The locker room before a football game alternates between quiet and loud. These days most guys have their headphones on so they can listen to whatever music they like to in order to get in the groove, find their happy place, the place where they can most effectively go out and pound other guys into the ground, dominate them, and make them rue the day they ever picked up a football and strapped on some pads.
Every so often, though, It was time for a pep talk, and football pep talks can be awe-inspiring and life-affirming, but not so much with the New England Patriots. They aren’t much for showing off like that. Their take is that if you put right amount of work and effort into meetings, studying the playbook, working out in the gym, and then again on the practice field, the actual game itself is just an extension of that. Just a way of putting it all together, integrating everything you’ve been building up to for the week.
It’s kinda refreshing to have so few big huge cheerleading efforts by different guys or coaches. It really was just everyone in their own headspace, sometimes looking at each other and nodding slightly, giving each other a fist pound or two as you passed by a guy’s locker.
Very few words were spoken. They weren’t needed. Everyone was there to do their part to help the team get to where it needed to be. That win. That W on the win column. Of course, this was a preseason game. No championships would be won or lost today, or even gotten closer to or farther away from.
But it was a critical game for the team, and for a whole lot of guys in that room. Each of these lockers in here had a strip on it that said someone’s name. It was very, very easy for someone to slip in and slide that strip out of the locker, so it once again belonged to no one, ready for the next guy to claim it, either for good or temporarily.
I sat in front of one of those lockers, looking up at the strip with “ROLLINS, WR 81” on it. No one had ever asked why I chose number 81, and I would never tell anyone the real answer was because I liked square numbers, and I liked the number 9, so 9x9 = 9^2 = 81 was a natural choice I’d never had reason to change.
This was my locker. It might be my locker for less than a week longer, or it might be mine for two weeks longer, or it might be mine till January, or even beyond that. It was my job to make sure that this stayed my locker. If I could do that, I was all set.
I had my headphones on, drowning out all the sounds around me. Most guys listened to something upbeat, something loud, something with a strong beat. Me, before games, I had always listened to instrumental rock. Just a couple guitars, a bass, and a drummer, the kind of music that you could space out to, the kind of music where the band stood on stage and rocked back and forth, their eyes closed, while the audience swayed back and forth too.
That was the kind of the stuff that got me ready for a game. It kinda turned the volume down on everything else, like it set a new level for me, something I could build off of once I got out on the field.
I went through my preparations, trying to keep Lily out of my head, but that was far easier said than done. Just the feeling of having her in my arms again, touching her, kissing her, was enough to snap me out of my routines.
It wasn’t just all physical, though. Lily challenged me. She forced me to confront things about myself that I didn’t like, and because of her I was a much better man.
She was the best. I was lucky to have her in my life.
I laced up my shoes, getting them just the way I liked them, testing out how much give they had. I liked a tight lacing job, I never wanted to slide around in my shoes. At various times I had even played with shoes just a tiny bit too small, just to make sure when I planted my foot, I knew exactly how it would feel and where it would go.
Then someone tapped me on the head, the generally accepted way of getting someone’s attention in the locker room when they couldn’t hear you and weren’t looking. I paused my music before looking up, only to see Coach Armstrong standing in front of me, his hands on his hips.
I took my headphones off, leaving them around my neck. We hadn’t spoken in 2 weeks, not since the start of training camp. Oh he had yelled at me a couple times on the field, and once I even got a “good job, Rollins,” out of him, super soft but I still heard it, and it had been the highlight of my football career to that day, no joke.
“Yeah, Coach? Anything I can do for you?”
Coach Armstrong’s face was stony, and his voice betrayed not even a single hint of emotion. The man was known around the league for being a football robot, and over the last couple weeks I had learned that reputation was well earned.
“Yeah, son. There’s something you can do for me.”
I stood up. “Sure, Coach, anything, what is it?”
Coach Armstrong gripped my pads and pulled me in close. “This is your final chance, Rollins. I need you to give me a reason to keep you on this time after tonight. Do you understand me?”
Oh shit, this really was the most important game of my life. “Y-Yeah, Coach, I got you. I’ll make you proud.”