“HEY, STAY DOWN, FOOL! Come after me, and that’s how you land!” Alex Chin taunted, as the running back he’d drilled into the turf from his free safety position on defense was helped back to his feet and moved woozily toward the sideline. “Yup, yup, time to leave the field and don’t bother coming back!”
The other team’s trainer came out onto the field to help number twenty-four, as Alex summoned the defense back into the huddle. They were taking the game—but he didn’t like the way it was going, just one score up late in the fourth quarter after a glut of penalties called on the home team had kept the game close. Maybe the ref was still pissed at Alex for stealing the game ball prior to kickoff.
He hadn’t thrown his flag once for all the hits after the whistle Alex had taken while in at quarterback. Alex had the feeling that the coach of the visiting Granite Bay Grizzlies had put a bounty out on him or something—free pizza for whoever knocks Alex Chin out of the game. Even on defense, the fullback hadn’t just tried to block him on the last play; he’d tried to elbow-jab him in the back between the ribs. The blow had stung and stolen his breath, but Alex showed no response at all, didn’t even complain to the ref. There were better ways to get even.
“This is our house,” he told his teammates, back in the defensive huddle. “Fourth quarter and they’re still trying to play dirty. Let them. One stop to go for the CCS championship. We own this field. Let’s send them home! Let’s go to state! What are we?”
“Glue!”
The defense clapped in cadence and fanned out to take their positions, then rapidly shifted about as Alex called out defensive signals. Pretty much the only television he’d been watching lately had been the opponents’ game films, something he was much better at studying than his senior year subjects. Every time he resolved to pay more attention to this or that subject, there was an offensive tendency to be studied or defensive weakness to be exploited. That was the thing about calling signals on both offense and defense. You had to know your opponent on both sides of the ball, instead of just one.
“Forty-three Juke!” Alex called out, as the quarterback backpedaled from center into the shotgun set. “Forty-three Juke!”
He could tell from the tight end going into motion that Granite Bay was going to run a screen to that side, hence his defensive signal to shift the Wildcats’ outside linebacker into a slot where he could disrupt the play. Alex rotated toward that side at the snap, saw the screen taking shape, and outside linebacker Tommy Banks, all 150 pounds of the legendary Tom Banks’s son, propelling himself toward an offensive lineman who looked twice his size, moving out to block.
Alex heard the bone-jarring impact as he rotated into position and charged the line, the crackle of helmets and shoulder pads crunching against each other. Tommy Banks disappeared under a sea of churning feet and black pellets kicked up from the turf field, as Alex knifed in through the gap Tommy had created and tackled the running back, who’d caught the screen low, for a five-yard loss. Then he bounced back up and moved straight to Tommy, who’d just made it up to his knees.
“That’s what I’m talking about, four-two!” he said, helping the smallest kid on defense back to his feet. “That was on you, all you! You made your dad proud, you hear me? You made your dad proud!”
And the crowd erupted in cheers again, for Tommy Banks this time as he jogged back a bit dazedly to the huddle with Alex’s hand wrapped around his shoulder.
“Let me see something,” Alex said, turning the kid’s face toward him with both hands on his helmet.
“You’re not gonna kiss me, are you?” Tommy mused through the blood from a cracked lip.
“Another play like that, and I just might. Follow my finger,” Alex instructed, holding up his middle one to make sure the crunching tackle hadn’t left Tommy’s eyes glassy.
“Very funny.”
Alex glanced at the scoreboard, which showed the Cats up seven points with twelve seconds to go and the Grizzlies forty yards from the end zone.
“Third down, boys,” he said in the huddle. “Stop them two more plays, we go to state. One deep-zone blitz to go. Let’s do it!”
The standing-room-only crowd began hooting it up as soon as they broke the huddle and spread out into position across the line of scrimmage. They got really loud when the Grizzlies’ quarterback brought his team up to the line and tried to shift the offense from the unexpectedly aggressive man-up coverage he was facing. The whole offense looked rattled. The quarterback took the snap, fumbled it, and covered up fast, no choice but to use his final time-out.
“There you go, there you go!” Alex said, slapping the pads of his teammates. “Almost over now, almost done!”
Having no idea in that moment how right he was about to become.
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