Game Changers (4 page)

It felt like the whole Rockwell Rams team missed the game, at least the first half of it.

They were behind 12–0 and it could have been worse than that if Midvale's fullback didn't fumble on the Rams' five-yard line with thirty seconds left before halftime.

“Put it this way,” Coop said to Ben as they walked off the field, “nobody would say we're exactly crushing it so far.”

“We're gonna
get
crushed if we don't step on it a little,” Ben said.

“You think I should give a halftime speech and remind the rest of the guys that, like, this isn't a scrimmage?” Coop said. “That the game
counts
?”

“I have a feeling the Coach is going to point that out without your help.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Coop said. “This is
not
going to be pretty.”

Coach was fine, though, mostly telling everybody to relax, that not once in his whole career had he ever won a championship in the first half of the first game of the season. And had never lost one.

Coach O'Brien was actually smiling when he said, “We're down a couple of scores in a Pop Warner game. It's not like you're all going to be held back a year in school if we don't come back. Even though we
are
coming back.”

He told them that he wasn't going to change much on his substitution pattern, not just because league rules said that everybody in uniform had to be out there for at least eight plays, but because he wanted to see what they all could do in a real game situation. Especially now that Midvale had come at them pretty hard.

“One of the greatest lines I ever heard in sports came from Mike Tyson, when he was still a great boxer and not in the movies,” Coach said. “Before a fight one time he said, ‘Everybody's got a plan till they get hit.' Well, we've been hit now. So we're the ones who are gonna have a different plan in the second half. Okay?”

They all nodded.

“But the plan does not include anybody on this team hanging his head,” Coach said. “Got it?”

Hardly anything had gone right for them in the first half. Shawn had missed all but two of his passes. And the Shawn that Ben had started to like and wanted to like after the two of them shared a pizza together had gone right back to being the Bad Shawn he'd see at practice. Grabbing his helmet when he'd miss a pass, or somebody would drop one on him, as Darrelle had in the open field. Staring with his hands on his hips after Conor Hale, their left tackle, missed a block and Shawn got sacked.

But most of it was directed at himself today. One time, waiting for Kevin Nolti to bring in the play from the sidelines, Shawn walked a few yards away from the huddle, put his head down, and said to himself, “I
stink
!”

Not only was Shawn playing tight today, he was making the other guys on offense tight. The more he missed with his passes, the worse it got. And once Midvale realized the Rams had no real passing game, at least so far, they started bringing more guys up close to the line of scrimmage to stop the run, one of the big reasons why Ben's longest run from scrimmage had been four yards.

The one time he did slip out of the backfield to catch a short pass from Shawn — one of Shawn's two completions — Midvale's middle linebacker dropped him after a one-yard gain.

“You good?” Sam had asked Ben earlier in the day.

Not even close
, Ben thought,
at least not so far.

They had waited all summer for football season to start, even when they were having their summer fun playing All-Stars after the regular Little League season. Only now, even after a full half against Midvale, it was as if the season had somehow started without them.

When Mr. O'Brien finished talking to them, Ben went over to where Shawn was standing by himself behind the bench. Looking a little bit as if he
was
hanging his head despite what his dad had just told the team.

“We're coming back, dude, no worries,” Ben said.

Shawn said, “I stink.” At least he was consistent with that today.

“And that would be a problem if the game were over,” Ben said. “Only it's not. We've got a whole half to play.”

“I stink and we stink,” Shawn said and walked away.

Coop came over and said to Ben, “How's the QB?”

“Sketchy,” Ben said. “
Very
sketchy.”

“Well,” Coop Manley said, “at least he hides it well.”

Out of nowhere, though, Shawn got hot at the start of the second half. Got on one of those streaks where he did show off his arm. They had run a couple of plays on their first drive, but got into a third and ten, and Shawn hit Justin for a first down. Then Sam for a short gain, then Darrelle, then Sam again over the middle. Even the Midvale players acted surprised, like, where was
this
guy in the first half?

Ben didn't try to figure out why Shawn had found his touch all of a sudden, and maybe a little confidence, mostly because he didn't care. All he cared about was that they were moving now. They were in the game.

Finally Shawn threw a short pass to Ben, who caught the ball in the right flat and didn't stop running until he was at the Midvale nine. Coach came right back to the play, and Ben was open again, but this time Shawn overthrew him. Badly.

Ben came back to the huddle and tried to make a joke out of it. “I'm too short for a lob pass,” he said.

“I am a
total
loser today!” Shawn said.

Like all the passes he'd completed on the drive suddenly didn't matter, like all it took was one bad throw to stop believing.

“Dude, relax,” Ben said. “We're still gonna score. Those guys on defense must feel like they're a car going in reverse.”

Ben thinking that he'd added one more position to all the others Coach said he was going to play this season:

Cheerleader.

“Dude,” Ben said, “it's just football.”

“To you, maybe,” Shawn said, and then told them the play his dad had just sent in from the sideline.

It was a draw play to Darrelle. Even though a defense usually has to be expecting a pass for a play like that to work best, Coop opened up a huge hole and Darrelle ran through it and the game was 12–6, where it stayed after Darrelle got stopped trying to run for the conversion. At this level of Pop Warner, hardly anybody was a placekicker yet, so teams always tried to either run or pass for two points.

But the Rams were on the board, that's what mattered. As they lined up for the kickoff, Ben said to Sam, “Our stupid alarm just didn't go off when it was supposed to.”

Sam grinned. “Don't you just hate when that happens?”

It became a defensive game after that, neither team being able to move the ball, Midvale's Eagles still ahead by a touchdown until the last play of the third quarter, the Eagles punting from their forty-yard line. But their kicker, who didn't have nearly the leg that Sam did, hit this low, wobbly line drive that Ben read all the way, the way he did sinking line drives when he was playing the outfield. Got a great jump on the ball, caught it in perfect stride, already at full speed, just short of midfield.

He was halfway to the end zone from there before the guys trying to cover the punt for the Eagles realized how fast the play — and maybe the game — was going the other way.

The punter was the last guy with a chance as Ben angled toward the right sideline, the kid maybe thinking he had the angle on Ben now.

He didn't.

Because Ben cut back on him now, at full speed, saw the kid fall down when he realized he was being dusted that way. From there Ben could have run backward into the end zone with the score that made the game 12–12 at The Rock.

This time they tried to run a quarterback draw for the conversion. But Coop and Shawn messed up on the snap, the ball ending up on the ground between them. By the time Shawn picked it up, there was no chance for him to think about running the play as called. He nearly got to the outside, using his own great speed, going for the pylon at the front corner of the end zone. But one of the Eagles linebackers shoved him out of bounds before he could make it 14–12.

Coop was the first one over there, putting a hand out to help Shawn up, saying, “My fault, man.”

Shawn ignored Coop's hand, just got up and walked past him, Coop's hand still hanging there in the air.

The way you did when you didn't want an opponent to help you up sometimes.

It didn't matter whose fault the bad snap was, not to Ben, anyway. All that mattered was that it was 12–12 and they still had a quarter left to play. The season really had started now. Big-time.

The Eagles got the ball back, made a couple of first downs. Had to punt. Same with the Rams. Two first downs, moved it into Eagles' territory. Sam had to punt.

There were three minutes to go when Midvale punted again, Ben having to make a fair catch because this time the kid had kicked the ball short and insanely high. Ball on the Rockwell forty-nine-yard line. All that green in front of them.

Tie game.

Ben looked over into the stands and saw Lily sitting with his parents. She smiled and pointed at him with both her index fingers. He quickly did the same, back at her, hoping nobody saw. Wanting to tell her she'd been right again, it really did feel like Christmas morning now.

As the rest of the offense came out on the field, Coach O'Brien came about ten yards out with them, telling them that Darrelle and Kevin Nolti, the other fullback, would be bringing in the plays. Telling them to run the plays like they did in practice. Telling them there was plenty of time to win the game.

“This is why anybody ever goes to the trouble of putting on all this equipment in the first place,” Coach said.

He put his hand out. They put theirs in on top of it.

Coach said, “Do I even have to ask who wants it more?”

On the way out for first down, Coop said, “That was what Mrs. McCloskey would call a rhetorical question in English, you know.”

Ben said, “Coop, no kidding, you're like half a genius.”

“We might as well go ahead and win this sucker,” Coop said. “Right?”

“Another rhetorical question,” Ben said.

Coop said, “You think anybody else in town is having this much fun right now?”

“Not,” Ben said, “if they're playing for Midvale.”

Ben took a pitch from Shawn and ran eight yards before getting knocked out of bounds. Kevin ran for three. First down. Ben again, running right behind Coop this time for five. Then three more, off tackle.

The Eagles were still bigger. They could see that the Rams were running it on every down, whether they were in a pass formation or not.

But couldn't stop the Rams now. It was as if Coach wasn't going to start throwing again, or try to start throwing again, until the guys on Midvale's defense showed they could stop the run.

Coming back to the huddle after his second-down carry, Ben shot a look at Coach O'Brien, who looked like the calmest guy at The Rock, as if this was exactly where he wanted to be, too.

Or maybe, Ben thought, he just looked like somebody who had been here before.

Darrelle ran for the first down on third and two. The Rams at the Midvale twenty-five-yard line. Minute and a half to play. Coach decided to call one of the two time-outs he had left, motioning Shawn over to where he was standing on the sideline, then staring back at the clipboard with their plays on it.

When Shawn got back to the huddle, Ben said, “Any words of wisdom from your dad?”

“He told me he wants Darrelle to stay in for now,” Shawn said. “So he gave me the four plays he wants us to run that he says are going to win the game.”

“That's being pretty positive,” Ben said.

“No,” Shawn said. “That's just him being Dad.”

This time Darrelle ran right up the middle behind Coop, for seven yards. They were inside the twenty now. Ben took another pitch from Shawn, running to his left this time, thought he might have enough of an opening to go all the way until their safety broke a block and shoved him out at the ten.

Minute left.

But then the Eagles' middle linebacker just planted Darrelle on first down, behind the line, almost hitting him before Shawn could hand him the ball. Two-yard loss. Shawn called the fourth play his dad had given him, handoff to Ben, with the option of taking it inside or outside their right tackle, Jack Wills. He took it outside. Again he thought he saw an opening. This time somebody tripped him up from behind, Ben going down at the Eagles' eight-yard line.

Third and goal.

Thirty seconds left.

Coach O'Brien called his last time-out.

Coach smiling at Shawn when he came over to him, putting both hands on his son's shoulders, obviously telling him the two plays he wanted Shawn to run, then leaning close to Shawn's face mask and saying one more thing before he sent him back out on the field.

“What did your dad say?” Ben said.

“He told me now I've got
two
plays to win the game,” Shawn said. “But Dad says I'll only need the first one.”

When Shawn called out “Sprint Left, Throw Back Right,”
Ben thought:
Love it
. Shawn was supposed to take the snap from Coop, roll to his left like he planned to run, stop, turn, throw it back across the field to Ben, who was supposed to be hanging around pretty much where he was when the ball had been snapped.

The play was always money in practice.

Better yet, it was a short, safe throw, and even though Ben knew he'd have downfield blocking if he needed it, Coach counted on Ben
not
needing it, counted on Ben's speed being all he needed to win the game.

“You get it to me,” Ben said, “I'll get it in.”

Then, one last time, Cheerleader Ben said to his quarterback, “Relax and just let it happen.”