The Ballad of Big Mike (Mike Oher)

[millbank]

How great it would be it would be this young man become a Buffalo Bill one day. This a long article but very much worth the time.

 

The Ballad of Big Mike

 

Hey, fat ass, I’m a kill you!

 

Hey, fat ass! Fat people can’t play football! I’m a run your fat ass over!

 

The more he went on, the angrier Michael became, and yet no one noticed. Freeze ordered up plays that called for Michael to block a linebacker or to pull and sweep around the right end and leave the defensive end across from him alone. The first quarter and a half of the scrimmage was uneventful — until Freeze called a different sort of play.

 

Leigh Anne rose from her seat to beat the crowd to the concession stand and so had her back to the action when the people in the stands around her began to laugh.

 

“Where’s he taking him?” she heard someone say.

 

“He’s not letting go of that kid!” shouted someone else.

 

She turned around in time to see 19 football players running down one side of the field after the Briarcrest running back with the ball. On the other side of the field Briarcrest’s No. 74, Big Mike, was racing at full speed in the opposite direction, with a defensive end in his arms.

 

From his place on the sideline, Sean watched in amazement. Freeze had called a running play, around the right end, away from Michael’s side. Michael’s job was simply to take the defender who had been jabbering at him and wall him off. Just keep him away from the ball carrier. Instead, he had fired off the line of scrimmage and gotten fit — which is to say, gotten his hands inside the defender’s shoulder pads — and then lifted the Munford player off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the middle of the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines. “The Munford kid’s feet were hitting the ground every four steps, like a cartoon character,” Sean says. As the kid strained to get his feet back on the ground, Michael ran him the next 25 or so yards to the Munford bench. When he got there, he didn’t stop but piled right through it, knocking over the bench, several more Munford players and scattering the team. He didn’t skip a beat. Encircling the football field was a cinder track. He blocked the kid across the track and then across the grass on the other side of the cinder track. And kept going — right to the chain link fence on the far side of the grass.

 

Flags flew, grown men cursed and Sean called Michael over to the sidelines.

 

“Michael,” said Sean, “where were you taking him anyway?”

 

“I was gonna put him on the bus,” Michael said.

 

Parked on the other side of the chain-link fence was, in fact, the Munford team bus.

 

“The bus?” Sean asked.

 

“I got tired of him talking,” Michael said. “It was time for him to go home.”

 

Sean thought he must be joking. He wasn’t. Michael had thought it all through in advance; he had been waiting nearly half a football game to do just exactly what he had very nearly done. To pick up this trash-talking defensive end and take him not to the chain-link fence but through the chain-link fence. To the bus. And then put him on the bus. And Sean began to laugh.

[Tortured Soul]

I got to read an advanced copy of his new book and thought it ws awful. It had absolutely no insight into football, and unlike moneyball, didn't tell you anything you might not have already known. He really phoned this one in.

[respk]

That is a long article but well worth every minute. I would love to see him in a Bills uniform.

 

How great it would be it would be this young man become a Buffalo Bill one day.  This a long article but very much worth the time.

 

The Ballad of Big Mike

 

Hey, fat ass, I’m a kill you!

 

Hey, fat ass! Fat people can’t play football! I’m a run your fat ass over!

 

The more he went on, the angrier Michael became, and yet no one noticed. Freeze ordered up plays that called for Michael to block a linebacker or to pull and sweep around the right end and leave the defensive end across from him alone. The first quarter and a half of the scrimmage was uneventful — until Freeze called a different sort of play.

 

Leigh Anne rose from her seat to beat the crowd to the concession stand and so had her back to the action when the people in the stands around her began to laugh.

 

“Where’s he taking him?” she heard someone say.

 

“He’s not letting go of that kid!” shouted someone else.

 

She turned around in time to see 19 football players running down one side of the field after the Briarcrest running back with the ball. On the other side of the field Briarcrest’s No. 74, Big Mike, was racing at full speed in the opposite direction, with a defensive end in his arms.

 

From his place on the sideline, Sean watched in amazement. Freeze had called a running play, around the right end, away from Michael’s side. Michael’s job was simply to take the defender who had been jabbering at him and wall him off. Just keep him away from the ball carrier. Instead, he had fired off the line of scrimmage and gotten fit — which is to say, gotten his hands inside the defender’s shoulder pads — and then lifted the Munford player off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the middle of the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines. “The Munford kid’s feet were hitting the ground every four steps, like a cartoon character,” Sean says. As the kid strained to get his feet back on the ground, Michael ran him the next 25 or so yards to the Munford bench. When he got there, he didn’t stop but piled right through it, knocking over the bench, several more Munford players and scattering the team. He didn’t skip a beat. Encircling the football field was a cinder track. He blocked the kid across the track and then across the grass on the other side of the cinder track. And kept going — right to the chain link fence on the far side of the grass.

 

Flags flew, grown men cursed and Sean called Michael over to the sidelines.

 

“Michael,” said Sean, “where were you taking him anyway?”

 

“I was gonna put him on the bus,” Michael said.

 

Parked on the other side of the chain-link fence was, in fact, the Munford team bus.

 

“The bus?” Sean asked.

 

“I got tired of him talking,” Michael said. “It was time for him to go home.”

 

Sean thought he must be joking. He wasn’t. Michael had thought it all through in advance; he had been waiting nearly half a football game to do just exactly what he had very nearly done. To pick up this trash-talking defensive end and take him not to the chain-link fence but through the chain-link fence. To the bus. And then put him on the bus. And Sean began to laugh.

790089[/snapback]

[Booster4324]

Great read. It makes me both proud and ashamed of my hometown at the same time.

[I 90]

Wow.

 

Heartbreaking. Unsettling. Unbelievable. Thanks for that.

 

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