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Thirty-Three
THE LOCKER ROOM had gone mad. At half-time, the Raptors were up twenty-one to three in Kansas City. No one had ever done anything like it. Not in a playoff game, not in a championship game. Not with the Super Bowl on the line.
And none of it will matter a bit if we call in the second half, Scott thought to himself. The Chiefs were masters at the come-from-behind victory. You could never count this team out.
As if he could read Scott’s thoughts, Coach called for silence, gesturing the last of his staff away from the small huddles of players. The offensive coordinator, Jeff Rigby, showed Scott a final play on the small tablet lying across his knees. Scott nodded, then poked Finn, tipping his head at the screen. Finn checked, nodded, and offered a fist-bump.
“... but we can’t get slack. Defense, keep the double coverage going, but don’t forget it’s a red herring for their run game. Offense. Let’s keep those points coming. We all know that team out there has a long history of closing big gaps. We’re not adding to their list.”
The men in the locker room leapt to their feet. “Work harder. Work harder!Work harder!”
The chant echoed from the walls, and Scott welcomed the familiar rush of adrenaline, feeding off the energy around him, and feeding it, in turn, as he jammed his helmet onto his head and led the rush back onto the field.
Reaching the sideline, Jeff took Scott aside. “I think we should keep the ball on the ground, unless we have to pass. Less chance of a turnover if we keep it out of the air.”
Scott nodded. Football, especially in the playoffs, could be as much about the mental game as the physical one. Not only keeping your emotions in check, but playing smart, as well.
“You got this?”
“I got this.”
And he did, for the most part. He pushed Abby from his head, pushed Dylan’s hearing away, too, forcing his mind to a laser focus. Thirty more minutes to play. Thirty minutes, and then he could deal with all the rest of it. Maybe he and Finn could go out, afterwards, win or lose, and he’d tell him what happened with Abby this week. Maybe in telling someone, it might make it real.
The Chiefs pushed hard, but the defense held them to another field goal. Then, Scott had his hands on the ball again, a line of men before him, Finn behind and to one side.
He breathed, let the sound of the crowd wash over him, closed his eyes for a moment. Letting them snap open, he read the line and absolutely knew they’d already recognized the play. So much for the run game. He stood, called the audible, watched his men shuffle. He crouched, gave the count. The ball touched his fingers, the rough, pebbled surface exactly like a million times before.
The world went silent.
He stepped back once, twice. Checked right. Finn. Double covered. Glanced left. The rookie, Highcastle, open. Planting his feet, he spun the ball off his fingers. It sailed, floated, in slow motion, and Highcastle, head turned to track it, let it slide into his outstretched arms.
Sound returned, a rushing wall battering his senses, buffeting him as he followed the ball’s progress down the field. One tackle avoided, a quickstep and spin, and then a clear, straight run.
“Yeah!”
He chased Highcastle into the end zone, knocked the forehead of his helmet against his, grabbed his arms, too pumped to use words, nothing but an animalistic scream of victory.
They still had twenty-five minutes to play, but the Raptors had controlled their own fate and would continue to do so.
Scott’s hands shook, but not for the usual reasons. Well, notjustfor the usual reasons. The usual reasons were the kind of pre-game jitters he’d spent a decade mastering, or accepting and getting the job done, anyway. Post-game jitters, on the other hand, were for the adrenaline crash after a high-stakes game or...I’m going to the Super Bowl!
Elated, breathless, beyond words, he shook out his hands, took deep breaths, grounded himself in an overwhelmingly surreal moment.
The long walk back up the tunnel had been muffled, his mind so far out of his exhausted body he’d been hovering. Sound receded, only one thing kept looping through his brain:Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl...
I can’t wait to tell Abby...
And then it all came crashing back in, like the moment after the snap, when the other team has anticipated the play, and his vision filled with nothing but the massive bulk of a lineman coming straight for him.
Stand up. Protect the ball. Take the hit.
He didn’t know how many more hits he could take.
Through the haze, as if his best friend could sense his thoughts, his attention snapped to Finn. “I’m sorry?”
“Have you seen Abby, yet?”
“Abby?” The air went out of the room. “What do you mean?”