The Legend of Jesse Smoke Read Free Page B

who plays linebacker or center, but ones that cripple a quarterback. The year before, he sat out five games because of a broken middle finger on his throwing hand. Do you know how many times a guy in any other position breaks his finger in a given year? How many men play with multiple broken fingers? Nobody talks about it, but believe me, most of the lineman have broken fingers at least once or twice in the course of a season; some, in the course of a game. The year before that, Ambrose developed a severe case of laryngitis; couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper. It hung on for two weeks and just to be safe, the doctor ordered another week of silence after that. He missed three games because he couldn’t call the signals. None of that would have been so bad, but he always acted like some kind of dispossessed royalty. The guy was good and he knew it. So he would damn well stay on his ass until he was good and healed, never once fearing for his job. He knew it was his. (And let me tell you, I hate that kind of certainty.)
    The guy we had playing behind him was another freak. A tall, lanky kid from Oklahoma named Ken Spivey who could whip the ball far enough and, when he was on his game, throw pretty accurately, too. Only he was erratic. He still had not fully grasped the playbook, and what was worse, he let things upset him—had a terrible temper—and when he got angry he’d lose concentration, which is to say, he’d lose his talent. I mean all of it. Hell, he’d lose the ability to hold a football, much less throw the damned thing. You could tell when he was getting upset, because his face would turn bright red. And you know what upset him? He didn’t like it when somebody pushed him or knocked him down. Which tends to happen a lot in football, especially when a fellow is playing quarterback.
    The third-string guy was Jimmy Kelso. He’s a head coach now, but back then he was one of those fellows you like to have around because he was plenty smart and plenty willing. He played well in college, showed he could lead a team downfield. His passes were unerringly accurate—I mean he could drop the ball over a guy’s shoulder and into his arms before he had time to look for it. Problem was, he couldn’t throw the ball very far. The arm strength just wasn’t there. We used him in practice a lot, especially when we wanted our defense to be ready for a short, quick passing game, but even then you have to be able to really fire the ball sometimes. For a quick-out pass, where the wide receiver runs five to seven steps and then breaks toward the sideline, the quarterback has to be able to put the ball in the air, on a line, with little or no arch, twenty to twenty-five yards, before the receiver makes his cut toward the sideline. When he does make his cut and turns his head to look for the ball, it’s supposed to be right there in front of him. Half the time Kelso couldn’t even make that simple pattern work. He’d throw it quickly enough, but the ball wouldn’t have enough steam on it and a lot of the time the defensive back or even a linebacker would simply knock it down, or worse, intercept it. When you intercept that kind of pass, there’s only three people who can stop you from taking it back all the way “to the house,” as the players still like to say: the receiver you jumped in front of to intercept it—and he’s usually moving pretty fast in the other direction, and therefore isn’t likely to catch up to anybody; the quarterback, who generally isn’t very fast, or likely to be able to tackle a coatrack; and the referee, who is usually racing down the field next to the interceptor so he can signal touchdown. So an interception under those circumstances is a pretty grim development—and,unfortunately, what you could frequently expect with Kelso leading the charge.
    The truth is, in spite of the All-Pro talent at starter, and the almost prissy cockiness of our bench, we were considered pretty weak at