When I look up, Tyler Moss is standing over me.
“Welcome to the pros,” he says.
He doesn’t offer to help me up.
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
I’M BROUGHT INTO what is known in pro football as the blue tent, where the team doctor can determine if I’ve suffered a concussion.
But that’s not what’s going on in my brain right now. Just the thought racing around in there that this all might be over after just three plays.
Dr. Sherman, who’s been around the Stallions since their inception, checks my eye movements, attention, even language.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I just got my bell rung, right?”
“Shockingly, after that hit, the answer happens to be yes.”
The doctor finishes giving me the tests that all bell-rung players get, then he says: “Now go back out there and get that guy as good as he just got you.”
I grin at him. “I thought your oath was to do no harm?” I ask as I put my helmet back on.
“I’m talking about you,” he says, “not me,” and then gives me a shove out of the tent.
We’re already down, 7–0, by the time I get back to the bench. But then our rookie quarterback, a Vanderbilt grad named Travis Kiley,breaks off a fifty-yard run on our first possession, the championship game is tied just like that, and I’m back out there.
I’m looking to hit somebody for real now after all those times in the gym. But knowing, after just a handful of plays, that I need to not just play harder, but play faster. As quarterback, one of my skills—a gift, some people said—was my ability to slow the game down.
This is the pros, as Tyler Moss had just told me.
I needed to pick up the pace, and now.
I try to shut out everything except getting past the blockers lined up across from me, getting to the ball. The only noise that matters to me isn’t crowd noise, just the snap count from Jamal Henks, the Renegades quarterback, whose cadence is already sounding predictable to me, just because I know what he’s trying to do with it. Get us to jump offside, mostly.
On a third down in their next series, Henks throws a tight-end screen to Tyler Moss, who catches the ball and turns and seems to have a lot of green in front of him.
Only I’ve sniffed out this play just off what the blockers do after the snap, and as Moss squares up and heads upfield, he has no way to see me coming for him. No way to see me flying at him across open field of my own. To see that I have picked up the damn pace now. He’s got two blockers in front, but I’m coming fromhisblind side, lowering my helmet and hitting him so hard he must feel like he just got hit by my truck.
At the same time I’m driving into him and through him, I’m punching at the ball with my left hand, knocking the ball loose, falling on it before anyone else can get close.
Moss has managed to get to his knees after I’ve handed the ball to the refs. I’ve never taunted another player in my life and don’t do it now, as much as I want to.
Instead, I just reach out a hand to help him up.
He lets me do it.
“I’ve never known a quarterback who could hit like that,” he says.
“Not a quarterback anymore,” I say, and head back to the bench while our offense goes back on the field.
Halfway through the third quarter, the Renegades have gone ahead, 27–21. And as the game goes on longer, I realize I want it even more than I did when it started, just because I have no way of knowing if I’ll ever have another one like it.
Or ever get anywhere near another championship game.
Arlington ball again, Jamal Henks scrambling out of the pocket the way he’s been doing all day, me sprinting after him the way I have been all day.
I shouldn’t be anywhere near the play, but I am, willing my legs not to slow down even as I keep fighting to catch my breath between plays, knowing there’s gym shape and then there’s football shape. Adrenaline is carrying me along and I’m closing in on Henks, who’s every bit as good in the open field as I once was, he just doesn’t have the arm I have.
Had.
