1. PREGAME. To start I don't like sports movies, and yet I love televised pro sports, and, like this country, none more than NFL football. I have never seen a football movie hit the sweet spots of what I love about football, and what I love about movies for that matter. Most team sports movies use the team in the old crusty metaphor of a bunch of underdogs coming together, and becoming greater than their individual selves -- a fine lesson of cooperation and brotherhood. But lame, even when it works great.
2. DECONSTRUCTION. Here is my thing: take an old defensive back. A corner. A great corner. A man who has spent the last ten years covering receivers, this particular skill that has made him millions. This man would be that specialized soldier in the legion, (to use the old football, war metaphor), a loner, a scout, a sniper? His entire job is unto itself, he covers the deep runners of the other team's offense, and prevents them from catching thrown footballs. He must not only be as fast as the other man, his enemy, but he must be as fast as that man while reacting to that man, while that man can be proactive, and choose his route, (in effect be allowed to throw every punch), and as well, must be as fast as that man while running backwards for the first five yards of their race. He, if he is great at this particular skill-set, will be left alone to accomplish his objective. Forgotten unless he fails.
-- To perform this job successfully for a decade seems to me to have very little to do with the idea of team greater than the individual. This man's craft has nothing to do with being aligned with his teammates, but alignement with that Sunday's particular combatant receiver. He is like the merc from Warren Zevon's Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, a man traveling from state-line to line, outfitted to perform his job. He plugs leaks in a shaky line of defense. He can't help but be a merc even if he has a brotherly disposition -- that's the job. This is what I love about football: the specialization of skill-set, and watching it performed. I have my team, and despite it, I love watching the pro league's mercs travel from town to town to sell their skills like Sanjuro's sword and shoulder twitch. This guy will catch across the middle; this guy can take on two interior blockers; this guy is a great zone second interior linebacker in a 4-3; their are so many mercs in football moving from PMC to PMC with Thompson and katana. While football might be war, it is not Gettysburg war, or Normandy war, but Roman civil war, legions jumping from general to general. Sports fans root for their home-drafted players often because they think these players care about team and/or town as much as they do, whereas the mercs are a bit harder to cheer for. But if the walls of the city-state hold, they'll cheer anyone; they'll cheer murderers. I love the calculation mixed with the naivete, like I love our country.
3. THE PITCH. So a cornerback. Ten year vet. All with the Dallas Cowboys. The team is midway through the regular season. Their record is 2-6. This man's contract with the team is up. He wants a new contract, but the team is already into the next season's plans of rebuilding this team from scratch. All heads will role, and despite this cornerback's legendary status, he is likely losing his locker with the rest. There is nothing to play for. This movie will not involve a miraculous winning streak, and amazing playoff run, with all these lovable losers coming together. No, the season is not salvageable.
-- This movie takes place over one week. In this week we will meet his ex-wives and girlfriends, his children, his brothers, and all who he is financially responsible for; we'll see his bad investment choices all coming back to haunt him at the same time: a night club his brothers are ruining; investment managers not returning his calls; ex-girls' lawyers coming for more money; his Jaguar gets repossessed, and he has to pay off the local media not to report it. Life is going down the drain. Week Ten of the season. Everyone on the team has quit. But our man has a thing to focus on, if he can cut through everything else. The team coming to town this week has on it's roster a rookie wide receiver who is blowing things up! Think Randy Moss as a rookie with the Vikings, (which is about the time when I came up with this idea). This receiver looms like Sugar Ray in Raging Bull, he is as inevitable as Death in The Seventh Seal. He is bigger, younger, faster, stronger, and he is coming to finish this whole thing off for our guy. Our guy has been the man for longer than anyone could expect, and great men usually fall hard; this kid on the other team is bringing the ignominy, and he gonna be here all day, Baby! As Darwin said, (I think): Let's eat.
-- Now our man knows he needs to cover this kid one-on-one. Even if the Cowboys lose 31-17, our protagonist needs to cover this apocalyptic young receiver, and by himself. And win. Win his battle. Because it's a contract with a new team, (or, less likely, his old team), if he does, (and he needs that last contract). So a sports movie in only one week, a one week build-up to a showdown, a showdown that is about an old soldier looking for some new money.
-- The entire on-field climax of the movie, that final half-hour of football on film, should be shot unlike any football movie, because we'll only see these two players, running with each other. Thirty plays. Thirty sprints against each other. Some are false starts. Some are boring, and away from the action. But this is all we can see: two out of twenty-two. The thirty snap how these two players handle each other. Could an audience root for this man to win out somehow against his younger enemy, a millionaire trying to make a few more million by out-dueling a younger soon-to-be millionaire. All day, Baby.
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