GANG GREEN by GERALD ESKENAZI

Author:GERALD ESKENAZI
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: POCKET BOOKS
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The locker room was edgy. I sidled over to one of the players and asked him if he thought Walt was acting funny that morning. I told him what I had observed.

“If you’re asking me if I thought he was drunk,” said the player, “I’ll tell you this: You ask 25 guys here and they’ll say no.” Then he added, “But you got to write what you see.”

That was confirmation enough for me.

I hedged my story. I didn’t say Walt was drunk, but I did use “slurred” and “rambling,” and mentioned his dark glasses.

We saw Walt again on Wednesday. He was upbeat and smiling in preparing to face the dangerous Steelers. Before he started talking, he looked in my direction and said, “Well, can you see my eyes now?”

He survived not only that assault but the following Sunday’s onslaught by the Steelers, who crushed his team by 38-10. A huge number of columnists had made the trip to Pittsburgh, thinking they were about to preside over the demise of a coach. We all collared Kensil after that game and he continued to stick up for Walt, calling him once more “a good coach.”

After that 0-3 start, more than half the players refused to come to the locker room the next day to talk to newsmen. Todd, the most approachable of Jets, stopped giving interviews. (This was about a month before his confrontation with Serby.)

Walt saved his mind games for his team before Game 4, when another loss might have simply destroyed the season. He cleared everyone except the players out of the locker room—the trainers, the assistant coaches, the equipment men, the team physicians.

“I’m going to leave it up to you,” he said before his 0-3 squad faced the Oilers. “If you want to win this game, come out. If you don’t want to win it, don’t bother to come out.”

The Jets produced a spectacular turnaround. They trounced the Oilers, with Todd having his best game in the pros.

“My coaches at Swoyersville High School in Pennsylvania used to do that once in a while,” Walt remembered. “Sometimes you’ve got to do something, even if it’s wrong.”

After that 0-3 start they went 10-2-1. They lost only to the Seahawks, whom they faced twice. That 10-5-1 record was good enough to squeeze them into the playoffs for the first time since the 1969 season.

You could sense that the Jets, with their Sack Exchange, with Todd connecting with Wesley Walker, with rookie running back Freeman McNeil, the first-round draft pick out of UCLA, making his presence felt, were on the verge of a run that would take them into the mid-1980s. They won seven of their last eight games and faced the Bills in the playoffs.

It ended badly but dramatically. Indeed, Walt’s guys almost pulled off the greatest comeback in postseason play after falling behind by 24-0. But in the closing seconds, trailing by 31-27, Todd looked for wideout Derrick Gaffney in the end zone. He was in front of the scoreboard flashing

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