Tank grabbed his face-mask on the way past him.
“Small fucking windows tonight.”
“I know,” Piper replied, as rain pounded his helmet.
“Let the rain show us what it wants to do,” Tank said as Piper nodded, and they both jogged out.
The first pass hit Tank in the hands and he couldn’t catch it.
It was not a drop, the ball had arrived where it was supposed to arrive, and Tank’s hands had arrived where they were supposed to arrive, and the rain had other plans. The ball spun wrong in the last half-yard. It hit Tank’s right palm and came off it and hit the ground.
Tank looked up at the sky. “Fix it, Jesus,” he said as he got back into position.
Piper nodded once.
Second down belonged to the running back for three yards. Third and seven was a slant to the slot receiver that was almost there but wasn’t. The punt team came on. No score yet.
Piper came off the field. The coordinator looked at him from beneath a hooded poncho and didn’t say anything, and Piper stood on the sideline with his hood up and watched Seattle return the punt cleanly, which was, in itself, a small miracle, and get to the thirty-four yard line before the L.A. coverage brought him down to the field pooling with water.
Seattle scored first on a long eleven play drive. They ran the ball seven times, because Seattle had practiced running the ball in rain for the entire season, and L.A. had practiced running the ball in rain when they had to.
The Seattle running back broke a tackle on a fourth-and-one and then broke a second tackle on the same run and then went down at the six yard line, and two plays later Noah threw a fade into the corner of the end zone that the rain almost knocked down. The receiver came down with one foot in, but his body was sure about the other foot. The officials huddled, replay caught it, and the review held. Score: Seattle 7, L.A. 0.
Piper watched Noah jog back to his sideline. He didn’t celebrate. He tapped his helmet once against his running back’s helmet and went to the bench.
Tank walked past Piper.
“Let’s fucking answer it.”
“I know.”
L.A.’s second drive started at the twenty-two yard line.
First play was a run that went for two. Second play was play action Piper had been running since college, on which the receiver broke and Piper lofted the ball over the corner to a spot where the receiver was going to be, but the rain did what the rain had been doing all night, because this throw had distance, pushed the ball down the field. The receiver had to come back to it. The safety closed in, the ball was caught but the receiver was hit at the catch point and went down on his back in a puddle that Piper could see from thirty yards away, splashing up around him. First down.
“Good throw,” Tank said when Piper got back to the huddle.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Good enough.”
They drove. They drove for nine minutes and thirty-one seconds and ate two-thirds of the first half.
It was a rain-soaked messy drive Piper pushed through, and nothing was pretty. A pass went for twelve because the defensive end over-committed in the mud. Tank made a catch on second and eight, where the ball arrived six inches off his chest, and he adjusted and got his hand under it before it hit turf, and got up, and handed the ball to the ref without celebrating.
Second and goal from the seven yard line.
Piper took the snap.
The pocket held, it was the only pocket of the night that was going to hold for him this clean, though he didn’t know that yet, and he had three full seconds to move through his reads.His first read was covered. His second was a tight end with a linebacker trailing closely behind. There was a window. In dry conditions, Piper threw that ball for a completion nine out of ten times. In these conditions, he was living on a prayer.
Piper saw the throw and didn’t take it.
“Fuck me,” he said under his breath.
He pulled the ball down and ran.
He hadn’t run a quarterback sneak into the end zone in two years, and the rust showed. Piper Ashton was not an improvisational running quarterback, always fearing injury, but today he had to do what he had to do.
