Tue, Dec 27, 2005 page20

• Joe Theismann faces the hit that ended his career

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  It was one of the ghastliest sports injuries captured on television, and Joe Theismann had spent 20 years avoiding the replay. He would turn his head if clips from the tackle by Lawrence Taylor that snapped his right leg were being shown.

  Although he initially agreed to watch a tape of that Giants-Redskins game shown on ABC's Monday Night Football with a reporter, Theismann then resisted.

  "Why would I want to watch that?" he said. But after a break, he returned to a viewing room in the Redskins' complex, where he works out and is a regular visitor.

  "OK," he said, sounding nearly eager to see the play that ended his playing career. "Let's do this. It's been long enough."

  Theismann's belated reminiscence came four days before ABC's Monday Night finale -- the Patriots against the Jets at Giants Stadium -- after 36 seasons. ABC has two wild-card playoff games and the Super Bowl left, but the Monday night games will shift next year to ESPN, for whom Theismann has called Sunday night games since 1988. He will call Monday Night with Al Michaels, the series' play-by-play voice for 20 years.

  "I wanted to continue to do television," Theismann said. "The only viable option for me was Monday Night."

  As he watched the game that turned him into a sportscaster, he recalled that he was inconsistent. He was throwing too many interceptions.

  "I was in a funk," he said, then remembered how in training camp he boasted that he would play until he had to be carried from the field.

  As he watched video of his 36-year-old self from Nov. 18, 1985, he said he had thought that would be the game that would reverse his luck.

  He watched as he fired a sharp pass to Gary Clark.

  "See," he said. "That's the way I should have played all year."

  He watched as he was sacked by Leonard Marshall.

  "Stupid decision," he said. "I should have thrown that ball away."

  He protested a pass-interference penalty against the Redskins.

  "No!" he said from his leather swivel chair. "Bad call!"

  Frank Gifford, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson were in the booth. Ten months earlier, in January, Theismann called the Super Bowl with Gifford and Don Meredith, as ABC Sports relegated Simpson to pregame duties.

  Now, as the moment that ended his playing career neared, Theismann said: "I'm getting butterflies. It's like you know something's coming."

  The second quarter began with a short run by John Riggins for a Washington first down to the Redskins' 46.

  One play away. "This is funny," he said. "My heart's racing."

  The flea-flicker: Theismann handed off to Riggins, who pitched it back to him, but Theismann could find no open receivers. He was trapped. Giants linebacker Harry Carson grazed Theismann with his right hand. Then Taylor jumped and grabbed Theismann's lightly padded shoulders. Taylor's momentum caused his body to swing under Theismann's torso; his knee landed with a missile's impact on Theismann's lower right leg.

  ABC's live angle showed little, but Gifford took note of the gravity conveyed by Taylor's fervent waving for help. But a reverse angle, taken from the 50, revealed the grisly twisting of the leg.

  Looking through his camera from the opposite side of the field, Jack Cronin knew he had witnessed something dreadful. He alerted Chet Forte, ABC's director. "I think someone should look at the tape," Cronin said he told Forte. "I think he broke his leg. And they said, `Oh, man.'"

  Tommy O'Connell, another cameraman, said he heard Forte say that the shot was too gruesome to be replayed.

  Bob Goodrich, the producer, said it was the worst injury he had seen. He said in an interview that he told the announcers: "`Guys, this is ugly.' We knew we had to be careful."

  But despite any misgivings, ABC rolled the replay. Simpson or Namath groaned.

  They all knew the sound of snapped bones, Gifford said.

  "Oh," Theismann said.

  His eyes closed a bit. He winced: the jolting voltage of memory.

  "You could hear it," he said, referring to the cracking of his tibia; his fibula was broken, too. "The pain was unbelievable."

  "Oh, God," he said. "Wow. It just went so suddenly. It snap-ped like a breadstick. It sounded like two muzzled gunshots off my left shoulder. Pow, pow!"

  Then, he said, his endorphins kicked in and he felt no pain.

  While ABC was in a commercial break after the first replay, a camera zeroed in on Theismann; there was blood around his shin.

  "That was not something people wanted to see, especially if kids were watching," Goodrich recalled thinking.

  On the air, Gifford reported what was seen by the camera and warned that another replay was coming.

  "If your stomach is weak," Gifford said, "just don't watch."

  Theismann's face was turning away as it repeated his horror.

  "How many times do I have to watch this?" he said quietly.

  Then, he turned away, but not far enough to avoid seeing it.

  He recalled being lucid and hearing the team's orthopedic surgeon tell him that he had reset the tibia on the field. He could be seen speaking. Eventually, six men carried him off on a gurney; an ABC handheld camera showed them bringing him to a dimly lit area under the stands at RFK Stadium.

  On the field, Jay Schroeder replaced Theismann.

  In the third quarter, ABC showed the replay for the third and final time. Gifford repeated his caution to viewers with weak stomachs.

  The Redskins won, 23-21.

  Now Theismann looked relieved. He had finally seen the play, not just a photograph, but the full sequence, from the start of the flea-flicker to the mangling of his leg, which healed shorter than his left.

  He said it was not as bad as he imagined, or as graphic as people told him.

  "It was so quick and so sudden," he said. "I didn't feel a twinge in my leg, but I felt butterflies. If the technology available now was available then, it would have been incredibly more graphic."
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