I wanted to tell Drake all of this, but I had said it all before. I couldn’t keep propping him up like this - I had said my piece and now it was up to him.
I got away from Drake with a minimum of small talk, making sure that with his new found confidence he didn’t try to make plans to show up in my room that night, despite how much I was aching for him to at least make the attempt.
I would have shot him down, but at least I would have known that he was thinking about me at the time.
Why was he so tough to talk to? Argh, it was frustrating on a level I never even thought possible. He was like a brick wall sometimes, a brick wall with a smile that made me want to strip down and rub myself against it.
Luckily I could avoid him for another day. As I was walking away from him, I saw a group of position coaches standing near the opposite sideline.
Maybe I could talk to them about Drake and how he was doing. I started toward them, giving them lots of time to disperse before I arrived. I was the scary press lady, and I didn’t want to just appear in the middle of their huddle, notebook in hand, stealing all their secrets.
They saw me coming, and by the time I got in front of the wide receivers coach, a couple of them had peeled off, leaving only him and one other, the offensive line coach.
“Coach Smith!” I called out, getting the wide receivers coach attention with a wave of my hand. He grimaced, then nodded toward the man he was talking to, who smiled and nodded at me before walking away without another word.
“Miss Pearson, how can I briefly,” he emphasized, “help you on this fine Monday afternoon?”
“I just wanted to thank you for the team’s hospitality,” I started, trying to sound like a visiting dignitary. “I and the Boston Globe really appreciate it.”
“The New England Patriots,” Coach Smith said, with glacial sarcasm, “are always interested in working together with our local media to give more transparency to the inner workings of our football team.”
It was the most canned response I had ever heard, and Coach Armstrong would puff out his chest in pride if he had been around to hear it. Coach Smith even winked at me.
I made a big show of putting away my notebook and pen. “I come in pace, Coach Smith, and I just want to talk off the record for a couple minutes. That cool?”
Coach Smith looked at me warily, as if he was trying to gauge how well he could trust me. Then he grunted and the beginnings of a smile appeared. “Off the record, then. What’s on your mind?”
“Drake Rollins.” That was an understatement.
Coach Smith grunted again, and both of us turned to look at Drake on the opposite sideline. He was holding an iPad and it looked like he was imagining routes. “Kid had a rough week of practice last week.”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t know the playbook. That’s bush league shit right there. No dedication.”
“Wait just a minute, Coach Smith, that’s not fair,” I felt my hackles rise to defend Drake. “He only found out he was gonna be on the team 3 days before camp started, and only got the playbook in his hands the first day. You can’t expect him to know everything on day 1, can you?”
Coach Smith eyed me like he was surprised I was standing up to him on Drake’s behalf. “It took him a whole week.”
“The Patriots have a complicated offense, Coach, a credit to your players and coaching staff. College offenses are pretty much ‘see open guy, throw ball,’ in comparison.”
Coach Smith must have recognized what I was doing, because he laughed. “Now that’s for damn sure. I’ve seen some players get totally lost, no amount of time could save them.”
“Exactly. And Drake Rollins made the transition in a week! That’s pretty good, come on, Coach, give him a little credit.”
“Alright, alright. You have a strange way of persuading people, Miss Pearson, but it’s damned effective at times.”
I smiled wide, bursting with pride. Now it was time to change course slightly and get a real read on the temperature for Drake. “How did he look today?” It was an innocuous question on the surface.
Coach Smith grunted again. “He looked…better.”
That was a good start. “Please elaborate, Coach!”
“Today he actually knew all the routes we called for him. Way better than last week,” Coach Smith admitted, like I was pulling teeth. That was the Patriots for you. Everyone who worked here picked up the habit of saying as little as possible.
It was like a team full of Sphinxes. And the riddles were all about football.
“How is he compared to the rest of the wide receivers?”
Coach Smith folded his arms under his chest and stared at the field. “He’s got a long way to go. The playbook thing didn’t help. His routes aren’t nearly as crisp as they need to be. Only caught a few that came his way today.”
“That’ll improve in time, though, right? He may know the routes, but when he gets comfortable with them he’ll be able to make them as crisp as you need.”
Coach Smith grunted again. “We’ll see if he has enough time for that.”