The Legend of Jesse Smoke (7 page)

That was my last game. I got put on injured reserve and spent the rest of that season in a sling. I was released during the off-season, and that was that. Like I said, nobody wanted me.

So, I got into coaching. I started out as a special teams coach with the University of Maryland, then moved to Atlanta and caught on with the Falcons as quarterbacks coach. I stayed in Atlanta a few years and worked my way up. I was offensive coordinator when the head coach got fired and I was asked to serve as interim coach for the last six games of the season. I did pretty well. Coached them to three victories, but at the end of the year, the owner and general manager started their search for a permanent coach, and as the owner said to me, I wasn’t “in the mix.” That’s when Jonathon Engram called. He’d been hired to coach the Redskins and wanted me for his staff. I jumped at the chance, of course; we were already friends, so I knew I could work with him, and I knew I’d probably learn a whole lot about coaching, too.

At any rate, I’d been involved with a very good team or two but had never won a championship. The Redskins had come close that one year, and there was talk that we’d have to make good the year I met Jesse or Jonathon would be out of a job, which of course meant so would I. As they like to say in every sport: The pressure was on.

But with all that stress, you know what I was worried about that spring? The championship battle between the Divas and the Fillies; it really had me tied up in knots. You’d have thought
I
was their head coach, not Andy Swilling.

I stayed away from practice the week before the championship because I didn’t want to know Andy’s plan for the game; I wanted to watch the thing unfold without the knowledge of how it was supposed to. It’s sometimes very rewarding to watch a game that way.

The championship was played at Claremont High School in Northern Virginia—a pretty good field, with far better lighting than they’d had for any of the previous games played in D.C. and freshly limed lines that made it look like the proper venue for a championship. The stadium even had assigned seating in real seats, rather than
just elevated boards. There was a pretty good crowd there, too. It wasn’t a sellout, but the stands looked pretty well full. I’d say maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand people.

Of course I was invited to watch from the sideline if I wanted, but I preferred watching from the stands, so I bought a seat high up, near the 40-yard line. When I got to the game I stopped near the sideline and waited until a few of the players noticed me. I waved to Jesse and a few of the girls to let them know I was there, then climbed up to my seat. I got up there just in time to see the opening kickoff.

The Divas won the toss but elected to let the Fillies have the ball first. As they had done in the first game, the Fillies started pushing their way down the field. They started at their own 28-yard line, and thirteen plays later were on the Divas’ 11. Only this time the girls on defense came on a hell of a lot stronger. On third and 3, the Fillies tried to run it up the middle; one of the girls broke through low and fell in front of the running back, who tripped over her for a 2-yard loss. They were close enough for a field goal, but the kicker missed it. The Divas had stopped the Fillies without a score. Three minutes left in the first quarter, and the score was still 0 to 0.

Andy’s game plan became apparent on the Divas’ first possession. Everything Jesse threw would be from what they like to call a “quarterback waggle”—rolling slightly to her left or right as she dropped back to pass. Either she’d dump the ball off short or she’d fire it to one of the outside receivers. Andy put Michelle Cloud in motion on almost every play, too. The women’s league doesn’t use a lot of motion before a play, because that takes so much practice to get right, and the league just doesn’t have the facilities or the money to devote that much time to practices. But Michelle was perfect for it. She was smart and never made a mistake. She would move from the left side of the field to the slot position and then, just as the ball was snapped, she would disappear in the confusion for a second before coming open 5 or 10 yards downfield, where Jesse would hit her. The play looked like this:

Michelle began the play on the left. As Jesse called the signals, Michelle would go in motion to the slot position on the right. She timed her move to the slot position perfectly. Each time they ran this play, she was in that position the instant before the ball was hiked to Jesse. Jesse would fake a handoff to the running back (who would then run through the line and become a receiver), only to fall back and throw it to Michelle on the outside. Also, they worked out a kind of passing tree for each receiver; I could see that Jesse was throwing to a place on the field. Many times she dropped back, looked to her left, then to her right, then she’d throw the ball 15 yards to what looked like an open space until Michelle or Brenda Smalls would suddenly emerge out of the pack into that area, take the ball from the air, and keep going. Jesse’s release was so quick, and the plays developed so quickly, that the Fillies’ pass rush was useless. Jesse threw it a lot harder than she had all year too, though still not as hard as she could actually throw it. Michelle didn’t drop one ball. Neither did Brenda.

The Divas didn’t run the ball much, but they had a dainty little halfback named Cissy Davis who could run and catch. On the last play of their first possession—after they’d driven a little more than 50 yards downfield with quick, short passes to the wide receivers—Jesse threw one of those dump-off passes to Cissy in the flat just to the outside of the pass rush, and she took off like some frightened Pekingese and ran 25 yards for a touchdown.

A flat pass looks like this:

When Cissy got to the “flat,” which is just to the right of Jesse in the backfield, a few yards behind the line of scrimmage, Jesse flipped her the ball. The right guard, the tackle, Michelle Cloud, and Brenda Smalls were all in front of her to block, and nobody could catch her.

On their next possession, the Fillies, slow and plodding as always, couldn’t even get a first down. The Divas defense, in a kind of frenzy, stayed in their positions, held on to their blockers, and went down with them if they had to. It might have been luck the second time the Divas stopped them, when the Fillies running back fell down trying to cut through a gaping hole in the line, but they went three and out and had to punt from the 50-yard line.

On first down, Jesse flipped another flare pass in the flat to Cissy and she ran for 16 yards. Then on the next play, Michelle went in motion to the strong side, and when the ball was snapped, she took off down the middle of the field. Jesse lobbed it over everybody and hit her on the run for a 69-yard touchdown.

Just like that, the Divas were up 14 points. I could hear the girls screaming and cheering down on the sideline. The crowd got into it too. It was pretty damn noisy and exciting throughout the stands.

The Fillies started getting careless now. When you’re trying to catch up, you want to move the ball a little faster and you get nervous about letting your opponent have it back, since another score might
finish you. They even tried a few passes—including one that went for 12 yards. But they kept stepping on their own hair, as the saying goes in the women’s league. By the end of the first quarter, they were down 21 points.

Jesse was something to watch. She was so sure of herself directing the offense, pointing to places on the field where she wanted folks to move. And I really admired the way Andy Swilling had coached his team for the game. I mean he really
coached
them. They were playing like one beast, every move exactly choreographed as though the plays were rehearsed, rather than practiced. Even the defense played with more confidence. The Fillies pushed them around, as they had before, up and down the field, but every time it looked like they might bully their way into the end zone, the Divas would manage to stop them. The Fillies kicked three field goals out of five tries, but the half was winding down now, and they were getting more and more frustrated. The very thing they were used to exploiting as a weapon ran out on them: time. Though they had the ball for most of the first half, by the time it ended they were down 27 to 9. It was something to see.

I was as deeply involved in that game as any I had ever watched from the stands, or anywhere else, for that matter.

With four possessions in the first half, the Divas scored four touchdowns. (Their kicker missed one extra point.) They had the ball for less than 6 minutes in the entire half. I wanted to go down there at halftime and hug every one of them, including Andy.

It started to rain in the second half, and it was all pretty sloppy after that—sloppy and scoreless. By the end of the game, everybody was making a mess of things. The Fillies started trying to throw the ball even more—they had to catch up, after all—which was something pretty comical, really. I’m sorry to say this, but to put it mildly, their quarterback threw the ball like a girl. And nobody on the Fillies could catch all that well either.

The Divas had their share of mistakes in the second half, sure—dropped balls and fumbles. At one point, when Jesse threw a pass to a
spot where Michelle was supposed to be, Michelle fell in the mud trying to make her cut and the ball hit one of the referees right between the eyes. He fell straight back into the mud and just lay there. Everybody thought he was dead. But it was just a broken nose. And a severe case of male humiliation. Coming to, apparently he said “Mommy” real loud and a lot of the folks attending to him heard it and started laughing. I felt sorry for the guy.

When the game was over, I went to congratulate Andy and the team. The school was kind enough to let the Divas use their gymnasium and locker rooms, although all athletic equipment was off-limits. Andy had the players gather in the gym so they could celebrate a bit.

It’s a different thing when women celebrate. They aren’t as noisy or physical with it somehow. I can’t describe what it was like in that gasping crowd of tired, muddy, bruised women, as they looked at one another and embraced with these deep sighs. It was a celebration of something almost spiritual. That’s all I can say about it. I’m not a poet or anything, and I don’t want to get sappy, but … you should have seen it. They weren’t just high fiving each other and grabbing one another around the neck; they didn’t howl or shout or slap anybody on the ass. They were just joyful together. Does that describe it? You have to see it to believe it, but it was almost as if they could know each other’s thoughts without words, so it was all conveyed through tearful smiles and knowing glances.

They had a few bottles of champagne—courtesy of Andy and the team owners—but they drank the stuff, you know? They didn’t pour it over anybody’s head or anything. The owners were a couple of government lawyers whose names I’ve long since forgotten, but they congratulated each of the players who had made “impact” plays, and of course they were all over themselves in their praise of Jesse. Then Andy introduced me to everybody and I shook hands with the two lawyers, and one of them, who wore a long dress and very pointed black shoes, wouldn’t let go of my hand until she’d finished telling
me all she remembered of that season we went to the Super Bowl and lost. She was pretty sure we’d have won that game, she said, if we’d only used the clock better. (We lost by one point, remember.) When she let go of my hand and held her champagne glass high, Andy and all the players cheered. In spite of the lack of horseplay and rowdiness, it was a genuine championship celebration and I was suddenly very proud to be a part of it—if only a very small one, admittedly. I put my arms around Jesse and said, “You played a great game.”

Then she said something I couldn’t hear very well because of the noise. I shouted, “How’s it feel to be a champion?”

“I like it.”

“You really were terrific,” I said.

Then I figured out what she must have said before, because she said the same thing, only a lot louder: “I was good in the
first
half.”

“You controlled the team, Jesse. You led them.”

She smiled, then tipped her glass to the women behind her. “Here’s to a great bunch of gals,” she said, allowing herself a moment of merriment. Everybody cheered.