The Replacements

The Replacements is a 2000 sports comedy film directed by Howard Deutch and starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Orlando Jones, Brooke Langton, Rhys Ifans, Jon Favreau, and Jack Warden in his last film appearance. The movie was loosely based on the 1987 NFL strike, specifically the Washington Redskins, who won all three replacement games without any of their regular players and went on to win Super Bowl XXII. Though the film is a story of the replacement players, the Falco–Martel quarterback controversy is quite similar to the one in the post-strike Washington controversy between Doug Williams and Jay Schroeder. Hackman narrated the episode of NFL Network's America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions devoted to that team. Plot An unnamed (fictional) professional football league is hit with a players' strike with four games left in the season. Washington Sentinels owner Edward O'Neil calls a former coach of his, Jimmy McGinty, telling him that the league's going to finish the regular season with replacement players, and asks McGinty to return to coach the Sentinels the rest of the season, adding that winning three of the last four games will get the Sentinels into the playoffs. McGinty accepts on the condition that he can sign the players he wants without O'Neil's interference. McGinty pulls together players of varying talents who he believes can make a winning, if not entertaining, team. For quarterback, McGinty chooses Shane Falco, a former All-America from Ohio State whose career went to pieces after a lopsided Sugar Bowl loss; he now lives on a houseboat in a D.C. marina and makes a living doing hull maintenance on private yachts. Falco initially refuses, but McGinty persuades him, believing that Falco can still become the player he was meant to be. The striking players greet the replacement players at their first practice with hostility, calling them "scabs" and throwing eggs at them; Falco, who arrives late, gets his truck overturned. Head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell, who has to find new cheerleaders since the originals apparently walked out in sympathy with the players, hires strippers when the other tryouts go terribly badly. After practice, she drives Falco home and surprises him with her vast football knowledge.