Dreaming of Cowboys

I ran back kicks with Ken Marlboro for nearly two years with the Cowboys. I say "ran back kicks" because that was the only part of our jobs that was even remotely glamorous. I guess he was listed as 5th string wide receiver and I was 3rd string tailback, but the only time we saw the field on offense was in preseason and at the end of complete blowouts.

Other than that, we were strictly special teams guys, and we both loved it. Running back punts, gunning in punt coverage, wedge busting, we did it all - and we were pretty good, if I have to say so myself. Not Bill Bates good, but still, solid, you know?

Anyway, Ken was a little older because he'd done a stint in the Army before making it in the NFL. Everyone knew that about him, and a lot of guys talked to him about it; I guess they were curious, or envious maybe.

So when he re-upped to go to Iraq, it was a big deal, obviously. He signed back up during the offseason, but wasn't assigned back to active duty until November 5th, so he got a fair number of games in before he left. He asked the NFL for a couple of exceptions for his jersey that year, and (amazingly) they let him have both of them; he changed his number to 5, for his intake date, and instead of his last name he wore "Last Tour of the States" on the back of his jersey.

It gave everybody on the team a little extra incentive, I guess, especially the special teamers. We went out for drinks as a group a little more often than we had before, maybe spent more time watching film together than usual; I think we all were trying to draw out our time with him as long as we could.

But the day of his last game arrived, of course, and he couldn't have picked a better sendoff game, let me tell you. Playing the Redskins at our place, really needing a win coming off being shut out by Tampa Bay the week before...we were 5-2, but 6-2 for the first half of the season would put us in a totally different place than 5-3, and we all knew it; Bill wouldn't let us forget it for a moment, that's for sure.

We were clinging to a 7-6 lead at halftime, and as much as we were going all out, for Ken, we hadn't really made a difference on special teams. Maybe we were trying too hard, I don't know. Anyway, Parcells wrapped up his halftime talk by saying, "Hey, Kenny, this is your last tour, remember? Go out there and give them something to remember you by, alright?"

Well, the locker room just erupted at that, and we charged back out to the field almost literally breathing fire. We got the kick for the third quarter, and the call was for a sideline return - our sideline, right in front of everyone who’d be living and dying with Ken if he got the ball.

The man himself, Jerrah, had come down to the sideline during halftime, his face pinched into the characteristic mask of anxiety that he always wore during games like this. He talked briefly to Parcells, and then to some of the marquee talent, but then he just paced, back and forth. There had been an ugly rumor in the locker room for a couple of weeks that Jerry already had started planning to put Ken in the Cowboy Ring of Honor if he were to, you know, not make it back, and even to take the unprecedented step of retiring his #5. It wouldn’t have been much of a loss as a number; the only guys to wear it before Ken were some punter and Clint Stoerner, who wasn’t Hall of Fame material even if he did come from the University of Arkansas. Ken didn’t seem to put much stock in it, but a lot of guys were pretty bent out of shape about what they saw as just another cynical exploitation of an opportunity by the king of the football dollar, Mr. Jones.

The kickoff finally came, and we couldn’t have asked for better placement for the return we had on. Ken caught the ball at the 3, took two strides toward the right and then cut sharply back left toward our sideline. He burst through a seam in the initial wave of coverage and then angled over toward the wall of blockers that was forming, and even as busy as I was, I could see that he had a chance. He picked up two good blocks, made the corner, and was suddenly in high gear down the sideline, with all the guys screaming at him, half the coaches losing their headsets, and the crowd absolutely deafening with their sudden roar.

There’s always a last guy that you have to beat on your own, and this time, as usual, it was the kicker. I don’t remember his name, but he was a young guy, still pretty athletic, and he had read the play well enough to keep a good angle on Ken, squeezing him toward the sideline as they approached each other. Jerry had paced down toward that side of the field before kickoff, and he started walking toward the sideline for a better view of what we all knew was going to happen; Ken was going to beat the kicker and score a touchdown. It was fate, or destiny, or Tom Landry’s ghost, whatever; but it was going to happen.

When you watch the replay on film enough times, you notice three things that happened almost simultaneously on the field, but that can be disentangled from each other in super slo mo. First, Ken’s head turns slightly to his right as he picks up the kicker - his position, his angle. Then, Ken’s head turns to the left for just a heartbeat, as if he needed to judge his distance from the sideline one more time.

Lastly, just as the kicker is preparing to square up for the tackle, Ken breaks stride - the classic hitch that inevitably throws the pursuer’s angle off, allowing for a cutback to the middle of the field, where only the end zone awaits. You can see the kicker stumble slightly as he tries to adjust, but he’s no linebacker; by the time he is a yard from Ken, he’s already closer to the sideline than Ken now is, clearly out of position for the tackle.

I wish there had been a camera better positioned to see Ken’s face at that instant; there was no TV camera that had a good shot of it and I’ve never seen anyone with a still photo taken with a good telephoto lens that caught that moment. If anyone has one, let me know, because I’d love to see it.

Because Ken kicked it back into high gear alright, but he angled back into the kicker as he did so, lowering his shoulder and CARRYING that motherfucker with him out of bounds.

In the sea of humanity that is an NFL sideline, it seemed like a miracle that the two grown men suddenly hurtling through it only took one person with them. Ken was the first one up - throwing the ball into the stands, then buried in the mass of teammates that had been sprinting down the sidelines along with him.

The other two figures were less resilient. The Washington kicker had raised himself to a knee and was being attended to by the Cowboy trainers as they waited for the Redskins crew to make it across the field. The other man was nearly unrecognizable from the blood streaming from his nose, but the shine on his expensive yet somehow hideous silver business suit instantly identified him as Jerry Jones, now unconscious on the turf of Texas Stadium.

The medical folks came and got Jerry, and other than the broken nose, he was pretty much okay; I don’t think he had more than a mild concussion. We won the game, and Ken got the game ball, but there was something beneath the raucous celebration that felt a little unsettling, as if there were some question that the team collectively wanted answered, even if they weren’t sure how to ask.

I sure as hell asked, though, even though I had to wait for more than two hours while Ken fulfilled the countless interview requests and finally returned to his locker. He sat down next to me and kind of smiled, and didn’t even blink when I said, “You saw him there, didn’t you? You fucking saw him there, and you traded a touchdown for…”

I didn’t even know how to finish the sentence; it was too crazy a thing to accuse a guy of doing. He stopped smiling then, and leaned in close. “I’m going to have more chances to get touchdowns after I get back, but some things you only get once chance at in life, and you just can’t afford to miss them.”

He made it back in one piece, and even got to attend a training camp with the Cowboys as a courtesy (I was in Denver by that time), but he never got back on an NFL field. I guess that spared Jerry the painful situation he would have been in had Ken bought it in Iraq, but I’m sure Ken didn’t begrudge him that given the alternative. I called up the Cowboys' front office and made sure that they sent Ken a DVD of that game that had all the television coverage as well as the NFL Films footage, everything that existed of it. He didn’t make too big a deal out of it, but every now and then I’ll go on YouTube and look for clips posted by “Last Tour #5”, whenever I want to see some slow motion goodness of Ken’s inspired burst off of the playing field and into the hearts of millions, MILLIONS of Cowboy fans.