 When the NFL football team, the Washington Sentinels, goes on strike, the team s owner, Edward O Neill (Jack Warden), calls former NFL coach Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) out of retirement to coach a rag-tag team of replacement players to finish the season s last four games in which McGinty turns to former Ohio State player Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves) to be the team s captain for the duration of the season and Falco is forced to shape up the misfit players whom include convenence store guard Clifford Franklin (Orlando Jones), gangster rapper brothers Andre and Jamal Jackson (Faizon Love and Michael Taliferro), former sumo westler Jumbo Fumkio (Ace Yonamine), a Welsh "football" player called "The Leg" (Rhys Ifans), a deaf player, a convict on a work-release program, a tough SWAT leader, and many more while, at the same time, Falco strikes up a possible romance with the team s cheerleading captain Annabelle Farrell (Brooke Langton).