Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark Leibovich

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       Prologue

       RESPITE

      April 28, 2017

       Goodell is a Douchebag!

      —SIGN AT THE NFL DRAFT

       PHILADELPHIA

      Again, Philly.

      The season ended here with a parade and started with one, ­too—­a parade of soon-to-be rookies ambling across a stage. The first NFL Draft ever to be held outdoors took place on a warm spring night, ten months and a very different identity ago for this proud and prickly town. Philadelphia had yet to achieve its unlikely Peak Football status. This was before Crisco poles and doggie masks and Nick Foles had also become celebrated Philly “things” (Foles had previously been a Philly “thing,” for sure, but mainly just a thing to heckle).

      I joined a sweaty throng outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, near the Rocky statue. The City of Brotherly Love had been conferred by the NFL with the 2017 edition of its annual cattle call, kicking off a new tradition of the draft’s being held in alternating cities (it was in New York for decades, then Chicago for the previous few years). Philadelphia, of course, makes a curious welcome center for a nervous young man. The town owns an ignominious reputation for drunken and derelict fan ­behavior—­home to a population СКАЧАТЬ