Page 74 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

FOURTEENTH OUT OF FOURTEEN

Sebastian

Super Bowl halftimes, I was thinking, were way too long.

The QB had talked. The coach had talked.

The coordinators had made their adjustments and passed them along.

And we were still in the locker room, a quiet group.

Too quiet. Special teams sitting together on the benches, helmets in hand, elbows on knees, waiting.

Kelsan Simmons came in wiping his mouth, probably from throwing up in the toilets, his complexion ashy, and sank onto the bench with none of his usual jumpy energy.

Somebody should say something. Somebody should …

Oh.

I stood up.

“Hey,” Simmons said. Looking up, trying to smile.

I said, “Know what they call people like you and me?”

Simmons said, “No.”

“Overperformers,” I said. “And you know what the most overrated thing in football is?” Everybody had their heads up now, at least.

“I can’t do a quiz, man,” somebody said .

“Talent,” I said. “That’s the most overrated thing.

Talent never made anybody great. There’s this cricketer from India, Rahul Dravid.

Maybe the best batsman ever to play the game, and a hell of a coach.

He had this quote I used to have posted in my locker, back when I played soccer.

It’s a little cheesy, but we’ve got thirty minutes to play in the most important game of our lives, so I’m going to tell you anyway.

I’m going to tell me anyway. He said, ‘I think we judge talent wrong.

What do we see as talent? We judge talent by people's ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That's the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent.’”

“OK,” Simmons said. Nobody else looked impressed.

“Nobody expected us to get this far,” I said.

“But we did, and not just because you guys run and block and tackle better and Turnbull and I kick better than anybody gave us credit for. We’re not here because of that talent, not really.

We’re here because of those other things.

Because we don’t give up, even when any reasonable person would say it was over.

I was washed up in soccer, and I was almost thirty.

Simmons wasn’t drafted. But we didn’t quit, did we?

None of us quit. We fought for our spot, and we won it.

We worked for it, every one of us here, and we fucking kept it.

And we believed in each other. That’s what this team has that the Niners don’t.

I know that, because I played for them for almost two years. ”

They were listening, anyway, so I kept going.

“We have so much more than talent. We have each other’s back, and every one of us is an overperformer.

And that’s why we’re going to win. Because when somebody else would give up?

We double down. How many close ones have we won now?

Every single game in the postseason, that’s how many.

We were fourteenth out of fourteen. Fourteenth.

And we’re still here. We’ve done it for each other all the way, and that’s what we’re going to do today.

We’re going to set our feet, we’re going to pull out every single bit of courage and determination and fucking grit we’ve got inside us, and when we’re done playing today, the Niners are going to know they’ve been in a football game.

They want this win? They can pry it out of my cold dead hands, because I’m going to win this game or die trying.

And I’m going to do it right beside all of you. ”

Simmons didn’t look ashy now. He stood up, pulled his 5’9” frame to its full height, turned to the rest of them, and said, “Stand up.”

One by one, they did it. Man by man, their spines straightened, their eyes focused. Nobody said anything at all.

“It’s time,” somebody said.

I looked at them. My guys. Special teams. I said, “It’s an honor playing with every one of you. Let’s go get this done.”

When we ran out there again, we weren’t losers. We were Devils.

Alix

The second the Devils touched the ball to start the second half, it was a different game.

To begin with, the short guy who usually returned kickoffs ran the ball all the way back to the 40, slipping through tackles like an eel, and the Devils fans started to make some noise.

That drive didn’t end with a touchdown, but it did end with a field goal.

Thirty-five yards, which Sebastian kicked in an almost casual manner, and at least the Devils were on the board.

The defense held the Niners on their next two possessions, and their defense held the Devils the same way.

Fifteen minutes later, though, the Devils punter pinned the Niners back down at their 10-yard line, and our defense stopped them short of the 20.

Another punt, another good runback by the short guy, and this was looking promising.

That drive, though, stalled at the Niners’ 25. Sebastian kicked another short field goal, and it was 6 to 14.

It's the hope that kills you. The phrase floated to me from somewhere. If you don’t expect anything, you can’t be disappointed.

But what’s life without hope? A slog, that’s what, and I didn’t want to slog.

I didn’t want Sebastian to slog, either.

For better or worse, I was going to hope. More than that. I was going to believe.

Even if it was stupid, because well into the fourth quarter, the score was still the same: 6 to 14.

The Devils fans had stopped making noise, because it was just too discouraging.

Especially when, with six minutes to go, the Niners were at the Devils’ 12-yard-line, ready to put the game out of reach.

Ben had his hands over his eyes again. I tried to think of something encouraging to say, but all I could think of was, “Hey, it’s an honor to even make it to the Super Bowl.

Thirty other teams didn’t, right?” Or possibly, “Wait until next year!” I didn’t think either of those would comfort anybody, though, so I didn’t say them.

I just watched and thought, Sebastian’s been good, though.

I can tell him how good he was. And knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

It's the hope that kills you.

The Niners’ main running back, a squat guy named Forrester who didn’t look like he could even run, much less run fast, took a handoff from the quarterback, and I braced for disaster as he stepped, swiveled, juked right and then left, and went for the goal line.

And got met with a smashing tackle from a guy who hadn’t been fooled at all.

We were standing up now, here in the family zone. Clapping. Yelling some. Not hoping, not exactly, but needing something to cheer about .

Third and goal from the 6. If the Devils could hold them to a field goal here, the score would only be …

The score would be 6 to 17, we’d need two touchdowns, and there were five and a half minutes on the clock. But still, it was possible. Theoretically.

Players ran off the field and players ran on, with the Devils lined up almost at the goal line. Ben said, “Passing play.”

“How do you know?” I asked, distracted.

“Because of who they’ve got out there,” he said.

“The QB will probably try to fake it with play action, but he’ll be throwing to the end zone.

That’s their best bet to score here, and they still have a down for the field goal.

” He didn’t add, “They’re not worried about the score anyway,” but he didn’t have to.

The center snapped the ball, the quarterback, yes, pretended to hand the ball off to the stumpy running guy, then started dancing in the way he did, and I tried to resign myself and couldn’t. Somehow, my hands were gripping the edge of the plastic seat hard, and I was muttering, “Come on. Come on.”

The quarterback threw the ball. A gloved hand went up for it and maybe caught the edge of it, because the ball sort of tipped sideways. And somebody was running. Somebody about the size of a truck.

Somebody in a white jersey.

A Devil. And he had the ball.

Nobody in the world would have picked this guy as their runner, because I was pretty sure I was faster.

The problem for the Niners, though, was that truck thing.

A player reached for him around waist level, caught him, and held on, but the guy just kept going, and the Niners player face-planted.

Two other guys were running at him, but we had the ball!

We had the ball, and we had a chance. A slim chance, but a chance .

That was when the crazy thing happened. The big guy looked around, saw a Devils player off his left shoulder—I didn’t know what position the guy was, because I never knew, but he was a skinny guy, not a big one—and sort of flung the ball backward at him.

Another Niners player was right there, though, closing in on the man who’d just caught the ball, and I thought, But we still have it. Then the big Devil turned, faster than you could have imagined, and threw himself through the air at the Niners guy like he was trying to fly.

It must have been like being hit by a train.

The Niners player went sideways and crashed to the ground, and the truck-guy fell down more or less on top of him.

And the guy with the ball was still running.

He covered eighty yards in about five seconds, or that was how it seemed.

Three different Niners players tried to catch him, but when he crossed the goal line, they weren’t even close.

He did a flip in the air after he crossed, too.

We were definitely all on our feet now. We were shouting. We were jumping. Ben actually hugged me.

Just over four minutes to play, but you know what the score was? 12 to 14, that was what. Sebastian ran on, kicked his first extra point of the day, and ran off again, and every bit of his body language said, Walk in the park, guys. We’ve got this.

13 to 14.

The last four minutes of a football game can last a long, long time.

Sebastian