Desmond Clark is used to the question. He gets it before each game from Rob Boras, his position coach.
What is the one play the Bears’ tight end would want called for him if he had the choice?
Usually, Clark says, “I have a couple of plays I’ll shoot out to him.”
But before Sunday’s NFC semifinal playoff game against Seattle, Clark has a different response.
“It doesn’t matter,” Clark recalls telling Boras. “Just call a play up and it’ll work.”
It works just before halftime, when Clark is called on to block for Thomas Jones and he and fullback Jason McKie blow a hole large enough for Jones to scamper 7 yards untouched into the end zone for the Bears’ third touchdown. And other than a 13-yard completion on an aborted drive in the third quarter, it all works in ways most fans probably don’t see.
“At this point it’s not about individual stuff,” Clark says after the Bears’ 27-24 overtime victory. “It’s about trying to get to the Super Bowl. If I have to stay in and block on every down, that’s what I’m going to do.”
It is his mind-set all week.
A festive start
Clark kicks off the week with one of his favorite pastimes and obviously a rare one for him.
“I hadn’t had a good Sunday dinner in a long time,” Clark says. “Man, I miss it because I grew up on Sunday dinner. It was a big thing. During the week it might be a little scavenger hunt because Mom’s working and it’s just me and my brothers, but on Sunday we ate good.”
Clark’s eyes glaze over.
“You’d have fried chicken, cornbread, rice and probably some black-eyed peas, some greens,” he says. “It’s like a miniature Thanksgiving on Sunday.”
Last Sunday, while the Eagles were beating the Giants, Clark was in his kitchen whipping up Sunday dinner for himself, two of his daughters and a crew from WLS-TV, who had come to Clark’s home to do a feature on the Bears’ tight end watching the game. Except Clark had more interest in cooking than watching.
“To tell you the truth, the only reason I watched it like I did was because they were there,” he says. “I probably wouldn’t have watched it as closely if they weren’t there.”
In the kitchen, Clark likes to improvise. “I can cook,” he says with self-assurance. “I don’t need to borrow many ideas because I get in the kitchen every now and again and experiment and come up with something good.”
For Sunday, with his wife Denise feeling sick and confined to the bedroom, he comes up with garlic chicken and what he dubbed “the greenery–cabbage and spinach all mixed together.”
It is his last feast of the week. Clark, like many of his teammates, then goes into a prize fight-like training mode.
Little extras
“John Gilmore comes in Monday and he’s like, `This week is dedicated to the Bears and the Bears only,'” Clark says. “That’s the mind-set. You shut everything else out, all the other stuff that’s unnecessary. This week it’s football and family. That’s it.”
There is endless discussion of “playoff atmosphere” and “playoff intensity” in the media. Is there anything to it?
“During the 16 weeks, you get into a routine, you come in and do the same things every week,” Clark explains. “Come postseason, you have more urgency and you want to do a little more than you’ve been doing because you know the team you’re playing is doing a little bit more.”
That little extra is born of a survival instinct, Clark says.
“It’s like everything is different now. The stakes are higher. If you lose one game, it’s over, so your mentality about the whole thing is a lot different.
“You’re probably paying better attention, taking more notes, looking at more film, taking better care of your body, spending more time in the weight room, in the training room, just more time around here in general because this is it. If you lose, you’re done.”
Clark wants to avoid regrets of any kind on Sunday, he says.
“I don’t want to have anything that I didn’t cover, where I say `Man, if I would have done this or done that, if I would have taken more time in the training room working on my knee, it wouldn’t have been as sore for this game. Or if I would have lifted weights, maybe I would have felt stronger. If I would have gotten on the treadmill and done an extra two miles or whatever, I wouldn’t have felt as tired during the game. If I would have watched a little more film, I wouldn’t have missed that hot [read].’
“You don’t want those thoughts going into your head because at some point in the season, probably every player had that type of thought. They missed something. They could have done something extra. And going into the postseason, you don’t want to have that going through your head.”
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The attention to detail extends to Clark’s diet.
“I’m definitely staying away from sweets,” he says. “I had a guy offer me cookies this morning and I was like, `No, I can’t do it’ because I want to come in a little lighter so I feel a little quicker. You want to sharpen every little thing about your game.
“I want to go on the field and feel quick. I don’t want to feel anything negative. I don’t want to have any doubts: `I wish I could do this . . . ‘ I don’t want to have a wish list. I want to have everything out in front of me so I’m ready to go. It’s just tightening everything up.”
In the training room, it means more stretching–once before practice, once after–and going from one to two massages during the week.
On the practice field, extra effort translates into extra hustle that’s sometimes forgotten during the season.
“On the practice field, you want to turn your game up a little,” he says. “Anybody who can say they turned their game up a whole lot, that means they weren’t playing real hard during the season. You’ve got to reach down there and get that little bit extra that you have left in the tank.”
Reining it in
On game day, Clark doesn’t want to overdo the playoff intensity.
“This is the best analogy,” he says. “In the preseason it’s kind of, `OK, we’re out here.’ But when you get to the regular season, everybody is ready to go. That’s the same kind of jump you get from the regular season to the postseason.
“Coming out of that tunnel for that introduction, wow. You’re ready to go. I know I’m going to have to calm myself down. I’m going to have to tell John [Gilmore] to get ready to go in because I’ll probably be so hyped up it’s going to be hard to get oxygen in and I’ll have to come out after a couple of plays.
“You have to calm yourself down and get back into whatever you do naturally. There have been games where I’ve had to settle myself down, but with everything that’s on the line it’s going to be hard to stay under control.”
Clark manages to avoid hyperventilating but nearly loses it when the Bears face fourth-and-1 at the Seattle 7-yard line shortly before halftime Sunday and the score is tied 14-14.
“I was on the field and I was like, `Let’s go for it,'” he says. “That was a key moment for us to get momentum. They took it back in the second half, but it was key in the first half.”
The other key to that momentum swing was Clark’s block on Jones’ second touchdown run, which gave the Bears a 21-14 lead.
“Everybody did a great job,” Clark says. “Me and Jason McKie led the way. Big Rube [Ruben Brown] came through. I don’t think he had anyone to block. He was holding up his hands running to the end zone with Thomas.
“It was a perfect play-call for the perfect defense, something we knew we were going to run on short yardage. It worked out the way we drew it up, and they rarely do that.”
For the most part it’s the kind of game to which Bears tight ends have long been accustomed.
“It was a hard-nosed game, a lot of grunt work,” he says. “They were coming after us pretty good early and we had to stay in and protect some. But at this point it’s whatever you’ve got to do to win the ballgame.”
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