Sidelines
IN every athlete's life, there is the awakening. The turning point. Before and after, darkness and light, the point at which the clouds part and the heavens open and there's soft sunshine and God Music descending from above. Click! Rolovich almost
fluent with ‘the light’It's a new world then, and everything is possible. The difference between struggling page by page for "bathroom" in a foreign language dictionary and feeling the words, the pronunciation, the intonation in your heart. Words flowing from brain to tongue perfectly, naturally, without a second's thought. It is, to further the analogy, becoming fluent in the game.
It happens gradually, and then suddenly. It happened again on Saturday night.
"He kind of saw everything, and knew exactly everything," June Jones said.
That's what it's like. You see everything, and know exactly everything.
But Nick Rolovich is still hesitant to go that far. Even if we see it. Even if we all see it. Even if Jones himself sees it. "I understand it better than I ever have," is as much as he'll confirm. "Going good," he says.
Like in "The Blues Brothers," when James Brown shouted, "Can you see the light?!" and Dan Aykroyd said, "What light?"
But Rolo would know if it happened. He'd just know.
"Warren Moon, we were getting ready to play the first round of the playoffs in 1987 and Warren and I are playing catch Saturday before the game," Jones began. "And he looked at me and said, 'You know Coach, I think this game is the first game I really know what everybody's doing, and feel good about it.'
"And I was thinking to myself when I walked away, I said, 'Wow, we've already played 16 games. And we're the No. 1 offense in the National Football League. And he just made that statement to me.' "
Rolo understands.
"There's so much (more) than just, 'You go here,' " he said. "There's so much more. And I think it's hard to explain a lot of that, especially like to, you know, everyone else who doesn't do it every day."
He's still reaching for the light switch, still has to guess on a couple of words. The run-and-shoot offense is intimidating. But he's almost there.
"I've had other quarterbacks the same way," Jones said. "You know, start off the same way. Jim Kelly was that way. In fact, we almost benched Jim Kelly. Because he wasn't seeing it, wasn't doing it. But then, Boom, it clicked in about week 7. And man, the rest was history."
And Kelly, with Jones and the USFL's Houston Gamblers, was one of the best run-and-shoot quarterbacks of all time. He saw everything, and knew exactly everything.
"And he was that way at Buffalo, to be quite honest," Jones said. "He struggled initially, and then, man, it just clicked in that no-huddle, and all of a sudden it was over."
It just clicked, and all of a sudden it was over.
That sounds like what happened Saturday night. The corner turned. The light is coming, Mr. Rolovich. Brace yourself. The light is coming.
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com