Kitabı oku: «Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times»

Introduction

FOOTBALL, IN SPITE OF ITSELF

February 4, 2018

It fell to the Brazilian First Lady to settle the ­punch-­drunk scene. She strutted in with the ­self-­assurance of someone who knew her aura preceded her, even in defeat. “Great game,” she said, not aware of the player’s name (he was out of his jersey, a lineman by the size of him). He knew hers. Gisele Bündchen was working the big game ­after chaos in a back hallway of U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, seeking out Philadelphia Eagles to stun with her classy attaboys. I watched them ­flinch—“Uh, thanks, thanks very much.” Super Bowl 52 had just ended in a hail of confetti and an unanswered Hail Mary from her husband, New England quarterback Tom Brady.

He was already being criticized across the Hot Take Village for not sticking around the field long enough to congratulate his Philly counterpart, Nick Foles. So his supermodel wife, in Brady’s stead, was taking on his celebrity grace duties. She moved from Eagle to sweaty Eagle, representing Brady both as a sportsmanship ambassador ­and—­in a sly ­way—­as a killer consolation trophy to brandish over the new champs. She was the last power play in his playbook. And the Eagles had no answer for Gisele. She caught another one leaving the locker room. “Good game,” she said, startling him. “Uh, your guy’s amazing,” the Eagle muttered back.

Brady himself was behind a curtain dealing with the media. “Losing sucks,” he confirmed. “But you show up and you try to win, and sometimes you lose and that’s the way it goes.” The game had finished only fifteen minutes earlier, he reminded everyone.

Brady is an empire, like the league he plays in. Empires fall eventually, but one of their best moves is to sell the illusion of timelessness. Normal limits don’t apply. How many more big games did Brady have left? He kept getting asked this question, in so many words. “I expect to be back but we’ll see,” he said.

Four years earlier, in the Almighty’s den, Brady and I had discussed the “How much longer” question too: issues of age, mortality, and the actuarial tables that he knew were running against him in the NFL, or “Not for Long” as players call a league where the average career lasts 3.3 years. Barely anyone still plays in these big ­games—­much less ­excels—­past forty, Brady’s present age.

I wondered why he kept doing this, and whether he worried about confronting a void after he finished. “When I don’t have the purpose of football, I know that’s going to be a really hard thing for me,” Brady told me then. There was melancholy to him when he said this, one I’ve sensed in Brady sometimes, even in his pinnacle ­moments—­of which this batshit shootout in Minnesota was not one. He headed off his temporary stage and met up with his football goddess in a hallway. They shared a group hug with the kids, Instagrammed for proof.

Brady’s Patriot teammate Rob Gronkowski walked by en route to another makeshift podium. Gronk appeared dazed, more so than his usual stupor. He also had processing to do. Only ­twenty-­eight, the tight end had filled up an impressive share of stat sheets and medical charts over his eight seasons. How much more? He got that question, too. “I am definitely going to look at my future, for sure,” Gronkowski said, maybe more candidly than he expected. “I am going to sit down the next couple of weeks and see where I’m at.”

No one could blame him if he quit. His working life had been a pained procession of broken bones, concussions, surgeries, and rehabs. Even when health allowed, he performed under a doleful tyrant of a coach for a ­below-­market contract in what sure looked to be a cheerless work environment. He had plenty of money, two Super Bowl rings, and Hall of Fame credentials. He could move into any number of ­Gronk-­suitable ­existences—­WWE, action movies, or some reality show.

But Gronkowski was also born to play this game, as much as any mortal body can be. He was Peak Football, both in size (six foot six inches, 260) and temperament (beast). He could still dominate if he wanted to ­or—­more to the ­point—­he should still dominate because I really wanted him to still dominate. Yes, I want Gronk to keep playing because he helps my team win. That’s my selfish disclaimer: the Patriots are a disease I contracted early, growing up in Massachusetts. I still root for them, and am still trying to grow up (no longer in Massachusetts). The team has been great and interesting and despised for a long time. They make me feel like a winner, superior to my friends who root for other teams, and that’s important, God knows.

Allegiance to the Pats can be tricky. We lead the league in crosses to bear. Our owner can be a whiny ­star-­fucker and sniveling in victory. ­Everyone who follows pro football outside of New England is sick of us (excluding Donald Trump, Jon Bon Jovi, and maybe a few others). Big portions of the Patriots’ fan base have become entitled assholes. And yes, I might be one of them. Yet I am loyal to the Pats pretty much unconditionally, give or take the odd cheating rap or occasional Aaron Hernandez.

If anything, my infatuation with pro football has only deepened, even as I’ve supposedly become instilled with more mature priorities and a fuller knowledge of how the game operates and the kinds of people who operate it. It started in second grade, when my best friend, Josh, and I wrote a letter to our favorite player, Jim Plunkett, and invited the young Patriots quarterback to Josh’s house for dinner (he never responded). This attachment has endured through the years and withstood a steady ­helmet-­slapping of cognitive dissonance over whether I should know better than to keep following this sport as closely as I do. Scary research on posthumous football brains has been as impossible to miss as the testimonials from ­still-­living retirees about the sad state of their bodies. (To wit: “My life sucks,” Jim Plunkett, then ­sixty-­nine, told the San Jose Mercury News in 2017. “Everything hurts.”)

If you love football, you get good at blind spots and blind sides. NFL Network and NFL Films captivate with ­round-­the-­clock fairy tales: “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun!” A football life can be irresistibly Hollywood and ­parable-­ready—­like the up-­from-­dirt saga of lineman Michael Oher, the protagonist in Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side. But it’s easier to ignore how his story ends, if anyone even noticed: Oher missed most of the 2016 season with the Carolina Panthers after a series of concussions. He posted a photo of ten pill bottles on Instagram and captioned it “All for the brain smh.” Oher eventually deleted the post from Instagram, and the Panthers eventually deleted Oher from their roster.

The Lords of the League can appear overmatched by the moral and cultural moment that confronts them. Roger Goodell, the game’s embattled commissioner, who in late 2017 received a contract extension that could pay him up to $200 million, always seems to be presiding over some ­self-­inflicted mess. Under his watch, the NFL has gone from being one of the most unifying institutions in America to the country’s most polarizing sports brand. Goodell himself seems not inclined to accept much blame for this trajectory. “I think it’s a little more reflective of how somewhat divided our society is at this stage,” he told me in his New York office a few weeks before the Super Bowl.

Still, my ­four-­year incursion into the NFL has also led me to another impression: that for whatever reckoning might be in store for the ­sport—­and whether that reckoning comes now or ­later—­the game’s appeal is powerful and durable, and its redemptions are never far away. The sport has a way of grabbing you back. It happened here in Minnesota three weeks earlier, when the Vikings quarterback Case Keenum threw a 61-yard touchdown pass as time expired to shock the Saints in the NFC Divisional Playoffs. The play sent Twin Cities fans into merry conniptions, lasting right up until the moment their team got spanked a week later by the Eagles. It would be relived and rehashed around the country for several days, no doubt by people who a few months earlier were declaring themselves “done” with football over some kneeling player, lousy ref’s call, or other such outrage.

What to make of this beautiful ­shit-­show of a league? I get asked existential versions of the “How much longer?” question myself. Which camp was I in? The true believer camp (“If we lose football,” said David Baker, the president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, “I don’t know if America can survive”¹) or the cataclysm camp (“In ­twenty-­five years, no one in America will play football,”² said Malcolm Gladwell)?

Are we witnessing the NFL’s last gasp as the great spectacle of American life? I’d probably put the game’s ­long-­term survival as a slight favorite over the doom scenarios. Pro football has prevailed too many times to bet against, in spite of itself.

Beyond that, I’m punting, or turning the question back on ­ourselves—­the hundreds of millions of us who have made the National Football League the superpower it is. Why does this game still mean so much, and why are we still here?

THE WORST THING ABOUT PRO FOOTBALL IS THAT A LOT OF IT HAS nothing to do with football. It has so much business and hair spray crusted over it: so many sideshows and expert panels “breaking things down for us” and a whole lot of people you don’t want to deal with or watch on ­TV—­and then you supersize all of it, stretch it over a week, and here we have the Super Bowl.

Our hosts did not disappoint. Neither did the weather. It was a frigid week in the “Bold North,” as Minnesota is apparently now calling itself, courtesy of its Super Bowl 52 host committee. I hadn’t heard “Bold North” before, just like I had no idea why Philly fans had taken to wearing German shepherd masks as their trademark identifiers instead of something, say, more majestic and birdlike (apparently the canine masks were meant to evoke the Eagles’ underdog ­status—­got it). This 2018 gridiron carnival played out in a dream sequence that featured the various parading werewolves of the NFL: “I saw Bud Grant walking with the queen. I saw Odell Beckham Jr. walking with the queen. I saw (Boomer) Esiason drinking a Starbucks at the Loews Hotel. And his hair was ­perfect.”

Both the Eagles and Patriots, and most of the international media, were based out at the Mall of America in Bloomington, next to the airport. By Friday, the warring Taliban factions³ from Massholia and Phillystan had descended on this retail ­colossus—­big enough, by the way, to fit 7 Yankee Stadiums, 32 Boeing 747s, or 258 Statues of Liberty. The MOA also has its own in-house counterterrorism unit for our safety. Fans pestered players at the food court, a Chinese TV crew broadcast from the Splat-O-Sphere (at the Mall amusement park), and armed SWAT teams prowled among the Buffalo Wild Wings, Kiehl’s, and Benihana. Philadelphians were warned, as a security precaution, not to don their German shepherd masks inside the complex or to break into their menacing renditions of “Fly, Eagles, Fly.” They appeared undeterred by the counterterrorism unit.

As happens whenever large bunches of media people assemble in one place, there was no shortage of bitching about something or another. This week’s ­über-­complaint, obviously, involved why on God’s frozen earth we were here. As in, why would the league plunk down its marquee event in this NFC North Siberia? The consensus is that pro football has been overtaken by a “biblical plague of dickheads,” to paraphrase the late writer Richard Ben Cramer (granted, he was talking about journalism).

Like many things with the NFL, the real answer included dollar signs. This was all bribery fodder, essentially, or a Bold North variant on the civic blackmail and corporate welfare model that’s gotten many grand NFL edifices built and paid for. Football had awarded its grandest pageant to the Twin Cities in order to sweeten an already sweetheart deal in which state officials had agreed to subsidize a new ­billion-­dollar stadium for the billionaire owners of the Vikings. And taxpayers would foot about half the bill for a football Versailles whose primary ­beneficiaries—­a pair of New Jersey real estate ­barons—­cared little about the ­cash-­strapped predicament of Minnesota schools, roads, and “essential” services that were less essential than football.

And then came the extra point: local fans/taxpayers were also forced to play host to the marauding followers of the team that two weeks earlier had defeated the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game in ­Philadelphia—­and, for good measure, had pelted their kindly midwestern visitors with a Philly Special of profanity, hurled objects, and beer showers as they attempted to flee their beating.

All that said: the “Minnesota Nice” thing is legit. People are unfailingly friendly, even to outsiders who don’t deserve it. “I will always live in Minneapolis,”⁴ Prince once told Oprah. “It’s so cold it keeps the bad people out.” Prince, however, did not live to see this invasion of Eagles and Pats fans at the Mall of America.

Yet just when you’re ready to pronounce the NFL dead beneath an avalanche of its own greed and ­bullshit—­hell, even declare the Super Bowl to be a trope for the decline of ­America—­you hit the payoff. The game starts, and with it the best part of pro football: football.

THERE IS AN HONESTY ABOUT FOOTBALL THAT MY DAY JOB—­politics—­could never match. No one tries to dress up or excuse a loss, which was refreshing after being lobotomized by so much political spin. No one tries to argue against numbers on a scoreboard, or convince a coach they deserve to start because they went to Harvard (or Alabama). “Football was an island of directness in a world of circumspection,” Frederick Exley wrote in A Fan’s Notes. “It smacked of something old, something traditional, something unclouded by legerdemain and subterfuge.”

Super Bowl 52 was a glorious jailbreak. Both offenses ran circles around the opposing defenses. There was just one punt, few penalties, lots of big plays, and a few sandlot calls back and forth. The Pats tried a ­double-­reverse pass intended for Brady, who had run wide open down the right ­sideline—­only to drop the damn pass. This felt fateful, if not ominous.

Eagles coaches might have sensed the same because they called a similar play later in the half that Foles caught in the end zone. Philly fans were now beside themselves. They had dominated the stadium all night, outnumbering and outcheering smug Pats rooters by a ratio of about three to two. (We got totally owned, as the bros say.) Foles threw three touchdown passes, each requiring replays to confirm the balls were “possessed,” the passes were “controlled,” and the receiver “survived the ground.” But it was Foles’s touchdown catch that kicked the hysteria in the giant room up to decibels rarely heard from a Super Bowl audience in a neutral city.

At the start of halftime, I saw an older Eagles fan in a throwback Wilbert Montgomery jersey wheezing outside a men’s room. He was resisting an oxygen mask from a paramedic and wanted no part of an ambulance. He had suffered too many years with the Eagles to miss this reward. Air is overrated.

I came to respect Eagles fans, ­grudgingly—­very, very ­grudgingly—­as their desperation added a visceral edge. Could they handle ultimate victory? What would the city look like in the aftermath? Philadelphia police slathered Crisco on city poles to discourage celebratory climbing after the Eagles’ win in the NFC Championship Game. The ­precaution—­which based on news photos appeared not to ­work—­joined an instant pantheon of nationally recognized “Philly things.” Before the game, I spoke to many Philadelphia fans who fully expected calamity to intervene to ruin the ride. This is what being a Red Sox fan used to be like before we won in 2004, back in our lovable loser days (we are now ­neither).

In December, I was at the ­Eagles-­Rams game in the Los Angeles Coliseum in which the Eagles’ brilliant young quarterback Carson Wentz hurt his knee on a ­third-­quarter scramble. The injury did not appear serious at first, but Wentz was replaced as a precaution by his backup, Foles, who managed to hold a late lead. Philly ­fans—­a vocal majority in that stadium, ­too—­were joyous as they filed out of the Coliseum after a ­43–­35 victory over the NFC ­West–­leading Rams, only to get the news upon checking their phones that Wentz’s injury was in fact a ­season-­ending ACL tear. Elation to deflation, just like that. People were actually in tears. It was hard not to feel for the poor hooligans.

Nick Foles? Maybe a serviceable backup; but when posited as a viable Super Bowl quarterback, his name became a punch line. Foles had performed well as the Eagles’ starter in 2013 and part of 2014, but had worn out his welcome by season’s end—to the extent anyone ever gets “welcomed” in Philly to begin with. Not a single Eagles fan I spoke to believed that the team had any hope without Wentz and with Foles. But somehow Philadelphia kept on winning with the journeyman backup. They were underdogs at home in the playoffs against Atlanta and Minnesota, but won both games. New England was solidly favored in the Super Bowl, despite the Eagles’ being better at nearly every ­position—­except for the most important one on the field, quarterback, where the Patriots and Brady held what looked to be a historic advantage.

This is why it can be hard to turn away from football. The most ­unlikely of performers can electrify on the biggest of stages, and when you least expect it. This game was just deranged. Thrills came ­nonstop—­except when it all stopped.

A terrifying episode nearly ruined the whole party. In the second quarter, Patriots receiver Brandin Cooks caught a 23-yard pass over the middle, danced around for extra yardage, and never saw Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins charging at him and BOOM! The helmet-to-helmet ­hit—­deemed ­legal—­elicited another category of football gasp, the sickened kind. Everything went quiet and Cooks was not moving and holy shit. Things got solemn fast.

Football is the “secret vice” of the civilized, wrote William Phillips in the journal Commentary in 1969. “Much of its popularity is due to the fact that it makes respectable the most primitive feelings about violence, patriotism, manhood.”⁵ This is true enough, but the notion is predicated on damage staying within bounds. The year had been filled with serious injuries to star players (Aaron Rodgers, J. J. Watt, Wentz, and a host of others). But none of them threatened vital organs or functions, with the catastrophic exception of the Steelers’ young linebacker Ryan Shazier, who suffered a spinal injury in a Monday night game against Cincinnati that jeopardized his playing career and (as of early 2018) his ability to walk normally again. Otherwise, even in the ­season-­ending cases, the injuries remained in bounds. As long as the gladiator is still ­breathing—­maybe favors us with a thumbs-up while being carted ­off—­we know we’ve remained safely on the right side of what our football stomachs can digest. Pass the bean dip.

But Cooks was motionless for two, maybe three minutes. The silence in the stadium was becoming gruesome. Not respectable. To state the unspeakable, and at the risk of sounding glib: the Super Bowl would be a most inopportune stage to have a player die ­on—­the NFL’s worst nightmare. My colleague Joe Drape, who covers horse racing for the New York Times and sat next to me in the press box, mentioned at this moment a tragedy from 2008 in which a filly had died on the track after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby. Since then, the sport’s leadership has lived in fear of a replay, believing horse racing might not survive another televised extravaganza that turned into a thoroughbred snuff event. It was obvious why Joe mentioned this now. Would they keep playing this game if Cooks died? Again, maybe this was needlessly glib and morbid (press boxes bring out the glib and morbid). But the NFL had almost certainly ­game-­planned for this scenario, figured out some contingency in the event of sudden death.

Thank goodness, Cooks survived the ground and the blow that planted him there. He finally picked himself up and walked off and we could all get on with our fun. Cooks was ruled out the rest of the night with a head injury, but everyone else was free to resume pounding. It took just a few seconds to feel the game rumbling back to life, like a restarted locomotive. Drape headed off on a beer run.

Spoiler alert: The Eagles won, ­41–­33. Brady, who had been named the league’s MVP for the third time the night before, was his usual New Age Ninja self, finishing with 505 yards and three touchdowns. His ­last-­ditch 51-yard heave, intended for Gronk, was batted away in the end zone. As soon as the leather hit the turf, everyone’s first ­instinct—­mine, yours, Brady’­s—­was to glance up at the clock to see if ticks remained. The zeros confirmed that time and Philly had beaten Tom, at least for this season.

“We never had control of the game,” Brady was saying afterward to punctuate a season in which the NFL had itself felt at the mercy of uncontrollable events and ­actors—­protesting players, rogue owners, and, not least, a U.S. president using our most popular sport as ammunition in the country’s culture wars. Football no longer felt safely bubbled off from the messiness and politics of the larger American reality show.

This would all take time to process. The sport felt exhausted and unsettled, even as the Big Game euphoria spilled onto the arctic streets. Eagles fans were delirious and also dumbfounded. They were the underdogs who caught the car, and now what? Reckoning and redemption stories are always getting tangled up in football, boom versus doom in a grudge match. It felt strange to experience Peak Football and have it also feel like the end of something.