No, Reverend Reggie decides against sharing the full range of his thoughts and emotions with his teammates now, down ten points at halftime in the New Orleans Superdome.
It’s the same old story. All the emotion, all the energy, all the hours of preparation, the pain and frustration of five losses, the joy of eleven wins, all of it was expended just to get themselves here, at the starting line, and now they’re playing poorly against the Saints, a team they can beat. The offense has made one big play, Randall’s touchdown bomb to Fred, and that’s it. They’ve earned just three first downs (the Saints have 14). And the defense … well, today, once again, they haven’t done enough.
It could change, though. They had all seen it happen, seen their fortunes in a hapless contest suddenly turn. It didn’t have to come on a touchdown or interception or even a big play. It might happen because of something one teammate said at precisely the right moment, or some gesture one of them made, or some inspiring extra burst of desire—the burners would ignite, and off they’d go. You couldn’t make a moment like that happen, although you could see guys all around straining to do so. Right now, Reggie is listening to Andre, standing in his gray wool parka in the center of the room raising the roof in an effort to whip the bird into flight, begging for that chance to take a shot at Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys (Andre’s broken leg will be healed enough to play next weekend, when the winner of this game will meet the Cowboys in Dallas for the NFC semifinals). Reggie hears Richie pound through the usual exhortations, knowing these things are important but won’t do the job, and then he falls back on what to him is the most reliable source of inspiration and inner strength—he quietly prays, “Lord, give us strength …”
• • •
As THEY HEAD back out, Richie’s not praying, he’s thinking.
The problem on offense, aside from a few wrinkles in the blocking schemes that Dave Alexander had effectively diagnosed, is that they haven’t been able to keep the ball long enough to develop any rhythm or confidence. They’ve barely scratched the surface of his game plan, and it’s a good one.
Richie enters the game with a laminated sheet of plays broken down by situation—first down, second and short, second and long, third and short, third and long—and color coded, so that he knows which play to call first, second, third, et cetera, in sequence, according to down and distance. Based on the computer-aided study of his own team’s tendencies (you have to stay unpredictable) and his opponents’, the play list literally scripts the entire contest before it starts. Players, especially quarterbacks and receivers, are always eager to depart from it, based on their observations in action, and sometimes their ideas are good (you at least have to humor them), but compared with the indepth reasoning behind every move on the game plan, spur-of-the-moment play calling is like feeling your way around with your eyes closed. Of course, there’s a big measure of coaching pride on the line here, too. Dissecting opponents and discovering weak spots are what coaches do. If the players could just trot out every weekend and make it up as they went along—à la Randall—then what good is the whole lousy Pigskin Priesthood? Richie, the old special teams grunt, even more than most coaches, places his faith in the spadework done in the weeks preceding the game. There was a photo on the front page of the Inquirer sports section once, a stop-action shot that showed an Eagles ballcarrier frozen in the midst of an awkward tumble out-of-bounds before his own bench, and every face along the sidelines, all the players, coaches, linesmen, spectators, were watching with their mouths O’d and eyes wide—except Richie. There in the middle background, as the furious action unfolded, the coach’s ample Levantine nose is bent to his laminated, color-coded play list, oblivious, already plotting the next call, like a man working a crossword puzzle in his living room. Richie isn’t completely inflexible; he’ll make changes on the sidelines to take advantage of opportunities as the game unfolds, scrapping plays that clearly aren’t working and returning to ones that are, but the credo he lives by is Stick to the Game Plan.
Only in this opening play-off game, he’s used only about onetenth of the plays on his list. They haven’t even gotten to exploit the crowning insight gleaned from their hours and hours of preparation. Reviewing New Orleans game tapes and studying the computer data, they noticed something about the Saints’ all-pro right outside linebacker, Pat Swilling. Ordinarily the idea would be to stay as far away as possible from Swilling, one of the game’s dominant players now for six seasons. But the computer data reveals a surprising nugget of information—lately, sweeps and screens run at Swilling, toward the right side of the Saints’ defense, have been surprisingly successful. Studying the videotape of Saints games this season, they can see why. Few players in the league have a reputation as fearsome as Swilling’s, but you don’t game plan against players by their reputation. You plan according to what’s current. (This, incidentally, is one of the common shortcomings of media pundits and the game’s growing chorus of charlatan prognosticators, who judge teams and players on the basis of yesterday’s news—it’s like trading stocks with last year’s listings.) The so-called best linebacker in the league may be playing only mediocre ball this week if he’s got a sore knee or broken finger, or if he’s at the tail end of his career and doesn’t have the explosive strength he had, say, five seasons ago. Pro Bowl honors and lifetime sack and tackle totals are good enough for the Pack, the fans, and the archives people in Canton, but smart coaches scout each player anew every time out. Pat Swilling two seasons or even two weeks ago may not be the same Pat Swilling you’ll face this week. Zeke prepares a brief abstract about every player on the defense, gleaned from close study of their play in recent games (for this game, the Eagles broke down and studied their season opener against New Orleans, and the Saints’ games against the Dolphins, Rams, and Jets, the three most recent opponents who favor the Eagles’ offensive style of two-back, one-back sets). Turns out that the very current Pat Swilling, ferocious reputation aside, is not particularly good at fighting off a block and moving laterally, he tends to dance away from cut blocks (he seems inordinately skittish about getting hit down around the knees), and he has a tendency to charge upfield so fast in his hurry to get at the quarterback that he leaves open his entire side of the field. Armed with these insights, Richie has a whole package of left-side screen passes and leftside sweeps behind pulling guards designed to attack Swilling. It’s the Eagles’ secret weapon in this contest, something Richie had planned to pull out as a surprise after lulling the Saints with more traditional modes of attack—only, half the game is gone and they have yet to spring the trap once.
When Richie tells his coaches and the offense Let’s get back to our game plan, this is in part what he has in mind.
Back out in the reverberant indoor arena, draped with cheery homemade signs urging the Saints on—PROJECT PASADENA; THE SAINTS WILL MAKE THE EAGLES SORE; HERSCHEL WILL DROP, RANDALL WILL FLOP, SAINTS ARE THE TEAM THAT WILL COME OUT ON TOP— filled with raucous anticipation of a long-awaited postseason victory.
Rookie return man Jeff Sydner waits alone in the end zone, watching the second-half kickoff tumble down from the darkness of the upper Dome, catching the ball and then dropping to one knee.
And the contest resumes.
First and ten (Eagles’ twenty): In the Eagles’ self-analysis, a breakdown of all their offensive plays this season, the computer revealed that they infrequently throw on first down, and, beyond that, when they send a receiver in motion before the snap, they rarely, if ever, throw the ball to him. Richie knows, of course, that the Saints are looking at the same data, and predictably, the Saints have been playing off the Eagles’ receivers on first down, giving them plenty of room, especially the motion receiver. So Richie signals in his tenth first-down play of the game, a pass play, sending Calvin Williams in motion from the left slot to the right and naming him as the primary receiver. It’s a quick two-step drop for Randall, and he drills the pass cleanly to Calvin for an easy six-yard gain. Sometimes things work exactly as planned.
Second and four (Eagles’ twenty-six): Here the Eagles can afford to waste a play by trying something fancy, or throwing deep. Saints coach Jim Mora plays it safe, dropping his pass defenders into a deep zone, so Richie plays it conservative, too; he sends Heath Sherman crashing into the middle of the line to pick up the first down. The Eagles’ first goal here is to hang on to the ball for more than just three plays, find that rhythm with a first down or two, build some confidence, and plunge a little deeper into the game plan.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty): Richie sends Herschel Walker on a sweep to the right side (the way teams usually like to run against the Saints, away from Swilling and toward the left outside linebacker Rickey Jackson, the same Rickey Jackson who was a star at Andre’s Pahokee High. Richie is still setting things up for a run at Swilling, like a boxer throwing lots of quick rights, holding back the surprise powerhouse left. This play almost works. Right tackle Antone Davis locks up Jackson for a moment, but then lets him slip off the block and flatten Herschel after just a two-yard gain—anything fewer than four yards on first down is a failure. Antone flings his huge arms in disgust. There was lots of open space if Herschel had gotten by Jackson.
Second and eight (Eagles’ thirty-two): Randall hits Keith Byars over the middle for a four-yard gain. Keith had been so wide open so many times in the first half, and Randall had so consistently overlooked him, that the tight end and the coaches had harangued the quarterback at halftime to get him the ball. Voilà!
Third and four (Eagles’ thirty-six): Richie sends in receiver Roy Green, a cool old-timer with fourteen years of playing experience, with a nifty option route. Green is the primary receiver on this play, which is designed to employ his shrewd eye for getting open. Roy goes in motion before the snap, trotting from the right-side slot to the left side, which matches him in man-to-man coverage with right corner Reginald Jones. If Jones is lined up inside Roy, he’ll break outside. If Jones is lined up outside, Roy will break in. Jones is inside, so Roy turns out. Randall’s pass reaches him fourteen yards upfield. Academic.
First and ten (fifty-yard line): Now the Eagles finally have something moving on offense, two first downs in a row, matching their total for the entire first half. The crowd inside the Dome grows quiet.
Richie’s ready to try one of his left-side plays, a counterscreen designed to fool the Saints (and Swilling) into thinking the play is sweeping right. Randall is supposed to roll to his right (the best way to avoid Swilling) and then, once the linebacker pursues, dump the ball over his head to Heath, who has slipped into the left flat. Only Antone misses his block on Rickey Jackson again. The big right outside linebacker charges straight at Randall, who instinctively abandons the play, sidesteps Jackson as neat as you please, and then fires the ball fourteen yards straight downfield to Calvin, who leaps between two defenders and somehow snares the ball with both hands. Nobody in the NFL makes this play except Randall, and it’s all reflex. The move he puts on Jackson is so smooth and artful it could not have been thought out in advance. The pass is thrown like a bullet, high, so if Calvin can’t reach it, the ball falls harmlessly about thirty yards downfield. But Calvin hangs on, and the Eagles have another first down. He hops up pointing back downfield at the quarterback, saluting the play.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-six): Now the Eagles’ offensive motor is finally running. You can feel the hum in the huddle. Success breeds success. A touchdown and extra point here will put them only three points away.
Finally, Richie gets to spring his trap on Swilling. He sends Heath on a sweep to the left side, right at Swilling, a play on which Herschel’s specific assignment (based on the tape review) is to launch himself low and hard at Swilling’s knees—and it works like a charm. The linebacker leaps to avoid the hit, both arms fully extended to help fend off Herschel’s lunge, and Heath scoots right around him for an elevenyard gain before the Saints catch him. A third first down in three plays. Things are proceeding exactly according to plan. The Superdome has grown almost still.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): Switching things up again, Richie goes back to a simple running play, sending Heath into the right side of the line behind bigbodies Pink and Antone—only Antone executes what the coaches will later call a “Mark Spitz block,” lunging forward into empty space, completely missing linebacker Vaughan Johnson. Johnson smothers Heath at the line of scrimmage.
Second and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): Again Antone screws up, only this time with potentially disastrous consequences. On their opening drive of the second half, the Eagles have now controlled the ball for almost five minutes and advanced fifty-five yards—the most consistency they’ve shown offensively all day. They’re already in field-goal range (they need a touchdown and a field goal to catch up), and they have real momentum.
But now Antone’s Spitz block has left them at second and long, a situation in which New Orleans loves to blitz, because the highestpercentage plays are all passes. Richie sends in a pass play, but Randall hardly completes his drop back after the snap before linebacker Jackson runs right around Antone’s right shoulder and smacks the quarterback unawares, dropping him and sending the ball skittering to the turf—where defensive end Wayne Martin falls on it.
The noise goes back on.
Antone comes off the field shaking his head and mumbling to himself. He’s feeling humiliated again. He’d been feeling so good about himself and his game in recent weeks, after his fine outing against Charles Mann in particular, but now the old demons have returned.
“Rickey Jackson is just too quick for Antone Davis,” comments CBS analyst Pat Summerall.
“Shake it off,” line coach Bill Muir tells his huge second-year charge. But that’s easier said than done. With expectations like those placed on Antone, there’s no such thing as small failure.
So now Buddy’s Boys trot out on the field, feeling more and more like they’re the ones—once again—who have to make something happen if they’ve any chance left in this game. At halftime, Bud Carson stressed that there was nothing in their game plan that was wrong; they just needed to stay with their assignments, play more aggressively, and eliminate the big plays.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-one): Big plays like … this one. Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert drops a little screen to rookie running back Vaughn Dunbar, who races right around right-side linebacker William “Willie T.” Thomas. Willie T. is just a second-year player and a bit overeager. He reads the screen perfectly, only instead of positioning himself to nail Dunbar for no gain or even a loss after the back catches the pass (he’s in perfect position), Willie T. decides to try to make something happen. He angles slightly inside, trying to intercept the pass, misses, and then gets outrun by the fleet Saints running back. Eric Allen underestimates Dunbar’s speed and, diving to reach him, winds up knocking the pursuing Willie T. off his feet instead.
Which frees Dunbar to sprint thirty-five more yards down the sidelines in front of his cheering teammates before safety John Booty can push him out-of-bounds. This is the last thing the Eagles need— another big play right out of the blocks. Suddenly, instead of the Eagles’ threatening to narrow the margin, the Saints are in position to widen it. The Superdome is again ringing with gleeful noise.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty-four): Seth wraps up Dunbar trying to slip around the other side, only he gets his fingers caught up in the running back’s face mask and is penalized. Seth storms around the field blowing off steam for a few moments, swinging his arms and shaking his head angrily from side to side. On TV the slo-mo replay clearly shows the infraction.
First and five (Eagles’ twenty-nine): The Saints can afford to play cautiously here. They’re up by ten, by one touchdown and a field goal. Even if they only get three here, the Eagles will need either two touchdowns or a touchdown and two field goals to catch up.
Mora sends his gigantic fullback Craig Heyward straight into the left side of the line. Bud has anticipated the play and has his linebackers charging up the gaps on the line—a run blitz—but they don’t call the rotund Heyward “Ironhead” for nothing. He’s met right at the line of scrimmage by both Seth and Clyde, a quarter ton of determined defense—and he still gains two yards.
“When you call a run blitz, that’s the perfect call,” says Madden up in the TV booth. “And when you blitz in the hole they run in, they shouldn’t make any yardage. But when it’s Ironhead Heyward, Bud Carson looks on saying, ‘What the heck do I have to do?’ “—shot of Bud looking annoyed and bewildered on the sidelines. The tone of the national CBS broadcast, which, of course, the players can’t hear, is growing increasingly resigned to a New Orleans blowout. “Bud Carson is doing everything he can to stop this drive,” says Madden, correctly sensing the desperation being felt on the Eagles’ sidelines. “If they don’t stop them on this one—they’re already down 17—7— they know they can be put away right here.”
Second and three (Eagles’ twenty-seven): Bud decided at halftime that he had to put more pressure on Hebert, so he’s running down his list of blitzes. It’s all-or-nothing time—so what the hell. He sends everybody on this play. They’re trying to drive the Saints backward, chase them out of even field-goal range. Hebert hands off to Dunbar again, and he manages to advance the ball two yards before Andy Harmon and Mike Golic drop him.
Third and one (Eagles’ twenty-five): Another first down here would be almost as disastrous as another touchdown. It would enable the Saints to eat up most of the remainder of the third quarter, time the Eagles now desperately need to score points.
The Eagles line up in what they call their jumbo-even defensive front, virtually forsaking their pass defense in an all-out effort to stop the run. They stack five big men on the line (instead of the usual four), send in Ken Rose to supplement their usual three linebackers, and instead of lining the smaller Booty up with strong safety Rich Miano, Bud sends in the team’s biggest healthy safety, William Frizzell. The Saints aren’t trying anything fancy here; it’s strength against strength. They pull guard Chris Port (290 pounds) to join Ironhead (270 pounds) in a right-side sweep behind tight end Hoby Brenner (245 pounds) and right tackle Stan Brock (280 pounds). It’s like hitting the Eagles’ line with a small truck to clear a path for Dunbar. The mistake they make is running it at Reverend Reggie.
The mighty Reverend rises to the occasion. He hits Brenner and Brock with so much force that he drives them backward. Brenner is thrown so far back that he knocks into Port, who falls into Heyward. The whole mass of bigbodies collapses in a heap in the New Orleans backfield, and as Dunbar tries to dance his way around them, he’s flattened by Rose and Frizzell at the line of scrimmage.
Most fans can hardly make sense of the clutter of heaving bodies on the line—it looks like any other failed running play. But Madden, the crafty old coach, can sort it out. Apart from his genial gusty garrulity, Madden makes such an entertaining game analyst because although he sees and understands the game as a coach, he subscribes to the Great Man Theory of football—he’s less interested than, say, Richie, in the artful complexity of systems than in the heroic accomplishments of individual athletes. He invests the game with personality and emotion, things fans can readily understand. Madden believes a single player can, in certain instances, change the whole course of a football game, inspiring tectonic shifts in momentum with sheer strength and will. He has just seen such a moment.
“You always hear people talk about a dominant defensive player … what is a dominant defensive player?” he asks, nearly breathless with excitement. “Watch Reggie White on this play.” A slo-mo replay is shown. “He takes Hoby Brenner, knocks him backwards, and throws off the whole play. Brenner knocks into the pulling guard who falls into the lead blocker Heyward, and Dunbar gets stacked up behind the mess!”
It’s a big play, and it’s gone a long way toward keeping the Eagles in the game, but there’s more excitement about it in the broadcast booth than there is on the field. Back on the bench, Reggie isn’t even aware that his surge is what stopped the play. He knows he got a good push coming off the line, but that’s nothing new for Reggie. As far as he’s concerned, Ken and William made the stop. And it’s not a particularly up moment at all. After all the speechifying and loud resolution of the halftime locker room, they’ve come out to turn over the ball and give up another big play to the Saints, and have dug themselves into an even deeper hole. New Orleans is denied the first down, but Morten Andersen kicks a forty-two-yard field goal to give New Orleans a 20—7 lead. None of the boys in white and green are ready to give up, but prospects are looking bleaker and bleaker. For the veterans, there’s a familiar creepy feeling in the pit of their stomachs. The Superdome rocks with music and dance.
“Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?” the crowd is singing, “Who dat? Who dat?”
The party goes on.
Andersen boots the kickoff out of the end zone, and the Eagles’ offense manages to pick up only five yards on the next series and has to punt it away. With the third quarter almost two-thirds complete, Bud’s defense takes the field once more. The Saints can seal victory here by making a few more first downs, hanging on to the ball right into the fourth quarter.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): You’d figure Mora would play conservatively here. But the theme of this game, announced on the failed opening bomb, is the opposite. Indeed, the Saints now try the same post pattern they tried to open the game, sending veteran receiver Quinn Early racing down the right sideline one step ahead of little Mark McMillian. The first time, Eric was playing a deep zone designed to help Mark out on a post route, but Eric hadn’t moved over quickly enough. Only a badly thrown pass had prevented a touchdown.
This time, anticipating a return to just this play, Bud has switched up the zone assignments. He’s got both Rich Miano and Mark sandwiching the post pattern, with Mark deep and Rich underneath. Eric is playing deep backfield again, and this time he recognizes the route and moves into position. Hebert sees the double coverage and decides to throw the ball away, but he doesn’t see Eric waiting deep downfield. The ball floats high and far, and Eric waits underneath like Willie Mays fielding batting practice. He makes a basket catch.
And once more, the Eagles’ defense gives Randall and Richie a chance to climb back into the game. If the offense doesn’t do anything on this drive, they will have repeated the Eagles’ standard formula for defeat—Buddy’s Boys get the job done; the offense falls flat. The heat is on.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty-eight): Randall’s first read on this pass play is Fred, who is wide open about fourteen yards upfield— New Orleans is now giving Fred lots of room, an opportunity Richie wants to exploit. But Randall has been hit too many times today by the rush from Antone’s direction, and even though his big right tackle has linebacker Jackson squarely blocked this time, the quarterback just dumps the ball quickly to Heath, his secondary receiver, without even looking for Fred. The Saints have the play covered. By all rights, Heath should be dropped for a loss. But he shrugs off the tackle and runs eight yards down the right sideline before getting pushed out-of-bounds.
Second and two (Eagles’ forty-six): In high school, they used to call Heath “Gopher,” because of the way his squat, bowlegged body would disappear into a pileup of big grappling linemen, and then, moments later, emerge out the back end still churning forward. On this play he plunges straight into the roiling battle of bigbodies and squirts out the back end two-to-three yards upfield.
On the sidelines, Zeke wonders to himself, How’d he do that?
Heath is a big surprise. Despite all the Eagles’ well-publicized efforts in the off-season to secure a first-rate ballcarrier, using two top draft picks to obtain Siran Stacy and Tony Brooks, and then humoring Norman by shelling out more than a million to sign Herschel, it turns out the team’s premier running back for ’92 was already on the roster. Sherman will finish the season averaging 5.2 yards per carry, more than a yard better than Herschel. Neither Stacy nor Brooks will carry the football even once (both proved to be strictly draft-day wonders, and would be gone within two seasons). When the season started, though, everybody figured that Heath was as good as gone, but the taciturn little Texan had thrived under the pressure. He had taken up a daily thirty-mile cycling regimen in the off-season that had built up his legs and stamina, and was impressive enough over the summer to win at least a fourth-string job. When Richie started throwing him in at midseason to spell Herschel, Heath ran so brilliantly it was hard to justify keeping him on the bench. With his distinctly canine, fourpoint running style, the man they called Wolf had been the offensive hero of that all-important Redskins game the week before, and here he’s about to play the same role.
First and ten (Eagles’ forty-nine): Fred was so wide open on the previous first-down play, Richie calls it again, this time out of a different formation. But Randall, again, doesn’t even look for his primary receiver, even though Fred is moving once more into a wide-open zone. At halftime everybody was after Randall to throw the ball more to Keith, so—dammit!—throw the ball to Keith he will. This time the tight end hangs on somehow even though he’s got two defenders draped all over him. A four-yard gain. The Eagles are moving the ball, but Richie and Zeke are growing more and more irritated with their superstar quarterback.
Second and six (Saints’ forty-seven): Richie decides to attack Swilling head-on again, sending Heath around the left side behind pulling guard Daryle Smith and Keith Byars. Smith cuts Swilling down with another well-aimed low block, and Heath runs for nine more yards, once more vindicating the game plan—Stick to the plan.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-eight): Slot-ace-right-SLIP, a two-tight-end, two-wide-receiver, one-back formation (ace) with both a split and slot receiver to the right (slot-right), and the slot receiver in motion away from the formation’s strength (SLIP). The play calls for a screen pass, right side. The motion of the slot receiver is designed to pull one potential tackler out of the zone to the left, leaving the Saints down one defender and the Eagles up one blocker (the second tight end). The play is also designed to exploit Rickey Jackson’s tendency to chase too far upfield after the quarterback. It works well. Again, the ball goes to Heath—Richie is a believer in the “hot hand” theory, and Wolfie is hot. Heath catches the pass and races sixteen yards up the sideline, right in front of his teammates, and then, instead of stepping out-of-bounds when confronted by two tacklers—the way high-priced NFL talent does more and more these days—he lowers his head and refuses to yield, crashing into them full speed ahead, leading with helmet and pads, sending both of them flying. Heath has the breath knocked out of him—he winds up with his head down, gasping for air—but his grit has fired up his teammates. Jimmy Mac steps out on the field and just points in silent homage at the running back.
A chant goes up from the Eagles’ bench, “Wolfie! Wolfie! Wolfie!”
“Way to play the game, Wolf!” shouts David Archer.
Heath has to sit down for a couple of plays. He doesn’t know it, but he’s done it. He’s ignited the engine. Everybody on offense out on the field can feel it. Dave Alexander feels it as he summons his teammates back to the huddle—Dammit, Heath at least is bringing the heat, he’s going to do every little thing he can to win this football game!
The bird is in flight.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty-two): Guard Brian Baldinger executes an “oh, shit!” block, as in the exclamation that escapes his lips when he looks back to see the linebacker he was supposed to block (Vaughan Johnson), but completely missed, wrapping up Herschel for a one-yard loss. The exultant linebacker kneels over the runner pumping his fists.
Baldinger, looking back, cups his hands over the face mask of his helmet.
Second and eleven (Saints’ twenty-three): Randall rolls a few steps to his right (a waggle) and fires a pass at Calvin, who just drops it.
Third and eleven (Saints’ twenty-three): Richie steps out on the field to shout the play to Randall, “Red-flex-right-TIP,” shotgun formation with a running back on either side of Randall (red), with the tight end widened out to the right (flex), and then coming in motion to the left before the snap (TIP). It’s another screen, but Keith misses his block and Randall ends up ducking and dodging the rush. Instead of taking off on foot or throwing the ball away, the quarterback risks all by firing the ball upfield to Heath, who has three defenders grouped around him. It’s a heedless and foolhardy roll of the dice—a Randall specialty—in a situation where the Eagles desperately need to capitalize on their field position for at least a field goal. The ball is nearly intercepted, but not.
Richie and Zeke resist the urge to throttle Randall on the sidelines as Roger Ruzek boots a forty-yard field goal. The score is now 20—10, and the third quarter is just about complete.
“You just sorta—at least I do, John—get the sensation that the Eagles’ level of intensity is rising and the Saints are just leveling off,” says Summerall.
“I think what you have here is intensity driven by urgency,” says Madden.
As the fourth quarter begins, Bud’s defense again stops the Saints in three plays, and New Orleans is forced to punt. Vai Sikahema makes a strong twelve-yard runback, giving the offense good field position for the crucial drive.
“The Eagles had better get something done,” says Madden. There are fourteen minutes, forty-five seconds, remaining. The Eagles can’t afford anymore to grind their way patiently upfield. They’re going to need at least one touchdown and a field goal to tie the game. It’s big-play time.
First and ten (Eagles’ thirty-six): Richie decides to try to hit Fred long again down the right sideline, but the Saints, burned once by Fred’s speed, are backing well off, giving the Eagles’ star receiver lots of room. He’s well covered, and the ball is nearly intercepted by diving safety Keith Taylor. Fred trips over the defender and goes sprawling into the end zone as the ball bounces away.
“They have to take that shot,” says Madden, the unflagging Fred Barnett fan. “They have to keep taking that shot. They took it in the first half and it was a seven-point shot.”
Second and ten (Eagles’ thirty-six): Right back at Swilling, a screen pass to the left. Heath gets just five yards this time before the cornerback knocks him down.
Third and five (Eagles’ forty-one): At this critical moment, Randall runs to escape the pass rush and fires an amazingly accurate, hard pass eight yards up the sidelines to Calvin, who snares it for the first down. It’s the kind of pass that makes Zeke, the old quarterback, just shake his head with wonder. “It’s like a missile,” he says later, admiring it on videotape. “There’s not another arm in the league that can throw the ball like that. And that’s not a heavy ball. It’s got so many revs [revolutions] on it, it’s easy to catch, not a slow-moving rock.”
One minute you could kill Randall; the next you could kiss him. So much skill, so little judgment. But the league is full of quarterbacks with great judgment and pedestrian skills.
First and ten (Eagles’ forty-nine): Heath slips a tackle in the backfield, cuts back to his left, and scoots seven yards straight ahead.
Second and three (Saints’ forty-four): Heath bangs out another two.
“Wolfie! Wolfie! Wolfie!” goes the chant from the Eagles’ bench.
Third and one (Saints’ forty-two): Keith runs a little option route from his tight-end spot. If the Saints are in zone coverage, he’s supposed to trot out about four yards and squat. If they’re in man coverage, he’s supposed to slant across the middle of the field underneath his defender. Earlier in the game he’d blown it, misreading the coverage and squatting short of the first down. This time, Keith reads man coverage and runs the slant, and Randall throws him the ball for a seven-yard gain—just like the thing is drawn up in the playbook. Tank hops up and spins the football on the turf like a top, as if to say As easy as that!
When simple plays like this work, it reaffirms the Coach’s-Eye View—if players can just execute the play as designed, they’d be unstoppable.
“How come we can do it now, and we couldn’t do it before?” wonders Zeke.
First and ten (Saints’ thirty-five): Randall rolls to his left on a naked bootleg, his favorite play, and tries to shovel the ball five yards upfield to Keith. But Swilling gets a hand on the ball, and it floats off in the wrong direction. The linebacker ends the play grabbing his gold helmet with both hands. He thinks he should have intercepted.
Second and ten (Saints’ thirty-five): Antone Davis sends Rickey Jackson’s helmet flying with an inadvertent right uppercut. “Shit happens,” he says in the locker room later, by way of explanation. The infraction draws a personal foul and a ten-yard penalty, a potentially disastrous setback.
It’s clear to Richie and Zeke on this play that Randall is now looking almost exclusively for Keith Byars when he drops back to pass. It’s a pattern they recognize in the quarterback. Supersensitive to criticism and, hence, instruction (which he perceives as criticism) he frequently overcorrects, especially under pressure. They told him at halftime he wasn’t looking to Keith enough, so now he’s looking to Keith exclusively.
Second and twenty (Saints’ forty-five): Randall hits Keith on a slant pass again, and, with the Saints’ defenders now playing it safe in deep, soft zones, the tight end picks up ten more easy yards before getting hauled down by three tacklers. Tank lays the ball about a yard farther upfield and hops up clapping.
Third and ten (Saints’ thirty-five): There are just over ten minutes left to play. Any likely scenario for the Eagles to come back and tie or win this game turns now on this play.
Richie wants to shake the Keith fixation, so he sends in a simple pass play to Fred, ace-right-900. “Ace-right” defines a two-tight-end, two-receiver, one-back formation with the strength to the right side, so it’s a good bet that Atkins, the free safety, will be cheating a little to the right, leaving Fred one-on-one with cornerback Reginald Jones. With only thirty-five yards of field and ten yards of end zone to defend, and with defenders playing deep zones, the Saints figure Fred doesn’t have enough room just to run away from Jones. And Atkins is playing centerfield, so he can react to anything thrown deep.
Fred hears the 900 call, and his eyes widen. It’s a big moment, and the call is a vote of faith by his coaches—big moments call for big players. At the snap, Fred races toward the corner of the end zone, forcing Jones to stay outside of him, then, about twenty yards upfield, he angles back toward the post, effectively positioning himself like a basketball player angling for a rebound, between the cornerback and the ball. Randall, under pressure, has to get rid of the ball—he’s flattened by Rickey Jackson as he releases it. Randall and Fred and Calvin spend a little extra time working on this pass after every practice. The quarterback knows that Fred, especially, can outjump just about anybody in the league (remember the six-foot, eleven-inch, high jump in high school?), so he works at laying the ball up just high enough so that only Fred can get it. The pass floats now toward the left corner of the end zone, a high lob that Fred sees the instant he makes his turn—every player on the field and every fan inside the Dome and watching at home has a second or two to anticipate its descent.
The ball is thrown so high that Atkins has enough time to break toward the end zone. It’s going to be a jump ball. Jones is to Fred’s right; Atkins arrives in time to go up on Fred’s left. “I was gonna catch that ball,” Fred will say a little later, in the locker room. “I just knew, as I went up, that nothing was going to stop me from catching that ball.”
And Fred does. With both gloved hands a good foot higher than the straining reach of Jones and Atkins, Fred just rips the ball out of the air, fending off the cornerback and safety with his elbows, then falling to his rump in the end zone with Jones and Atkins crumpling to either side. The Superdome goes silent as Fred leaps to his feet between the vanquished defenders and, with his signature windmill windup, spikes the ball triumphantly.
“Fred Barnett! Diving catch. Spectacular catch,” says Summerall to the TV audience. “Thirty-five yards away. They had him covered.”
Madden explodes with excitement: “He’s the kind of guy that can do that! I’ve always said that Fred Barnett is one of the best deeppass receivers in football. He can do it against man; he can do it against zone. He can do it against double coverage. Here it is again.” Slo-mo replay. “They had double coverage, and here he is. Fred Barnett just goes up and catches the ball. That will make all the highlights films. I think you just have to keep doing that. You do that six or seven times a game, you’ll get two or three touchdowns.”
The Eagles are back in the game, trailing by three points with just over ten minutes left to play. Now the Saints have to make something happen. There’s no doubt the momentum has shifted in the Eagles’ favor; the damp quiet that has descended in the Dome is ample testament to that. By now there’s no doubt, the celebration—and nobody knows celebrating like N’Awlins—had gotten out ahead of the game. A gentlemen with his face painted black and gold, beard sparkling with gold dust, and his head enclosed in a gold-sequined helmet, leans over the wall behind the Eagles’ bench and closes his black-and-gold gloved hands in prayer.
On the sidelines, watching Ruzek’s kickoff returned to the Saints’ twenty-five-yard line by Vaughn Dunbar, Seth turns to Reggie and growls, “I’m going to make a big play.”
It’s Seth’s way of challenging himself. He believes there’s a subtle difference between playing defense well and playing defense to win, a mental adjustment mostly, one that says I’m not content with being in the right position and making the play that comes my way, I’m going to bring the heat… make something happen!
First and ten (Saints’ twenty-five): Throughout the first half, whenever the Saints lined up in trey, a three-wide-receiver formation, they’d been leaving the tight end, Brenner, in to block. Since Seth covers Brenner man to man in this formation, it had effectively been removing the Eagles’ star linebacker from short-pass defense, where he had been so deadly all season. So at halftime Bud made a change, instructing Seth to drop back into pass coverage right at the snap.
At the snap, both Byron Evans and Seth drop back about ten yards. Byron’s job is to pick up any receiver running a crossing pattern, but nobody breaks across the middle. So Byron charges Hebert, who is already being chased out of the pocket by Reggie and Clyde. Rolling to his left, Hebert can’t find an open receiver, and Byron is closing in fast. So the quarterback makes a mistake. Instead of just throwing the ball deep, over the heads of everyone, avoiding the sack and lining up at second and ten, Hebert tries to make something happen. His favorite receiver in a pinch is Eric Martin, and he knows Martin, seeing his quarterback in trouble, will break across the center of the field. And, indeed, that’s what Martin does. Only he’s not just being shadowed by a cornerback and safety, there’s a third unexpected presence lurking in the middle of the field.
Seth also knows Hebert in trouble will look for Martin, so he’s alertly shifted his normal zone over to the right. With Mark chasing behind Martin, and Booty playing back, a well-thrown ball, lofted over Byron’s reach, might reach the receiver in the center of the field. Martin is out there waving his hands in the air, begging for the ball. Hebert throws off balance, trying to propel the football to his right, out toward the center of the field, while he’s moving to his left. He doesn’t see Seth until the linebacker catches the ball.
Seth brings it back fourteen yards, all the way down to the Saints’ twenty-six-yard line.
It’s almost too good to be true. In two swift, spectacular plays, the Eagles have climbed back into the game, and now, thanks to Seth’s interception, they’re already in position to kick a field goal and tie it. The crowd in the Dome smells doom. Clyde and Eric drag a late tackler off Seth and pummel him as players come running from both sides of the field. As the officials try to break up the melee, Seth just trots off the field holding the ball, enchanging high fives with his defensive teammates, ignoring the offense as they jog back out.
In five simple plays, the Eagles chip down to within six yards of the goal line, picking up yardage in three- and four-yard bites, aided by a five-yard offside call on New Orleans. It’s warm inside the Dome, and the long afternoon’s work is starting to take its toll. Poor Pink is feeling the effects. After every play he lingers at the line of scrimmage, gasping for air, sweat pouring off his pudgy cheeks and brow, stinging his eyes.
Randall is peering over at the sideline, picking up signals for the next play, and Dave is circling the boys in the huddle—they have only forty-five seconds to get off the next play—and as he counts around the huddle he’s missing his right guard.
“Pink! Pink!” he shouts. “Where the hell is my right guard at?”
And just as Randall leans in to call the play, Pink makes it back to the huddle.
“Pink, what the hell are you doing?” Dave asks as they break huddle and turn to set for the new play.
“I’m more tired than Phoenix,” Pink complains.
Brian Baldinger, who is filling in at left guard for the injured Mike Schad, forms a hilarious contrast. Baldy is a pink-faced twelveyear veteran who is so wired for action that he sometimes seems a little off-kilter; his motor seems to idle in overdrive. He likes to wear his shirts buttoned all the way to the top, even without a tie, so his teammates have been heard to wonder if ol’ Baldy’s head is getting sufficient blood. Baldy loves everything about football; he loves practice; he loves meetings; he loves arriving at the stadium hours before game time—teammates have even heard him exclaim his enthusiasm for getting his ankles taped. Most of these guys like what they do for a living, but Baldy’s gusto is often comical. And now, Baldy is starting in a play-off game! He seems to have found an even higher gear for his engine, sprinting on and off and on the field, chasing downfield after plays he couldn’t hope to catch, then hustling back to the huddle, face growing pinker and pinker, lips stretched dry and white with excitement. After Heath plunges four more yards for a first down, Baldy comes hopping back gleefully. “This is great shit! Great shit!” he keeps shouting at Dave. To his right, Dave’s worried about poor Pink passing out and suffering heart failure from sheer fatigue, and to his left he’s worried ol’ Baldy’s heart is just going to explode with adrenaline.
Dave isn’t feeling too much either way. His energy level is closer to Baldy’s, but his eminently sane, jovial outlook on the game is more like Pink’s. The two nudge each other and roll their eyes in the huddle at the newcomer’s excesses.
A three-yard run by Heath, and a quick six-yard pass to Keith, and the Eagles face another important third-down play. They need one yard for first and goal. A touchdown gives them the lead; a field goal just ties the score.
Third and one (Saints’ six): Time to attack Swilling again. Despite the success the Eagles have had running straight at the linebacker, Richie has used the plays sparingly enough that New Orleans is still anticipating that they will run away from him. To further that impression, on this one-yard play, Richie calls a strong right formation, which stacks players up on the right side. On the left side, Baldy is going to pull out and head to his left, but the rest of the line—left tackle Ron Heller, Dave at center, and behemoths Pink and Antone—is going to form a train banging down to the right. They call it an elephant block, because each lineman just places his helmet on the rump of the teammate to his right and crashes blindly ahead.
It’s the counter OT play again, with Heath following Baldy, swooping straight down on the vaunted linebacker. With the rest of the Saints plunging in the wrong direction, fooled by a play fake and the elephant block into the right, Baldy lays a good hit on Swilling. Heath doesn’t just get the one yard and first down, he doesn’t stop running until he slams into a photographer behind the Girard Street end zone, right underneath the PROJECT PASADENA sign.
Untangling himself from the elephant heap back at the line of scrimmage, Dave can tell by the sudden sound vacuum that something very good has just happened. He sees Heath pop back up behind the end zone, sees the refs hands held high—23-20, the Eagles take the lead!—and peers into the face mask of Saints defensive end Wayne Martin, who lies beside him on the turf. Martin looks at Dave angrily and shouts, “Why’d you do that?”
“What?” Dave answers. He figures Martin is going to accuse him of cut blocking him or doing something illegal.
“Why’d you guys score!” Martin says.
“Hell, man, we’re trying to win the game!”
As they leave the field, the Eagles’ players are now shouting at the fans, “Who dat? Who dat?” The point after puts them up by four— and the Saints suddenly need more than a field goal to catch up.
Baldy is so fired up after throwing the key block on this play that he comes off the field shouting at line coach Bill Muir, “We’ve got to keep running the ball. We can kick their ass. We can kick their ass!”
Muir goes down the line, asking each lineman for input. “Dave, what do you think we can do?”
Dave is Mr. Analysis. “Well, Bill, that trap block scheme seems to be working well if we …”
When Muir comes to Baldy, whose facial blood vessels are straining for deeper shades of red, the left guard blurts, “Who cares? Just do anything! We’ll kick their ass!”
As bad as things are for New Orleans, they’re about to get worse. Inside the windless and suddenly silenced Dome, Roger’s kickoff sails out of the end zone, so the Saints take over on their own twenty-yard line. Over the last few years, the Eagles’ fans have often seen what happens next. Smelling blood, with an opponent cornered, Buddy’s Boys go into what local sportswriters have come to call a “feeding frenzy.” They do more than shut down the enemy’s offense; they actually begin driving the team backward, play after play, crashing in like waves on a swelling storm tide.
First and ten (Saints’ twenty): With the pass rush swarming, Hebert tries to hit Eric Martin on a simple out pattern, but Martin is flagged for pushing Eric Allen.
First and twenty (Saints’ ten): Hebert’s pass is slapped out of the air and back at the end zone by Mike Golic, who jumps up triumphantly pumping one finger at the ceiling.
Second and twenty (Saints’ ten): Noting that the Eagles’ linebackers are dropping back into pass defense zones, Mora calls a play designed to exploit zone coverage, a quick screen to running back Vaughn Dunbar, who is a terrific open-field runner. Mora figures Byron Evans, who ordinarily would cover Dunbar man to man, will be playing off ten yards or so, giving the rookie back room to maneuver. But, instead, Bud has anticipated the play and signaled in a change in coverage. Instead of dropping back, Byron is hugged up on the smaller running back so close that he nearly wrests the ball away when Hebert flips it. Dunbar hangs on, but Byron just wraps his long arms around him and drops him for a three-yard loss. The Saints have now run four plays and have gone backward thirteen yards. Their backs are now against the end zone.
Third and twenty-three (Saints’ seven): And here comes the next crushing wave.
Instead of dropping back into a prevent defense, Bud decides to gamble—send everybody. He feels the feeding frenzy, too. If the Saints anticipate the blitz, they have a remedy—they just send two receivers on quick slant patterns and Hebert dumps the ball fast. With just two men playing deep, the short pass can turn into a huge gain. If the receiver can dodge a tackle and outrun the pursuit, it could turn into a go-ahead touchdown, pull the plug on this late Eagles’ surge. But Bud knows that on third down, with twenty-three yards to the stick, the Saints won’t be anticipating a blitz. They’ll be sending out at least four receivers. With Hebert dropping back to pass, that leaves just six guys to block. If he sends eight, somebody is going to get a free shot at the quarterback.
At the snap, all hell breaks loose. Hebert manages to drop back to the end zone, but before he has a chance to throw, Reverend Reggie runs right over tackle Stan Brock, whose co-blocker can’t help him because he’s picking up the charging Rich Miano. Reggie lunges, grabs Hebert’s right leg, and pulls him down in the end zone.
The big man leaps up, joins his hands over his head (as if in prayer!), the signal for a safety. Two points! The Reverend comes dancing off the field excitedly before the humbled Dome crowd. The Saints are still down only by six points, with more than five minutes left to play, but on the turf it smells like a blowout. The Eagles are just crushing them now.
“That’s why they call them dominant players,” enthuses Madden up in the booth. “Reggie White in the second half just took over this game. That’s why Reggie White is the best defensive player in football. He can just take over and dominate a game, and that’s what he did here today.”
Reggie trots off the field into the embrace of Wes Hopkins, who slaps hard at his broad back.
And for these few blessed minutes, the team is soaring. They’re in that zone of complete domination, offense, defense, and special teams playing at a level where no one can touch them, where all the petty rivalries and jealousies of the locker room, feuds with management, criticism of play calling, anger over contract talks, shabby accommodations, all of it is irrelevant now; all that exists is this moment on this field against this opponent, when everything they try works, when every player is better for being part of the family, the Team. It’s bliss.
On the bench, Reggie sees the network camera pointed at him and seizes the moment. He points skyward with both hands, leans back, and shouts over and over, “Yes, Jesus! It’s Jesus! Praise Jesus!”
Into the teeth of this surge, the Saints must now punt the ball back to the Eagles. Running behind Baldy, again right at Swilling, the Eagles sweep three times in a row around the left side, for eleven yards, then six more, then sixteen yards. Fred hauls Heath up from the last tackle shouting, “Stay in bounds! Stay in bounds!” The drive ends with a thirty-nine-yard field goal and just over two minutes left to play. If the Saints aren’t completely finished, they will be shortly, when Eric Allen interrupts their next frantic possession with another interception. Pressured by the rush, Hebert tries to hit receiver Wesley Carroll, but the wily Eagles cornerback has it read the whole way. He just steps in front of the ball and practically walks the eighteen yards into the end zone. In their last five trips to the field, the Eagles’ defense has intercepted three times and scored twice.
Buddy’s Boys now break into a N’Awlins strut in the end zone, gloating before the stricken home crowd. Izel Jenkins points with both fingers at the crowd and shouts, “Go home! Go home!”
Byron taunts them with an impromptu mime. Helmet off, long arms extended, he gives an exaggerated shrug, and puts on a comically long face, wiping one eye sadly with the back of a white-gloved hand.
Exuberant and brazenly contemptuous, the Eagles welcome themselves to the Next Level.
“Dallas, here we come,” shouts Keith Byars. “One more time, baby! Next week! New Orleans don’t know it’s a sixty-minute fight.”
“Man, this is great shit,” shouts Baldy. “This is what it’s all about! This is the way it should be every Sunday!”
Forever and ever.