Especially when on the next down, Nate hit the gap a little quicker than he had the first time and flushed Crawford out of the pocket before he could even have a chance to toss the ball downfield.
It wasn’t a sack, but Crawford still threw the ball away, out of the hands of any receivers. Especially receivers named Chase Riley.
Third down, Crawford tossed a quick slant to the Riptide’s running back, but Jordan was there again, tackling him before he could get the first down.
It was fourth and six.
“Keep it up,” Sterling exhorted them in the huddle. “We’ve got this.”
Nate felt the last bit of tension leave him. He hadn’t been entirely sure if theydidhave this—how many game winning drives had Sam Crawford led this team on? Too many for Nate to remember and at least a handful had been in the playoffs. One to win the Super Bowl. It was stupid and dangerous to count the Riptide out, not until the last seconds ticked off the clock.
But they had this in the bag.
Jordan was playing great. The defense was a well-oiled machine.
On fourth down, Nate expected they’d slot that tight end to block again, hoping to give Crawford a few extra precious seconds to throw, and he was right.
Nate spun around the right tackle and got delayed just long enough in a block by the tight end, clearing him as Crawford threw the ball deep.
Not deep.
Deep-ish.
In the soft spot of the coverage. Exactly where Jordan had been covering. Or where Jordanshouldhave been covering, if he’d been in the correct position.
He was not in the correct position.
Instead, he was all the way over on the other side of the field. Too far to catch or even chase down Riley when he crossed over, caught the ball mid-stride, and took it for another twenty-five yards.
Sterling was the guy who finally brought Riley down.
He shot Jordan a look but didn’t say anything before they huddled up again, briefly, before the next play, the clock ticking down, which meant that they barely had a chance to catch their breath before the Riptide offense was getting into position for their next play.
Clearly they didn’t want to just be in field goal range—because they were nearly already there—and they were still pushing.
They wanted to win the game.
Nate was determined that it wouldn’t happen. But as one play slipped into the next, he realized that it might not matter how much he didn’t want it to happen.
The Riptide were inexorably pushing towards the goal line. Closer with every play. Time didn’t even look to be that much of a factor.
He pushed the last of his energy into the final two plays, trying to get to Crawford and get the sack.
But at the last second, Crawford stepped around him and tossed a short little screen to the running back, who dove over the line.
There were still forty seconds, but that was asking too much of the offense, and the game ended less than five minutes later.
Jordan was alone on the bench, towel over his head, and Nate considered going over to him. Reassuring him that he hadn’t fucked up, even though that would’ve been a lie.
Aidan and Levi joined him on the way into the tunnel. “Tough breaks, man,” Aidan said.
Nate had gotten out of the habit of apologizing for when the defense let the offense down, but it was so hard not to do it now, especially when itwastheir fault they’d now notched their third loss.
“Yeah,” Nate just agreed. It sucked. Maybe they were still on top of the division and still had a nice lock on the number one seed for the playoffs, but now the Riptide—a powerhouse in the AFC too—owned a tiebreaker over them. Never a good feeling.
“Don’t let him beat himself up too much, okay?” Levi said quietly, and Nate could only nod and hope that Jordan would actuallylethim do that.
Nate hadn’t been entirely sure about the whole situation when Ramsey had broached the idea of having a double date dinner post-game with Brody and Dean.
