Inside the NFL’s First Family Read online

  As much as that game hurt, it wasn’t long before my perspective began to change. Carrie was pregnant again and on February 11, 1992, Jacob Thomas “Jake” Matthews joined the family. Once more, I was thrilled to be a new dad. Now a father of four kids, I was reminded that some things were more important than my football frustrations. My children didn’t care if my team had scored fewer points than another team. They just wanted my love and attention. Enjoying time with my family was a blessing far beyond what I deserved.

  We had a great team in 1992, maybe our best yet. Despite Warren missing five games because of a fractured left arm, we finished the season 10–6 and qualified for the playoffs for an NFL-leading sixth consecutive year. Warren returned for part of our last game and we beat Buffalo easily in the Dome, 27–3.

  A week later, we were in Buffalo to play the Bills again in our annual wild card playoff game. The Bills had an excellent team—they’d made it to the Super Bowl the previous two seasons—but their quarterback, Jim Kelly, had been injured in that final regular-season game against us. Our prospects looked good.

  By the end of the first half, our prospects had improved to near-certain victory. I’d never been involved in an NFL game where my team had so dramatically imposed its will on an opponent. Warren threw for four touchdowns, two of them to our All-Pro receiver Haywood Jeffires, and we led 28–3. It was magical. I thought, Let’s just get this second half over with so we can get ready for the next playoff game.

  For Buffalo, it got even worse in the third quarter. On the Bills’ opening drive, Bubba McDowell picked off a Reich pass and ran it back fifty-eight yards for another score. We led 35–3. Fans began to exit the stadium.

  Buffalo finally showed some life, driving for a touchdown. With nothing to lose, the Bills tried an onside kick, recovered it, and scored a second touchdown. Now it was 35–17.

  Between the halftime break and the crazy action in that third quarter, it felt like we hadn’t played a down of offense for hours. I sat on our sideline bench with David Williams, our right tackle, and said, “Man, it would be wild if they came back and won this thing.” I meant it as a joke, but as we looked at each other, I think we both realized it was actually possible.

  That long break was the worst thing that could have happened to us. Suddenly our offense was out of sync. We punted after going nowhere and Buffalo scored on a twenty-six-yard pass to Andre Reed. On the second play of our next drive, the Bills intercepted. A minute later, Reed caught another touchdown pass, Buffalo’s fourth of the quarter.

  Suddenly, we were only up 35–31. The crowd in frozen Rich Stadium was going crazy and I was thinking, We can’t possibly blow this thing.

  Our magical, near-certain victory had turned into a nightmare. In the fourth quarter, we drove down the field and lined up for a field goal attempt to regain some momentum. But when I snapped the ball to our holder, Greg Montgomery, he fumbled the ball. No kick and Buffalo took over.

  Frank Reich was having the game of his life. He drove the rejuvenated Bills down the field, helped by a thirty-five-yard run by Kenneth Davis. Moments later, from seventeen yards out, Reich hit Reed for yet another touchdown pass. With 3:08 to play, Buffalo led 38–35.

  We actually rallied to tie the game on a field goal with twelve seconds left. Okay, I thought. We’ve weathered the storm. We’re going to laugh about this later. Now we’ve got this thing. We even won the toss and started with the ball in overtime. But on third down, Warren’s pass to Ernest Givins was intercepted on a play that could have been called pass interference. Three plays later, Doug Christie kicked a thirty-two-yard field goal and the celebration in Buffalo was on. It is still the largest deficit—thirty-two points—any team has overcome in league history. It’s known in NFL lore simply as “The Comeback.” In Houston, they called it “The Choke.”

  I had to give the Buffalo fans credit. Though some left, I was amazed at how many stayed and how loud they were. It was actually the least painful of my playoff losses because it was so surreal. It didn’t seem like it was really happening.

  Every year around playoff time, one of the networks replays the game on television. To this day, every time I watch the first half, I’m certain we’re going to win.

  The surreal didn’t stop with The Comeback. It extended to the entire next season. I’ve never experienced a crazier year.

  We rarely interacted with the Oilers owner, Bud Adams. Occasionally he came into the locker room to congratulate us after a win, but we never saw him before the season. Except in 1993. He addressed the team at training camp. “Next year,” he said, “this team will be broken up because of the new salary cap.” The NFL and players union had signed off on a new bargaining agreement that included more open free agency and a limit on team salaries. Since we had several high-priced veterans, the message was that some of us would have to go. The 1993 season was our last chance to win with the talent the Oilers had assembled. The pressure was on.

  You could say we didn’t respond well. We dropped four of our first five games. It was so bad that to shake things up, the coaches benched Warren for the next game at New England in favor of backup Cody Carlson. Then Cody got hurt running for a touchdown and Warren was back in there. Warren was always a competitor, but he had an extra edge to him that day. He threw for a pair of touchdowns and we beat the Patriots, 28–14.

  Despite the win and Warren’s resurgence, we had a controversy. On the day before the game, the wife of my fellow lineman, David Williams, went into labor and had a baby. Everyone was healthy, but David chose to stay in Houston with his family and miss the Patriots game. I understood being there for the birth of his first child—that’s a huge moment—but once that was taken care of, I felt his next obligation was to his teammates. Bud Adams fined David and said he had “misplaced priorities,” which set off a media firestorm dubbed “Babygate.” Since David’s locker was next to mine, I had to deal with an overflow crowd of reporters when he came back. It was a distraction.

  We put that craziness behind us and started winning. When we nipped Bruz’s Browns on December 12, 19–17, we’d won eight straight. But those achievements felt hollow a couple of days later. In the early morning hours of December 14, Jeff Alm, our backup defensive tackle, lost control of the convertible he was driving. His best friend was thrown from the car and killed. When Jeff saw his friend’s body, he was apparently so distraught that he pulled out a gun he had in the car and shot himself.

  For the most part, NFL players feel taken care of and safe inside the cocoon teams weave around them. We’re so focused on what we do that we’re insulated from the problems of others in the outside world. Jeff’s shocking death reminded me how fragile our football world and life really are. People will always be more important than wins and losses.

  Even so, we had more games to play. Somehow we kept winning. We beat the Steelers and 49ers to run our streak to ten, and were up on the Jets, 14–0, in our regular-season finale when the next blow arrived—literally. Our defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan, had been feuding all season with offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. Ryan apparently felt that the Run and Shoot, with its emphasis on passing, made it difficult to run down the clock and put too much of a strain on the defense. After Kevin called a pass play just before halftime, he and Ryan got into a shouting match. It ended with Ryan punching Kevin on national television.

  You can’t have animosity between coaches, which fosters animosity between players, and expect to succeed. Despite all our talent, experience, and victories, our team was dysfunctional. Jesus once said, “But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matthew 7:26–27). That was the Oilers in 1993—we had no solid foundation and were headed for a crash.

  We finished the regular season with an eleven-game win streak and a 12–4 record, capturing the AFC Central Divisi
on title. For the first time in my career, we’d earned an extra week to rest and prepare for the playoffs. Our opponent the following week was the Kansas City Chiefs, led by Joe Montana, then in the twilight of his great career. We’d blanked the Chiefs, 30–0, earlier that season and led them 10–0 at the half and 13–7 with nine and a half minutes left in the game. The rest of the final quarter, however, was all too familiar. The Chiefs drove seventy-one yards for a touchdown. We lost a fumble on our first play after the kickoff and the Chiefs soon had another touchdown. We were down, 21–13.

  As always, we rallied. Warren drove us eighty yards and threw a touchdown pass to Givins, bringing us within a point. But my old Trojan teammate, Marcus Allen, cemented our fate with a twenty-one-yard touchdown burst up the middle. Kansas City beat us, 28–20, ending our season and an era.

  We’d qualified for the playoffs seven consecutive seasons, best in the NFL at the time, but never made it to the conference finals. We’d run out of chances. Munch retired. Warren was traded to the Vikings. Buddy Ryan left to become the coach of the Arizona Cardinals. Other veterans were let go. The glory years in Houston were over.

  There’s nothing quite like the amazing thrills and devastating letdowns of life in the NFL. You’re treated like a king one minute, with thousands of people cheering and adoring you, and feel like the lowest bum in the universe the next when you or your teammates make a mistake and things go south. During those playoff years in Houston, I had plenty of opportunities to experience both sensations.

  But I was fortunate. I had a growing family—and a growing faith—to provide perspective. Just eleven days after that crushing loss to the Chiefs, Carrie delivered our fifth child, Michael Caleb (Mikey) Matthews. We named him after Munch. After I saw Mikey, all I wanted was to be with him and my family. We brought him home on a Sunday and I left the next day for the Pro Bowl. I remember how badly I wanted to stay home.

  If I learned anything during those up-and-down years in Houston, it was that I wouldn’t find lasting contentment in winning games, advancing in the playoffs, or going to Pro Bowls. I loved the game and the victories, but I came to understand that it really was just a game. My family meant so much more to me. My faith, meanwhile, was my foundation. Football victories and awards were more like the sand that Jesus talked about—the rains, floodwaters, and winds of life could wash those accomplishments away and leave me feeling empty. My “house” was built on my relationship with Christ. That was where my value as a person rested. He was, and is, the source of my fulfillment and contentment.

  Those truths didn’t sink in overnight. I spent a lot of years praying, reading my Bible, and talking with fellow believers—as well as enduring those painful playoff losses—before they resonated in my soul. I would need more reminders in the years to come. Yet I’m thankful to the Lord every day for giving me His perspective and showing me His plan and my purpose in it. His presence gets me through the defeats and makes the delights so much sweeter.

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  OUR KIDS ARE WATCHING

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  Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

  1 CORINTHIANS 11:1

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  IT SEEMED ONLY A MOMENT that I’d taken my eyes off them.

  We’d come home from church and Carrie had asked me to watch the kids while she changed clothes. This was in California, back when we had just the three children: Steven was probably four years old, Kevin two, and Marilyn, one. I took them into the backyard. I just wanted a minute to relax and check out the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. The kids couldn’t get in trouble in that short a time, right?

  A little bit later, Carrie came into the backyard and saw me and Marilyn. “Where are the boys?” she asked.

  “They’re playing,” I said.

  “Well, where are they playing?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. Somewhere in the backyard.”

  Carrie searched the backyard and couldn’t find them. Starting to panic, she ran into the front, then into the street. Suddenly she heard the sound of screeching tires. Down the road, a man leaped out of his car, then began jumping up and down, yelling something and pointing. Carrie turned to look where he’d pointed—at the steeply pitched roof of our two-story house. She was just in time to see, to her horror, the backs of Steven and Kevin as they ran over the peak of the roof and out of sight.

  They’re dead, Carrie thought. She screamed.

  By this time I was searching the backyard myself. When I heard my wife scream, I looked up and spotted the boys running on the roof. “Boys, don’t move!” I shouted. Of course they ignored me. I ran back and forth below them, arms out, ready to catch either one if he fell.

  Carrie rushed back into the backyard. She saw Marilyn at a locked gate that blocked access to a spiral staircase leading up to our second-floor balcony. The boys had created a makeshift ladder, scaled the gate, gone up the staircase, and climbed from the balcony to the roof. Marilyn was at the bottom of the gate, making a running start and trying futilely to swing her tiny leg over the gate, so that she could join them.

  Carrie scooped up Marilyn and hurried to join me. When she arrived and took my place, I hurdled the gate, ran up the staircase to the balcony, scrambled onto the roof, and grabbed Steven and Kevin. It wouldn’t be the last time we would need to remove our children from our roof—it happened again after we moved to Texas. Apparently a thirst for adventure—and a desire to scare the daylights out of their parents—is another part of the Matthews DNA. Though the fire marshal wouldn’t recommend it, we finally had to screw our windows shut.

  I have to admit, I may not have been watching my kids as closely as I should have that morning. If you’re a parent, maybe you can relate. But you can be sure that your kids are closely watching and listening to you. For better and worse, dads and moms have tremendous influence on our children.

  If I didn’t remember this already, I was reminded nearly every time I played a game with my kids. After a big yardage gain against me in our video football game, Steven would taunt me with, “You can’t go broke taking a profit!” When Kevin felt inspired to challenge me in hoops, he might say, “Hey, you want a piece of the champ?”

  I cringed every time I heard those words. My kids were using the same lines against me that I used on them. Clearly, they’d been listening to my trash talk.

  I might not have been thrilled that they were copying my vocabulary, but it was encouraging to Carrie and me to realize that the kids had to be absorbing our positive parenting efforts as well. That was especially important to us when it came to our faith. I wanted them to remember our Sunday mornings in church and our prayers before meals, before bedtime, whenever we had an issue we needed to talk to the Lord about, and before school. On those mornings when I dropped the kids off, I’d repeat something I once heard on the radio: “Have a good and godly day, for of what lasting value is a good day if it’s not a godly day as well?” They do remember and still repeat that line today.

  I had grand visions of passing on important lessons in theology to our children during family Bible studies. It didn’t usually work out that way. We’d get together after dinner in the family room and might start off fine. But then one of the boys or Marilyn would make a funny face and they’d all start giggling. We had trouble staying on task.

  One of my lessons involved toothpaste. I handed each of our five kids a small tube and then waved a hundred-dollar bill. “If any of you squeeze the toothpaste out of your tube and can put it back in,” I said, “I’ll give you this hundred dollars.” The message was about hurtful words, that once you say them, you can’t take them back.

  The kids tried to win that hundred. Once they figured out that their toothpaste wasn’t going back into the tube, they got mad. I’m sure they remember that. Whether they recall the lesson is debatable, but at least we were trying.

  Carrie and I tried
to be good examples in other ways. I took Marilyn on “dates” while Carrie did the same with the boys. It was a way to spend one-on-one time with the kids and make them feel special. We have lots of good memories from those outings.

  There were times when our words made an impression. Carrie once heard Steven and Kevin teasing Marilyn, calling her stupid. Marilyn was about seven years old and nearly in tears. Carrie talked to me about it. Then we brought in the boys. “I know you’re just teasing your sister,” Carrie said, “but when you say those unkind words it makes her feel like you don’t love her.” Carrie asked the boys to tell Marilyn something they really liked about her and say “I love you.” Then we brought Marilyn into the room—she had the saddest look on her face. The boys did as instructed and gave her a hug. Marilyn’s frown turned into a grin.

  What’s great today is that the kids still remember that moment. All of our kids still say “I love you” to each other and still give each other hugs. Apparently Carrie and I got a few things right.

  Love is the strongest bond in our family. We’re very “family first”—we lean on each other for support. We all like each other and want to hang out together. It’s hard for other people to break into that circle, but that’s just because we love each other so much.

  MARILYN MATTHEWS

  When my example was less than perfect, I tried to teach with my words. Though I didn’t apply myself as well as I could have as a student, I encouraged our kids to do their best in the classroom. “God has given us these gifts,” I told them. “We need to use them. We should strive for excellence in every area of our lives—athletics, academics, our roles as spouses, parents, sons, or daughters.”