Super Bowl Dreams Dashed

Two days before the biggest game of the 2002 NFL season, Oakland Raiders center Barrett Robbins disappeared.  Raiders staff, local police, the U.S. Border Patrol and the

 FBI began a frantic search in and around the San Diego area. Robbins’ exact path from Friday night curfew through Saturday evening is not entirely known, but media reports and eye witnesses said his binge began in Pacific Beach and eventually led to Tijuana, Mexico.

Barrett’s former teammate, Adam Treu, reluctantly shares his recollection of those stormy hours and how they affected him and his team leading to Super Bowl XXXVII.

ONE GAME TO GO

Unlike previous years, the Raiders found themselves with only one week between the AFC Championship game and the Super Bowl -- a time frame that was less than ideal but far from crippling.  We’d been preparing for the big dance for most of our lives, so what was a week lost?  I spent the first few days in San Diego taking most of the first-team center reps because starter Barrett Robbins had an injured foot.  The Raiders coaches tried to keep the week as pedestrian and typical as they could, scheduling meetings in the morning and putting us on buses to practice each afternoon.  The tempo was high, and we were as optimistic and confident as we’d been all season -- especially in the offensive game plan drawn up by Bill Callahan and Marc Trestman. And because we had one of the best offenses in recent Raiders history, the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” dictated our path. Of course, later it would become clear how deeply detrimental such an approach was.

Wednesday brought us the gift known as Super Bowl Media Day.  It’s only a gift if you love the sound of your own voice or have infinite patience for the dumb, repetitive questions lobbed at you by sweaty, skeptical journalists.  I saw Media Day as a crappy rest stop on the road trip to the ultimate big game, so having to pull over tested my calm.  It also defied my general belief that most players, namely long snappers, should be seen and not heard.   And as the media head butted up against the likes of Gannon, Rice and Brown, I quietly sat with some other no-names and read USA Today. 

THE HARDEST LESSON TO LEARN

One of the perks of playing in the Super Bowl was having a car at our disposal. On Wednesday night, I drove Rick Mirer, our back-up QB, to his house in Rancho Santa Fe.  Some of the team met there to eat dinner, shoot pool and just hang out.  As curfew crept closer, Barrett said he needed a ride from Rick and me back to our La Jolla hotel.

In the car, he asked where we planned to go that night.  The only place I was going, and where I hoped all the guys were going, was back to their rooms and to bed.  I had no desire to party.  But one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as a professional football player was that you had neither control nor command over the guys you were playing with; you only had it over yourself.  Plus, the Raiders weren’t my college teammates at Nebraska.  Players didn’t get suspended for being in bars.  No one was placed on academic probation.  No one was benched for being disrespectful.

Coming from any other teammate, this question would’ve been met incredulously, especially four days before the biggest games of our lives.  But Barrett’s penchant for partying was no secret — not to his teammates and not to the Raiders’ staff. Such behavior was a byproduct of the job.  You became teammates with guys you neither liked nor identified with.  But on the field it didn’t matter because you’d easily bleed, sweat and fight for them.  My problem was accepting it once I left the field.  I always managed to because that’s what you do for the team, for the organization, for your teammates.  But that didn’t mean I always found it easy.

I was told later that Barrett waited in the lobby until he was picked up.  He was heading out and apparently, nobody could stop him.

NO SURPRISE

You might think this was the point when I began to prepare myself to start in the Super Bowl, but it wasn’t. That preparation started years earlier.  I couldn’t then, and I still can’t today, profess to know the depths of Barrett’s problems; I can’t diagnose or speculate beyond what I witnessed.  That would be dangerous. I only know that I’d spent most of my career practicing his position for him because of injury or unexplained absence, especially during the 2001 season. 

I was used to seeing Barrett the morning after a night out, sluggish, asleep during meetings. I’d heard the crazy stories about his after-hours excursions — about alcohol consumed, nightclubs visited, cars wrecked, random rides and near misses -- enough times to stop listening. He’d take himself out of practice, walking away from the line often enough that I knew to just keep my helmet strapped on while on the sideline.  It didn’t so much make my life difficult as it made me sad for Barrett, because when he was healthy, alert, clean and rested, he was a phenomenal football player.  And so I learned that for some players, going out during the season -- even the night before a game -- was typical behavior.  And for some players, the consequences never catch up to them. But for others, they not only catch up, they trip them so fiercely that they never truly find their feet.  This is the beauty and the beast of a locker room, a sort of human cocktail you’re forced to drink. 

OUR STARTING CENTER IS MISSING

Thursday brought the arrival of my daughter Olivia and wife Tracy, as well as Barrett’s return to practice.  Friday came and went with the usual routine and no excitement except the arrival of more family, more fans and more media.  

Saturday, Barrett was a no-show for morning meetings at our hotel.  While we all wondered aloud where he might be, none of us was entirely surprised – we’d seen it all before.  We boarded the buses for our final and most important walk-through.  It was our final dress rehearsal, giving our coaches a chance to orally review every offensive, defensive and special teams situation we might encounter on Sunday.  I took all the starting center reps, and the actual long snapping was replaced, as it usually was, with call outs; first team punt and first team field-goal units take the field and we talk about the what-ifs and make sure everyone is where they need to be.  Ironic, isn’t it?    

After returning to the hotel, I called general manager Bruce Allen to ask if Barrett had been found.  Bruce told me that Callahan was going to announce to the team that night that I was starting the game. I was confident. Playing in, and winning, two national championship games in college had prepared me for this moment; I knew I could do it.  I left to meet with Olivia and Tracy, and after telling them, I called Bill and met him in the players’ lounge early Saturday evening.  Bill was beyond livid. Barrett had disappointed him for the last time.  I was grateful for the confidence he conveyed to me and content that the team captains fully supported his decision to start me even if Barrett returned.  The offensive game plan did not change. 

The entire Barrett situation was addressed in our team meeting that night with a single, simple announcement from Bill that I would start the game.  The meeting then proceeded as all our Saturday night meetings had in the past.  Privately, guys might have wondered if Barrett was in Southern California or in Mexico, in jail or in the hospital.  But we chose to look ahead instead of behind. This wasn’t the time for interruptions or distractions.

EYES FORWARD

Because I’m deeply superstitious, Matt Stinchcomb continued to share a room with me instead of splitting into separate rooms. This, combined with the media’s relatively late scoop of the situation, kept me calm. I didn’t deviate from my usual game-day routine, arriving at the stadium hours in advance of the game, looking over the game plan, methodically taping my jersey to my shoulder pads, going out on the field early with kicker Sebastian Janikowski and punter Shane Lechler.  We retreated to the locker room and had to sit around so Santana could perform before the game.  We talked about different plays, went over the reminders.  We were all absolutely ready to go.  None of the guys expressed worry or angst over Barrett; he was someone who’d be dealt with after we won the game.

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

When Charles Woodson intercepted Brad Johnson’s pass on the third play of the game, I thought it was going to be a fabulous day.  There’s no need to completely break down the rest of the game, as the outcome is well known. When we failed to get seven points off Woodson’s interception, it marked the beginning of an incredibly frustrating game in so many ways. Our old coach, Jon Gruden, was on the opposite sideline. We could hear John Lynch call out our plays. Greg Spires, a guy I’d never really heard of, worked with Simeon Rice to come off the backside and stop the run. We fell behind so quickly, we had to rely on passing instead of running the ball in an attempt to catch up.

The simple answer to the oft-asked question, “What went wrong?” is that Gruden knew our playbook.  He wrote it.  We ran the same plays the year before.  And why wouldn’t we? Those plays won us the AFC.  Those plays allowed us to dominate nearly everyone we played in 2002.  Looking back, I’m unsure if it was arrogance at the time, but we didn’t feel we needed to change the plays because every week, every team (if they study hard enough) is going to learn your tendencies whether you change your audibles or not.  Obviously, Gruden knew that against certain defensive looks, we’d audible this, and against other defensive looks, we’d audible that. His only task was deciding which defense to put on the field, knowing that if they adjusted, Rich would audible maybe one of two ways.  In a weird way, their defense was actually their offense.

The game came to its miserable end, a 48-21 loss, and I was loaded on a golf cart, still in uniform, and driven to the media tent.  The late, great Raiders PR guy, Craig Long, tried the best he could to prepare me for the questions I was going to get about the game and about Barrett.  Talking about the game was easier than talking about Barrett. I understood the game.  I didn’t understand Barrett.  The Raiders wanted to play it low key until they knew more, but obviously they knew something was very wrong for him not to be at the biggest game of his life.  It had been discussed and debated whether more could’ve been done by the Raiders earlier, but in my opinion, that’s too easy.  How valuable is hindsight?   Trying to help Barrett, trying to stop Barrett, hadn’t worked.  And no one can accurately predict how a player will react to the pressure of an event like the Super Bowl.  History has shown that to be a truism.

LOOKING BACK

In the weeks and months and years that have followed, I’ve learned more about the details of the night before, and about how the Raiders chose to handle it.   Barrett eventually found his way back to our hotel Saturday night and was instructed to sleep it off.  Whatever “it” was.  He was later taken to the workout room in the hotel and put on a treadmill in the hope that movement would bring lucidity.  Once he expressed a level of delusion so deep that a simple sweat wasn’t going to erase it (he was happy about winning the Super Bowl and excited for the upcoming Pro Bowl), the team knew he needed help beyond what the trainers and coaches could provide.    

We all knew he was in some serious trouble, but none of us of knew what the “it” was at that exact moment -- and that was OK. What did it matter?  For me, at that time, in that hotel, the only fact was that something had gone terribly wrong with him.  Not with us.  And had I started digging into the whys and wherefores of Barrett’s meltdown, I’d be ignoring my primary duty as an Oakland Raider, which was to prepare for the game with every ounce of concentration and focus I had.  Plus, for me, someone who had spent all those years filling his void in practice, this was not just a welcome start but also a sudden and surprise fulfillment of a childhood dream.  I wasn’t about to waste time wondering exactly which combination of Barrett’s rumored drug/alcohol/mental issues had paved my way; I just wanted to make sure I was on top of my own game.  And let me be clear: Barrett is not an awful human being, nor is he the reason we lost the Super Bowl.

ACCOUNTABILITY

There are more than a few things that separate a great team from a mediocre one in the NFL.  There are the obvious issues of coaching and staff strength, conditioning expertise and offensive/defensive sophistication. But there is also the issue of character and discipline, of accountability and understanding when a player has issues, both mental and physical, and knowing which needs vigorous one-on-one management. These are details rarely or willingly shared with media and fans.  Teams must hold their players to a very high standard, but they must also make hard choices to get the players the help they need when they need it.  And if this help is rejected, teams must be brave enough to cut ties with the player, even if this puts a winning season in jeopardy. 

I consider myself lucky.  The realization of how fortunate I was to have this career has never waned, and I was always able to look after myself both physically and mentally so that I could play 10 years in a league that can be, frankly, unforgiving.  It isn’t always easy to do so, but you dig deep to ensure it all works out because at the end of every day, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.  Not everyone is so lucky, even if it appears in exact opposition to what the fans see on the outside.

Unfortunately, there’s no real test to determine how a player’s background and upbringing, combined with the sum of all his experiences, both football and non-football, will cause him to react when a moment of truth arrives.  Super Bowl XXXVII will always be a bittersweet memory -- bitter because we lost a game we really could have won, sweet because I played in the biggest game football has to offer, the one I dreamed about when I was boy growing up in Nebraska.  And it will forever mean the world to me. I was on the field, however strange the journey turned out to be.

*Special thanks to Steffan Chirazi for his guidance and wisdom.  Thanks for getting it.

AFTERWORD 

Barrett Robbins was a second-round draft pick out of Texas Christian University in 1995.  He was elected to the Pro Bowl after the 2002 season. In November 2003, Robbins, along with three other Raiders, tested positive for the designer steroid THG. His name was found on a list at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which supplied steroids to Marion Jones.  In January 2005, he was shot three times by Miami Beach Police. He was subsequently charged with, and pled guilty to, attempted murder and was sentenced to five years’ probation. He was also ordered to receive treatment for his bipolar disorder and avoid alcohol.

In 2007, Miami-Dade Police issued a warrant for his arrest for violation of his parole.  His whereabouts today are unknown.

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