on the Chiefs’ side of the field. Every time Krieg takes the snap, turns, and fakes the handoff to Word, Arrowhead Stadium tilts about five degrees on its horizontal axis, as all seventy-six-thousand-plus fans lean along with the Eagles into the fake. Marty has never seen anything like this before. He’s come up with the unspoilable gag, the only fake in the whole history of football that works better the more you use it—because, see, every time Krieg feigns the handoff and then throws, the proud and mighty Eagles are that much more convinced that on the next play the handoff will be real, so certain are they of Marty’s game plan, so eager are they for the test.
Fourth play (first and ten on the Eagles’ forty-three): A screen pass, with the Eagles tripping over themselves scrambling toward the runner in the backfield. Only the long right arm of Clyde Simmons, slapping down the ball, stops a big gain.
Fifth play (second and ten on the Eagles’ forty-three): Bud has called a blitz; he’s sending cavalry, infantry, and mess-hall staff into the backfield this time (Andre is practically assuming a three-point stance), and he has this nifty stunt going on in front, with the ends swinging inside the tackles to throw off blocking schemes and just snuff that ol’ running play with a heavy splash of Clyde and Reverend Reggie, once again leaving Eric and Izel isolated in one-on-one pass coverage. Krieg can see the blitz coming (Christ, the Gang Green is panting and slobbering all over itself in blitzful anticipation), so he changes the play, calling for both his receivers, Birden and Davis, just to flat out challenge the cornerbacks. They sprint off the line converging toward a point near the center of the field and then, about twenty yards out, suddenly alter course and angle back toward the deep corners of the field.
Eric turns adroitly, he doesn’t miss a step with his receiver, but Izel (he isn’t called Toast for nothing) is distracted for a fatal instant by Krieg’s pump fake, and his receiver, Birden, has him by a good three steps. Krieg lays the pass out in front of his man, and the Chiefs have a forty-three-yard touchdown pass to conclude their opening drive. Five straight passing plays—so much for “strength on strength.”
But, hey, that was a fluke. Bud’s defense comes off the field chastened but undaunted. They figure Professor Schottenheimer is just setting them up for those big backs. These guys can’t pass the ball all day—they’re a running team, for crying out loud!
See, this is the unspoilable gag, the more you use it, the better it works!
Things settle down for the rest of the first half. The Chiefs actually run the ball a few times, with predictably minimal success. But Randall can’t seem to get the offense moving. For one thing, in all this noise the Eagles are using the silent count, with all the linemen looking back for center Dave Alexander to raise his helmet, and then counting to themselves, only Randall is once again telegraphing the snap every fucking time by jerking his right leg, which is making it all but impossible for poor Ron Heller to block the Chiefs’ speedy outside linebacker Derrick Thomas—Ron’s nightmare, the Bills Game Redux. Randall does manage to inch the Eagles within field-goal range early in the second quarter, chucking the play as drawn and high stepping for a couple of first downs. So there’s just a four-point deficit as the game approaches halftime—where presumably Ron can get the quarterback to keep his silver heels planted until after the snap.
With less than a minute remaining until the half, Richie tries to move into field-goal range with a few passes, but Randall gets sacked again by Thomas (who can’t believe how easy Randall is making this), and then again by the Chiefs’ star pass rusher, left end Neil Smith, who manages to battle through both big Antone Davis and Keith Byars. So with only forty seconds left, after Eagles punter Jeff Feagles gets off a rare bad kick, the Chiefs have the ball back again, just thirtyone yards away from the end zone.
It’s easy to figure the Chiefs’ next move: send that big back Word right up the middle for three or four yards, call time out, hammer him into the middle once more, call another time out, and kick a field goal. Easy to figure. The boys are ready.
Krieg fakes the handoff, the Eagles dive for the ballcarrier, the stadium tilts seven degrees this time—and the quarterback throws another pass, this one for a seven-yard gain. Now they’re in relatively comfortable field-goal range.
Bud decides to blitz, push ‘em back, challenge them. With only twenty-five seconds left, time to get off just one more play before the kick, the Chiefs have two receivers split to their left, where they’re guarded by three Eagles defenders. Cornerback John Booty joins Eric and Wes on that side. But Bud’s call will send Booty after the quarter back, leaving Eric and Wes to handle the two receivers. They’ve done this a thousand times: Wes has the inside guy; Eric has the outside guy. Simple. Two smart veterans and a routine adjustment.
Only Booty doesn’t do a very good job of disguising his intention. So Krieg can see he’ll have two receivers with one-on-one coverage on the left side … and then Eric screws up. He follows the inside receiver across, practically colliding with Wes, and leaving the outside man, Birden, all alone down the left side of the field. They had handed the Chiefs a touchdown. Booty pointed Krieg’s nose in the right direction, and Eric cleared out to let the quarterback and receiver play catch.
So the Eagles go into the locker room down 14-3 … and Richie and Bud are convinced—Okay, they’ve gotten away with it twice, lucked out, but now the contest really starts, strength versus strength, don’t be fooled, fasten your chin straps tight, boys, they’re going to be running that ball right down our throats.
The unspoilable gag!
And who does Professor Schottenheimer pick for the coup de grâce? Why, Andre, of course. The Dré Master has been so transparently eager to stop the run all afternoon that he’s practically been playing a third defensive tackle. Andre had knocked himself unconscious (for the second time in two games) in the first quarter delivering a headfirst shot to running back Todd McNair that prevented a Kansas City first down. He was back in on the next series, bailing out of pass coverage at so much as a hint at the fake.
So on the first play of the second half, the Chiefs come out in triple formation, with a pair of tight ends joining Willie Davis on the right side. Before the snap, one of the tight ends pulls up and moves back to the left side, shifting into what is clearly a running formation, with maximum blocking power evenly distributed upfront. As soon as the tight end goes into motion, the Eagles’ coverage changes. Andre’s job is to stay with Davis coming off the line. Cornerback Otis Smith (who has been inserted to replace the toasted Izel) is supposed to help Andre if Davis goes deep.
Only—shit, everybody knows they’re gonna run the ball—so when Krieg turns and fakes the handoff, and the Eagles dive, and the stadium tilts, both Andre and Otis abandon Davis and start toward the backfield. A split second later they realize, of course, that they’ve been had, but by then Davis is sprinting all alone about twenty yards behind them. Davis has time to slow down and circle under Krieg’s pass like an outfielder shagging a routine fly—a seventy-four-yard touchdown pass.
Andre is left standing with his hands on his hips, talking vigorously to himself. How has this happened? (The CBS announcing team of Verne Lundquist and Dan Fouts inexplicably places the blame on Wes.)
Randall gets his act together a little better in the second half, completing a long pass to Fred Barnett to set up one touchdown and steering the offense in for a second after Eric picks off a pass late in the game. But there’s too much ground to recover. The unbeaten, but clearly beatable, Eagles fall 24-17, undone by that newfangled invention, the forward pass.
The precise margin of victory, as Andre sees it, was supplied by the Dré Master’s gaffe. The fact that Eric’s mistake and Izel’s mistake or any number of offensive breakdowns were all equally culpable means nothing to Andre. He figures he lost the game. He—or that Dré Master—traded victory for the promise of a big hit. How could he be so stupid!
The next day he has to sit and watch it replayed on film, broken down from the overhead side shot and the end-zone shot, while Bud points out all the obvious adjustments that weren’t made—Andre can’t remember when he ever played so stupidly. And next Sunday they face the Redskins, always one of the toughest games in the schedule. Andre knows he can’t afford to play against those fabulous Redskins receivers Art Monk, Ricky Sanders, and Gary Clark, with his head up his ass the way it was in Kansas City. He worries that Bud will now think he’s the kind of player who easily suckers for play action. Remember, Andre is not out there because of his physical gifts; he’s out there because of his mind. After aggression, experience is his greatest asset. Getting suckered on play action is precisely the thing that should not happen to Andre Waters. Bud doesn’t rub it in. He knows Andre feels terrible.
But Andre is tormented in ways Bud can only begin to imagine. The veteran knows what he did wrong on the field, but for him there is always the more mysterious and troubling metaphysical question: Why did he do it wrong? How many thousands of times has he seen right through play action, knowing by the formation, the situation, the feel, that the pass is coming? Why does all that knowledge and intuition abruptly fail? What causes the sudden fall from grace? Is this just a slip, or is this the beginning of a more serious slide?
All week before the Redskins game Andre feels … stalked. He does everything he can. He writes his motivational slogan for the Skins game on all his playbooks, “We love you #99; bring it home for Jerome,” and he stays late studying film every day, not leaving the Vet until hours after dark. Working intently at his locker before the game, he uses a black marker to ink in on the white towel and forehead tape “Matt. 6—33” (But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.) It is both spiritual reminder and talisman: Andre wants to enter the battle with a pure and righteous heart, no doubt about that, but he’s also mindful that this particular chapter and verse was his slogan in the Redskins’ seasonender last year, and had produced a satisfying victory.
Yet despite his diligence, Andre has a sense of foreboding. Meditating in the RFK Stadium locker room before the game, Andre has what he will later recognize (too late!) as a premonition. It’s a fleeting vision of the horrible (and hence oft replayed) videotape of former Skins quarterback Joe Thiesmann having his right leg cleanly snapped by a Lawrence Taylor tackle. The image doesn’t linger, and it doesn’t trouble him. Despite his caution, Andre doesn’t brood over his fate. The remainder of his verse from Matthew instructs Take therefore no thought for the morrow…. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
As the team huddles before kickoff, it is Andre who first addresses his teammates, urging them to be mindful of the lessons learned last week. “We can’t give up anything deep. Hey, if they catch something short, come up and punish them. Let’s not give up big plays. This team can’t beat us if we don’t give up big plays. So let’s not give up big plays.”
Then it’s “One, two, three, JB!”
It is a cool, sunny afternoon, and the stadium is filled to capacity with loud, hungry Redskins fans. The defending Super Bowl champions have gotten off to a slow start, but a win here will boost their record to 4-2, and they will pass the Eagles in the standings—by virtue of the head-to-head win. An Eagles win will help bury Washington (three divisional defeats) and keep pace with Dallas, which hasn’t lost since Monday night. A defeat will completely dash the hopes of early October. They will go home trailing both Washington and Dallas.
Stealing a page from Professor Schottenheimer, Randall and the offense come out shooting, attempting two long-range passes—Randall’s arm is truly a magnificent thing, these passes travel sixty yards or more—that skitter uncaught on the grass. The Skins then come out and do, successfully, what the Eagles waited in vain for the Chiefs to do all afternoon the week before. They run the ball right at them, pounding Earnest Byner up the middle in eight consecutive plays, scratching out gains of two, six, two, three, six, five, six, and one yards. Washington coach Joe Gibbs is advancing Professor Schottenheimer’s gag, anticipating that the chastened Gang Green will this week be back on their heels, paranoid about stopping the long pass (witness Andre’s pregame comments). Quarterback Mark Rypien finishes off the drive with a ten-yard touchdown pass to Gary Clark. On the sidelines, as the Skins add the extra point, Seth paces before his teammates, helmet in hand, “#99” carved into the back of his head, snarling at them to shape up. Seth is wearing a knee brace today—he aggravated the Dallas injury playing against the Chiefs—which slows him down on the field and seems to make him even grouchier than usual.
After Randall leads the offense through three more unsuccessful plays, the Dré Master contributes a big blunder. He’s back in coverage six, a two-deep zone the Eagles prefer against the Redskins’ passing game, and when the Skins send two receivers wide left, Andre and cornerback John Booty (replacing Toast’s toasted replacement, the singed Otis) check off in what they call slide-switch coverage. This means Andre has the inside man and Booty the outside man, unless one of the receivers breaks across the middle. If that happens, Andre is supposed to pick him up—only, Andre finds himself peeking into the backfield again, the very thing he has promised himself all week he won’t do. So when Rypien fakes the handoff to Byner, the overeager safety involuntarily lurches forward—he can just feel the hit vibrating those subcortical synapses—at just about the time Monk, the NFL’s all-time leading receiver, goes flashing past across the middle (“I was in space at that particular moment,” Andre, with typical candor, will later explain). He catches Monk from behind thirty-four yards upfield.
Seth jumps all over his teammate. “Andre, you can’t make that dumb mistake! You can’t do that to us, Andre. You looked at the film. You know you’ve got to read your key. Keep your eyes on the key!”
Andre walks back to the huddle hanging his head, hands on his hips, muttering to himself— What is this? Why is this? Back in the huddle, he says to the furious linebacker, “Seth, I promise you, it won’t happen again.”
They manage to stall this Skins drive on their own fourteen-yard line. Chip Lohmiller, the normally reliable Washington placekicker, misses the field goal, and Andre can breathe easily again. Still, there is something ominous about this run of bad luck. He’s got on his bluesleeved shirt; he’s wearing the towel, the slogan; the pregame stuff went well. What gives?
But Andre starts to feel more like himself on the next drive. He crashes into the backfield on a third-down running play to tackle Ricky Ervins for a two-yard loss. He’s so happy he leaps up to do a victory dance, but can’t decide on which step, so he does this backpedaling improvisation, waving his hands like he’s discharging six-shooters. It looks pretty silly, and Andre knows he’s going to get teased about it tomorrow in the film room—such a sloppy display!—but this is the first time he’s felt right on the football field in two weeks.
Both teams manage field goals before the half is over, so the Eagles come out for the second half trailing by seven points. Randall is having a terrible day, worse than the week before. He hasn’t com pleted a pass for more than eleven yards. Even when the defense intercepts a Rypien pass—Byron picks it off and then pitches it back to Eric, who runs it out to midfield—the offense can’t get going. Tank fumbles the ball right back to the Skins.
So Andre and the defense trot back out on the field, Seth grumbling about the goddamn offense and how many goddamn chances do they goddamn need. The Skins open up another long march. The crowd at RFK is growing wilder and wilder—a touchdown here will almost seal victory—and Andre can feel the dark shadow closing in … only, he thinks it’s just the possibility of defeat.
Ervins carries the ball off right tackle on a second-down play and scoots untouched into the secondary—into the zone of the Dré Master. Andre lowers his helmet and launches himself at the running back headfirst, delivering a satisfying blow, driving Ervins backward, but then someone else slams into Andre from the side, turning his fall so that when he tumbles backward with Ervins on top his left leg stays planted on the grass. As their combined weight hits the grass, Andre feels and hears a sudden pop in his lower left leg, down around the ankle. He reaches down and feels the foot at an awkward angle.
“Eric, I broke it,” Andre says, as his friend leans into the pile.
“Don’t move,” says Eric. “Don’t move.”
“It’s broke.”
So far he feels no pain. Otho Davis and Dave Price sprint out to the field. They reach for the foot as Andre tries to straighten it—now he feels a jolt. Otho and Dave don’t say much.
“It’s broke, Otho,” says Andre.
The old trainer nods. He and Dave scoop Andre up and carry him from the field, setting him gingerly on the bench, and already Andre is calculating the damage. Broken ankle, does that mean the whole season? Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it’ll just be a few weeks. How long does it take the bone to heal? Pain is starting to mount. The ankle is starting to swell already, which is a bad sign. Andre can’t move his toes. He’s loaded on a small truck, which motors toward the ramp at the far end of the field that leads back under the stands.
As the Skins kick another field goal, the truck steers toward the gaping exit, and Andre, helmet off, foot elevated, prostrate and in pain, is swallowed by the cavernous darkness.
AFTER THE GAME, he sits in his wool parka and black cap on a folding chair at the center of the visiting team’s locker room. His left leg, shot full of painkillers, is propped on a second chair. A dripping bag of ice is balanced on his lower leg. The X rays, taken on the premises, show he snapped his left fibula, the more slender, outer bone of the lower leg. The break is near his ankle. After the swelling goes down, in a day or two, team physician, Dr. Vincent J. DiStefano, will fasten together the broken bone with a metal screw. His most optimistic prognosis? Six to eight weeks, depending on how fast Andre’s bone heals. Andre has never had a serious football injury before, so he doesn’t know what to expect. He’s dazed and depressed, deep in the belly of the whale.
He hasn’t even bothered to watch much of the remainder of the game, which has played out on a small color TV screen in the corner. The Eagles’ offense had come alive at last in the fourth quarter, scoring nine points to pull within four of the Skins. But it was too little, too late, just as it had been the week before.
His teammates file in glumly. Having risen to such dramatic heights two weeks before with the Monday night win, the Eagles’ fortunes have plummeted. The Cowboys have won again, defeating the Chiefs. The Eagles have gone from being the undefeated leaders of the NFC East, and every reputable prognosticator’s pick for Super Bowl victory—Hell, let’s just skip the next twelve weeks—to a lowly third place in their own division.
The locker room after a loss is a study in gloom. Even those players who don’t especially feel it, like the guys who didn’t even play and who might, in their heart of hearts, actually be rejoicing at the failure of the players who started in their stead, wrap themselves in a funereal funk. Steam rises from the showers and gradually fills the crowded windowless room. Balls of white tape cut from ankles and wrists adhere to shoe soles. Wet towels and discarded gear litter the floor and chairs. The Pack enters wearing matching long faces—it’s important not to let the boys think you enjoyed their humiliation, that you might relish tomorrow’s sprinkling of acid prose into the open wound.
Richie is subdued and says what losing coaches say.
“We had some missed opportunities,” he says. “We’re all disappointed that we came here and played the way we played … put ourselves in a hole … just didn’t get the job done … it’s going to be a close race … our destiny is still in our own hands … this team has always bounced back. …”
The ever forthright center, Dave Alexander, his broad square face still flushed, stands naked, a crush of reporters pinning him at his locker.
“We’ve had two tough games in two weeks at away stadiums against two good defenses. It’s not time to jump off the bandwagon. We’re still the same group. We had our chances, but we just got started a little bit too late.”
Any nastiness is well under wraps. All the mandatory postgame mea culpas are general and restrained, but on the defense’s side of the room a familiar theme begins to emerge: these guys are tired of playing their asses off and then watching Richie and Randall’s offense fall short. In the Chiefs game the defensive breakdowns had temporarily eroded the ground under Buddy’s Boys’ soapbox, but in this game they had allowed the Redskins only one touchdown. They intercepted a pass and set up the offense with excellent field position again and again.
“Anytime you’re forced to play defense all day, that’s not a good sign,” says Byron, who rarely speaks, much less complains. “It either means the offense is doing great or it isn’t doin’ nothin’. I think it’s pretty obvious which it was today.”
There are comments of a similar, vague tenor coming from Wes and Clyde and Reverend Reggie and Eric, enough to flavor the steam with the general drift, so that in short order every camera, notebook, and microphone in the room are assembled around Seth, who doesn’t have a vague bone in his body.
He scowls up at the crowd.
“I don’t want to point no fingers at anybody, because I know everybody comes to me for the controversy,” he says. “But I’ve made up my mind this year that I’m going to try to stay as positive as I can. Whatever gripes I have, we’re gonna keep it between us as a team.
“But …”
And Seth proceeds to break his personal vow. First in line to take it on the chin is Richie Kotite.
“It just seems to me that whichever team wins is the one who can better outsmart the other. Quite often in that department we come up on the short end of the stick.”
But Seth has venom enough to go around. Special teams?
“Special teams looked like garbage.”
Defense?
“We gave up too many plays.”
But, of course, the prime beneficiary of the linebacker’s blame is the offense, and, in particular—who else? Ran-doll. See, in one of the quarterback’s regular meandering exercises with the Pack the week before, Randall as much as admitted that it had been four seasons since he had mounted a good game against the Redskins, and that Washington, more than any team in the league, seemed to “have our number.”
Well, they sure as hell didn’t have Seth’s number.
“You can’t expect to play well if you don’t challenge people. You can’t go into a game thinking, or being afraid to challenge somebody! I don’t care who it is! … Offensively, it just seems like when you say ‘Washington Redskins,’ we just fall to pieces.”
It would be unkind, and probably a little unfair, to point out that the sum total of Seth the Scourge’s contribution to today’s battle had been one tackle.
No one does.
THE PROBLEM worsens the following week, back at the Vet, when the Eagles squeak out a 7-3 victory over the Cardinals. But what a paltry victory! Randall completes fewer than half of his passes, and while Herschel again pounds out 112 yards on the ground, the best the offense can muster is one touchdown. They are playing the weakest team in their division, one of the weakest teams in the league (with a 1-5 record), a team ranked third from the bottom in defense, a team that the Eagles beat handily just weeks before, and this is all they can do? The defense holds the Cardinals to one fourth-quarter field goal, and the thing goes right down to the wire?
For Seth and the rest of the defense (John Booty is now playing for Wes, and Rich Miano for Andre), the whole game comes down to one series near the end of the first half.
After picking off one of Randall’s passes, the Cardinals get the ball on the Eagles’ three-yard line. Seth and the gang trot out sullenly past their offensive colleagues.
Then with their back to the end zone, framed by the giant flag of Archangel Jerome, the defense draws the line. They put on the most amazing goal-line stand any of them have ever seen. The Pack will dub it “the One-Yard War.” Even jaded Bud will later concede it’s the best he’s ever seen.
Seven times—six from the one-yard line—the Cardinals slam the ball straight into the Eagles’ line, trying to push into the end zone:
Play one (first and goal on the Eagles’ three): Computer and film studies of the Cardinals’ tendencies this close to the goal line show that Phoenix nearly always tries to run the ball in. Coach Joe Bugel had been an offensive line coach for years before being anointed with the headset, and an offensive line that can’t advance the ball three yards doesn’t belong on a pro football field. Once or twice in past years the Cardinals have run a surprise passing play, but not often. A coach facing the Eagles’ number-one ranked defense (the Gang has yet to allow a rushing touchdown this season) has two choices. He can concede the Eagles’ strength upfront and go for razzle-dazzle, or he can try to prove how tough his team is by going nose to nose, pushing them back. Bugel likes to call himself a tough guy.
Bud sets up to stop the run. He sends in his jumbo goal-line defense, six linemen (Reverend Reggie, Clyde, Pitts, Harmon, Tommy Jeter, and Mike Golic), four linebackers (Seth, Byron, “Willie T.” Thomas, and Britt Hager), and one safety (Miano), who sets up on the end of the front line and keeps a close eye on the tight end.
The Cards come out in their power I formation, eight men down in front and a fullback and tailback lined in single file behind quarterback Chris Chandler. They run into the left side of their line, away from Reggie and toward Clyde, Golic, and Pitts. The fullback tries to hit Willie T. and move him out of the way, and a pulling guard is supposed to lead tailback Johnny Bailey into the hole, banging Byron backward and clearing the path. The play works well. It’s stopped short of the end zone because Golic gets enough penetration with his surge off the ball that the pulling guard is delayed. Both Byron and Seth stop Bailey on the one-yard line.
“Too much! Too much!” shouts Seth angrily as the pile untangles.
“We got to tighten up!” pleads Byron.
Play two (second and goal on the Eagles’ one): Now the Eagles can’t afford to give an inch. Any backward movement on the front line will allow a ballcarrier to fall into the end zone or just reach the ball across the line. They shift to jumbo goal-line gap all-out, their last-ditch defensive formation, which calls for every man on the front line to plug a gap between blockers. The six linemen just drive low and hard at the snap, plugging their gaps and leaving the four linebackers to dive up and over the roiling mass of bigbodies and make contact with the runner.
Chandler keeps the ball himself, but the surge from below knocks his feet out from under him, and he can’t jump. Instead he tries to reach the ball forward, but in the process it is slapped away, and out of the green tangle of clutching Eagles in the end zone, Pitts emerges with a beatific grin, holding the ball.
The ref signals the fumble recovery, and Pitts and his teammates parade triumphantly toward the sidelines.
But the celebration is premature. Another official had thrown a flag before the fumble. Linebacker Hager, out on the far right side of the play, had jumped offside. The ball is inched a half yard closer to the end zone, and the Cards are back in business.
“It’s not just Us against Them, it’s Us against Them and the Referees!” growls Seth as the defense shakes off its disappointment and reassembles in the end zone.
Play three (second and goal from the Eagles’ .5 yard): The Cards come back to the same play they ran from the three-yard line. This time Willie T. slips the fullback’s block, and Clyde manages to push the tight end trying to block him into the backfield. So the pulling guard can’t get into place, and as Golic wraps up Bailey’s legs, Byron delivers a thrilling, concussive hit on the smaller running back, who winds up going three yards backward.
Byron extricates himself from the pile—his mouthpiece has popped to the turf; his bald black head is shining, his helmet is embedded down in the pile in Bailey’s abdomen—and begins a loose, gloating dance. The stadium is now roaring with pleasure.
“You don’t have to say a word, just turn up your hearing aids and listen to this!” enthuses CBS commentator Matt Millen, a former linebacker, as he replays the massive hit on screen. “If that doesn’t get you wanting to play football, nothing will!”
The hit fires up the defense to near frenzy. All the pride they feel in being number one, mixed with all of this season’s emotion, their grief for Jerome—they suddenly feel immovable. They are convinced the Cards are not going to score. They will not allow it to happen. When the officials spot the ball on the one-yard line, where Byron first made contact, instead of back at the three, where Bailey came to rest, even that’s okay. It just doesn’t matter anymore.
Play four (third and goal at the Eagles’ one): the Cards go back to the same play again, only this time Miano is in perfect position to stop it. Before the snap of the ball, the tight end goes in motion, first right, and then back to the left. Miano mirrors his movements behind the line and sees the ball snapped just as he’s over the hole on the left side. He dives in to grab the runner’s legs as again the linebackers unload.
This ought to force the fourth-down play, only the Eagles have drawn another flag. Hager is called for jumping offside again. So the Cards get the play back, and the ball is once more inched up half the distance to the goal line.
Play five (third and goal from .5 yard): the Cards try another quarterback sneak, and this time they have even less success than the first time. Harmon and Golic drive their blockers straight backward, Miano wedges himself underneath, and Chandler doesn’t gain an inch … but there’s another flag! This time, way out on the left side, Willie T. had jumped.
Play six (third and goal from .25 yard): Pitts has to go looking for his helmet, which was torn off in the previous pileup. Seth and Byron are hopping up and down in the end zone, banging their helmets together, screaming incoherently.
The faces of the Cards’ linemen now show disgust as they line up over the ball. It’s hard to tell if they’re angrier with themselves or with their coach, who has grimly decided that they must move these Eagles players backward. Anyway, everybody on the defensive side can tell at a glance that the “tough guy” on the sidelines has called for another straight-ahead running play, and that his players are none too pleased.
“Run it at me!” screams Seth, straining to make himself heard over the savage roar from the stands.
Again the Cards try to lead with the fullback, left side, pull the guard, and slam in, only no one on the Eagles’ defensive front is pushed back an inch. The surge is now so powerful that, again, the guard can’t get around to make the block. Bailey anticipates Byron’s hit this time, so he dives back toward the center of the field, only to be met in midair—180 pounds meeting 240 pounds—and with a decisive smack is driven backward yet again.
No flags!
Bugel calls time out.
Play seven (fourth and goal from the one): Everybody knows he’s got to go for it. No field goal, no tricks. Six times in a row he’s lined his big boys up against the Eagles’ big boys, and six times in a row the Eagles have won the battle. Later, Bugel will explain, “This is the NFC East. If you can’t run it in from there, people will laugh at you.” The stadium is rocking. This is one of the great macho moments of football. One group of eleven men trying to move the oblong pigskin forward one yard; another group of eleven men straining to stop them. Bugel is trying to build some pride in his 1—5 squad. Pride turns on moments like this.
Bud warns Miano on the sidelines to be wary of the pass, but he’s the only one on the field even considering it.
“Joe Bugel says he’s a tough guy; he’s going to try to prove it right now,” says Millen up in the booth.
They try to run at Reggie this time, and the Reverend doesn’t budge. Two men arrive to block him before Bailey gets there. Reggie just hurls 266-pound tight end Walter Reeves backward. Reeves’s backside collides with Bailey, who is immediately crushed by Reggie and Hager and then a flood tide of green helmets and jerseys—short of the line.
“Eagles win the battle,” says Millen.
FEELING FORLORN, Andre watches all this on TV from a bed at Graduate Hospital, about a half mile away. Afterward, he phones his replacement, Rich Miano, to congratulate him. But it’s getting harder and harder for Andre even to think about football.
The broken bone in his left leg has turned from something routine and uncomfortable into something far worse.
After Dr. Vince had screwed the broken fibula back together four days earlier, Andre went home to heal. But three days later, he was in such pain he could hardly bear it. When he checked back with the doctor, he was told that blisters had formed around the fracture in his torn ankle ligaments, and they were slowly, painfully working their way up through the skin. Dr. Vince checked Andre back into the hospital, where he lay with his leg elevated, suffering the worst pain of his life. The hospital was concerned about controlling infection, which would threaten the limb, and Andre was no longer thinking about when he’d get to rejoin his teammates, about the Dré Master and big hits and biting on play action.
The throbbing was unbearable. The Eagles’ ferocious strong safety, the man with the Fu Manchu mustache and dark reputation, was reduced to begging the nurses for his regulated doses of painkilling injections. But the shots only took the edge off it. They wouldn’t shoot him up more than once every four hours, but the drug wore off after about one. Andre sometimes just laid in bed weeping.
Willie Ola flew up to be with him the next day. Together, in the hospital, they prayed for fortitude and deliverance.
I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, … out of the belly of hell cried I. … One week after surgery, Andre’s blisters have healed sufficiently for him to go home, but he’s still in terrific pain. Lying on his back with his foot elevated, Andre is getting only about one hour of sleep a night. Willie Ola cooks and takes care of the house, feeding him in his upstairs bedroom. Otis Smith, who shares Andre’s condo, keeps him up on the day-to-day developments with the team. As the Eagles prepare for game eight, their rematch with the Cowboys in Dallas, it’s Otis who brings news of the comment Emmitt Smith made to reporters there about Andre’s injury.
“He’s hurt,” said Emmitt to a clutch of newshounds around his Dallas locker. “Keep doin’ bad, and bad things will happen to you. I guess bad things finally caught up to him.”
As if Andre deserved what he’s going through! Emmitt Smith becomes the focus of his recovery. If the Eagles make the play-offs, which they almost certainly will, then it seems increasingly likely that they will face the Cowboys a third time in January. So while Andre sends his supplications to the Lord, the Dré Master chews on a vision of the Cowboys’ all-pro running back. It’s hard to say which inspires him more.
The worst of his ordeal is over after three weeks— And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Willie Ola flies home, and Andre resumes daily trips to Veterans Stadium to speed his rehab.
During those lost weeks, it was as though Andre had dropped off the earth. He sees Otis because they share the same condo, but other than that, Andre hears not a word from coaches or teammates.
There is one exception. He hears from Ben Smith.