The Underdogs

by Mike Lupica

  A few minutes before the kick, Joe Tyler called the players in around him.

  “This is just a beginning today,” he said. “But it’s a beginning that I have a feeling means more to us than it does to them.” He looked down the field at the Palmer Wildcats. “They’ve got more players than us, probably have had more practice time. Looks to me like they can practice eleven-on-eleven. We don’t have that luxury. Heck, the only luxury for us is the uniforms you’re wearing. And I don’t care about any of it.”

  Looking around at the faces looking at him.

  “We’ve got talent, we’ve got heart.” Pointed to his shoulder. “And we’ve got that chip.”

  Joe Tyler put his hand out. They all put theirs on top. Somehow Will never got tired of doing it.

  “Whatever happens in this game, we’re gonna be better at the end of it than we are right now.”

  He looked at Will now.

  “And if we get knocked down today, we get back up, and we keep coming, no matter what.”

  “One, two, three, dogs,” he said.

  They yelled back at him in one loud voice.

  They won the coin toss and elected to receive; Will returned the opening kickoff to the Bulldogs’ thirty-five-yard line. Then he gained four yards on each of his first two carries, Will feeling as if he’d earned every inch of the eight yards that brought them to third-and-two.

  Chris looked over to Will’s dad for the play.

  “Thirty-four lead,” Chris said in the huddle.

  It took Tim out of the slot and put him in the backfield as a fullback. Chris would fake the ball to him, then give it to Will, who would follow Tim through what was supposed to be a great big hole between right guard and right tackle.

  Tim sold the fake about as well as you could and headed through the hole ahead of Will, right at the middle linebacker. His mission: knock him down or at least slow him down enough for Will to run past, find some open field.

  The ball was in Will’s hands now. Wes and Jeremiah had done their job getting off the ball and holding their blocks, Will waiting to see once he’d cleared them whether he should keep running up the middle, where Tim would be trying to cut down the middle linebacker, or cut to the outside. From the time Will had first started playing, his dad had told him that you had to wait for your blocks to develop.

  The best opening was inside.

  Will wasn’t thinking about just making the first down now; he knew there was a chance for a big play. Feeling the play, one his dad said went all the way back to his days at Forbes High, Will past the line of scrimmage now, not sure where Ryan Webb was but already looking to see where the safeties were.

  Worrying about that when he was still in some traffic, not protecting the ball the way he should have. Not seeing the cornerback coming from his right side, swinging his arm the way they were all taught now, punching it perfectly out from under Will’s arm and into the air.

  On the third play from scrimmage.

  Out from under Will’s arm and into the hands of Ryan Webb. Like a power forward standing under the basket and having a rebound just fall into his hands.

  Will’s momentum was still going forward. Ryan Webb, having made his thank-you-very-much fumble recovery, was already running the other way.

  Will got himself turned around, tried to get himself back in the play. But the last Bulldog to have a chance to stop him or even slow him down was Hannah Grayson, chasing Ryan from his right, trying to get an angle on him.

  Ryan could have cut away from her easily, toward the goal line pylon to his left.

  Instead he slowed down, waited for Hannah to get right up on him, then straight-armed her as hard as he could, dropping her at the fifteen-yard line.

  Ryan scored easily, never looking back. The Wildcats went for a two-point conversion, made it. Just like that it was 8–0, Palmer. Will had waited since last season to make up for the fumble that had lost the championship game and now he had fumbled the third time he touched the ball this season.

  The Bulldogs got the ball back, went three and out. Hannah hit a pretty good punt, but it didn’t matter, because on first down Ryan Webb threw one as far as he could and one of his wide receivers caught it, and even though the Wildcats missed the conversion, this time they were already ahead 14–0.

  A few plays later Chris tried to throw one over the middle to Johnny Callahan, but one of the safeties jumped the route and took it the other way for a pick-six score. Ryan Webb faked a handoff and bootlegged his way to another two-point conversion, untouched.

  It was 22–0, Palmer. And would get worse after that, the Bull-dogs going three and out, and Palmer grinding out the last five minutes of the half and scoring again. They failed on the two-point conversion. Small consolation.

  Palmer led 28–0. At halftime.

  As Will ran to his sideline, Ryan ran up alongside him.

  “Yo, Tyler,” he said. “You guys are aware this game counts, right?”

  Then he added this:

  “You sure you only got one girl on the team?”

  No one on the Bulldogs quit.

  Halfway through the third quarter Will ran up on a short punt, got a great block from Chris Aiello and another one from Hannah down the field, ended up going fifty-five yards for the Bulldogs’ first score of the season.

  Hannah kicked the point as if she’d been doing it for boys’ teams her whole life and it was 28–7.

  But then Palmer went on a long ten-play drive, mostly running it now the Bulldogs getting tired on defense, just plain worn down. Ryan Webb finally scored on a quarterback draw from the ten-yard line. Then he threw for the two-point conversion to a wide-open tight end in the back of the end zone.

  Now it was 36–7, with three minutes left.

  Before the kickoff, Joe Tyler grabbed Will and said, “The guys are gonna look at you more than ever right now. Act like this is the biggest drive of the whole year.”

  “Dad, we’re getting killed whether we score or not.”

  Joe Tyler put his hands on Will’s shoulders and said, “Never let anyone see you give up. If it helps, just think of it this way: even one more drive working against a real defense will help us next week.”

  Will busted the kick return all the way to the forty. When he got into the huddle, he said, “Let’s show ’em what we’ve got.”

  Tim, hands on knees, clearly tired, said, “Can’t we just show’em what we don’t?”

  “They’re gonna want to stick it to us with one more stop,” Will said. “We might play these guys again. Let’s stick it to them with one more score.”

  Trying to act pumped up, as if it were the Steelers going down the field to win the Super Bowl against the Cardinals back in 2009.

  On second down they ran a regular 38 Toss. Jeremiah threw a great block on the defensive end, Johnny Callahan cleaned out the corner covering him and Will ran all the way to the Palmer twenty-two before getting knocked out-of-bounds.

  Two minutes left.

  Will telling himself he would have given anything a few weeks ago to have two minutes to score, even in a losing game.

  Chris overthrew Johnny on first down. Second-and-ten. As they were waiting for Johnny to get back to the huddle, Chris looked over to Joe Tyler, told everybody else in the huddle they were supposed to run the same play all over again.

  Will said, “Throw it to Hannah instead. We haven’t thrown to her once all day.”

  “I thought the quarterback got to call the audibles,” Chris said.

  Will said, “I’m not changing the play, just the receiver.”

  The play was simple enough: Go-7-Go. Both wideouts, Johnny and Hannah, just took off on the snap and ran straight down their sidelines. Tim, the underneath guy, looked as if he were doing the same thing down the middle of the field, then stopped and came back on a buttonhook.

  In the huddle Chris told Tim to keep going and Hannah to come back for a buttonhook near the sideline.

  Tim looked at Will, who said, “They
won’t be expecting it.”

  Hannah just nodded.

  Will stayed home to block for Chris, picked up a blitzing linebacker, giving his quarterback enough time to throw. He had a great view of the play, Hannah faking out the corner covering her, getting herself open at the first-down marker, Chris making one of his better throws of the day.

  Knowing they were out of time-outs and knowing she had the first down, Hannah looked the ball into her hands, then just looked to step out-of-bounds.

  Before she did, the cornerback covering her, coming back to her and the play at full speed, just buried her, even though everybody watching the play knew she was going out-of-bounds.

  Nothing illegal about the hit; she was still inbounds. But a total cheap shot as far as Will was concerned. He was already heading over there before Hannah went skidding toward the Bulldogs’ bench. But his dad had a shorter distance to cover, even on his creaky leg. Before he leaned down to see if Hannah was all right, he turned and put out his hand to Will and the rest of the Bulldogs, telling them to stay where they were.

  “Stay!” he yelled.

  Not sure if they were running for Hannah or the cornerback, not wanting any trouble, any kind of fight, when the fight was really over today.

  Joe Tyler put a hand down to help Hannah up, but she ignored it, pulling herself up on her own. Like the whole thing was no big deal. Will watched her tip her helmet back, take out her mouthpiece, say something to Will’s dad. Saw his dad smile and put an arm around her.

  Will would ask his dad later what Hannah had said.

  “She wanted to know if we should throw again on third-and-ten or try to fool them with a run,” Joe Tyler said.

  When she got back to the huddle, she had brought the next play with her.

  “Sweep 7,” she said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Will said.

  “Do I ask you if you’re okay every time you get tackled?” she said.

  The play was a simple pitch to Will on a sweep left, which meant Hannah’s side of the field. It would give her a chance to block the cornerback who had just clobbered her.

  Only Hannah never got a chance to throw her block.

  Somehow Tim, showing as much speed as Will had ever seen from him, got to the corner first. Ernie Accorsi, playing tight end now on offense, always fast for a kid his size, was right there with him, the two of them running shoulder to shoulder. Even Chris, who was supposed to lead the play, ran right past Palmer’s outside linebacker, like he couldn’t wait to get a piece of the cornerback, too.

  Three Bulldogs buried him now.

  Will could have walked home for the score. Will’s dad sent Hannah in to kick the point, which she did. It was 36–14, the way it ended.

  As they got into the line to shake hands with the Wildcats, Will said to Tim, “I thought you didn’t want a girl on the team?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means,” Will said, “that I was kind of surprised to see you turn into a heat-seeking missile on that block.”

  “Guy shouldn’t have hit her like that, especially with the game over,” Tim LeBlanc said. “That was messed up.”

  Tim took off his helmet.

  “Might have played like a dog team for most of this game,” he said. “We’re still a team.”

  Maybe one that could learn something even when it lost.

  CHAPTER 18

  There wasn’t much talking inside Joe Tyler’s car on the way home.

  When they pulled into the parking lot, Hannah poked Will on the shoulder and said, “Talk to you?”

  He thought he knew what might be coming. She had already told him after the game that she could have blocked the cornerback herself, that she could fight her own battles.

  Will had said, “Actually, you can’t always do that. Nobody can.”

  She was still in her pads and jersey. It still looked strange to Will, though, seeing her in uniform with her helmet off, long hair going down her back, reminding Will of a girl dressing up as a football player on Halloween.

  Not that he was going to make that observation to her.

  “I know you made Chris throw it to me,” she said when it was just the two of them in front of the old gym, Wes and Ernie getting their helmets and pads out of the trunk of Joe Tyler’s car.

  “It’s like I said to Chris,” Will said. “I didn’t think they’d expect it. And I wanted us to get that last score.”

  “Liar.”

  “Here we go again.”

  “You know it’s true,” she said. “But I don’t even want to go there. But I do want you to make me a promise.”

  “What, that I won’t ever change the play in the huddle ever again, whether I think you can get open or not?”

  “No,” she said. “I want you to promise me that I’m gonna be a real player on this team. Not just a kicker. Not somebody you needed to fill out the roster. It’s like I told you: I want to play.”

  Will waited.

  “I know I’m not great on defense, at least not yet. But I’m more than a kicker. You saw today that I can get open and catch the ball when it gets thrown to me. So I want you to promise that I’m not gonna be treated like some scrub. Because I’m not a scrub.”

  “Just because I called one play doesn’t make me the new offensive coordinator,” he said.

  “Just promise,” she said. Dug in. “I’d rather get hit like I got hit today than just stand out there sucking my thumb.”

  The fastest kid on the team and maybe the whole league knew he had nowhere to run.

  “I promise,” he said.

  They shook on it, Hannah looking him right in the eyes as they did.

  They saw Hannah’s mom pull up next to Joe Tyler’s car, saw her waving.

  Hannah said, “I could have blocked that idiot myself, you know.”

  Then she gave Will a toss of that long hair, like she wanted to give him a good slap with it, and ran on long legs toward her mom’s car.

  Dinner with his dad wasn’t a lot of laughs, either. There might have been slightly more conversation than the ride home. But not much.

  Will had watched his dad on their sideline every chance he got today. Even though it was hard to think of it as a real sideline. Will wanted to see how his dad was taking it, losing the first game this way, being behind all day, having no realistic shot at winning in the second half. But if his dad, who hated to lose at anything, had dropped his guard, Will hadn’t seen it. He kept encouraging them to the end, telling them not to quit, to keep running their stuff, to make a play whether they were on offense or defense.

  Still.

  The whole game Will kept thinking that he was the one who had talked his dad into doing this, who’d practically begged him to do this, and now they’d lost by three touchdowns and might have lost by more than that if Ryan Webb had kept throwing once his team had its big lead.

  Near the end of dinner, pushing some of his Chinese takeout food around on his plate, Will’s dad said, “It was good that the guys stuck up for her.”

  “It probably wasn’t as much for Hannah as they just wanted to take out their frustration on somebody wearing a Palmer uniform,” Will said.

  “I was still glad.”

  “Dad, you wanted us to be better by the end of the game than we were at the start, and we were, right?”

  “Right.”

  Will said, “Trust me, those guys on defense were trying on that last drive, I could tell they were, and we still took it to them.”

  “I was there, remember?” Joe Tyler smiled.

  “And next Saturday will be better than this Saturday,” Will said.

  “All about the coaching,” his dad said.

  Will helped clean up, said he was going to turn in, he was beat, hugged Joe Tyler and told him he loved him and thanked him again for coaching the team.

  Then he went upstairs and shut off the lights and stretched out on his bed, thinking that if it was all about the coaching, his dad better turn into a c
ombination of Bill Belichick and Mike Tomlin of the Steelers between this Saturday and next Saturday.

  Because next Saturday, the big bad Bears from Castle Rock were coming to town.

  If the Bulldogs were underdogs against Palmer, what did that make them against Castle Rock?

  CHAPTER 19

  They had a good week of practice, ending with them under the lights at Forbes High School on Friday night, Will’s dad having gotten permission from the athletic director, another former teammate, the field being free because the high school team was on the road this week.

  Will was still trying to recruit players every chance he got at school, not even wanting to think about actually going through a whole season without a single substitution, knowing how humiliated they were all going to feel the first time somebody got hurt and they were forced to play with ten players.

  Or just forfeit the game.

  The sign-up sheet stayed right where Will had posted it the first day outside the cafeteria at Forbes Middle. This week he had gone back to a couple of friends from the basketball team who weren’t playing a fall sport this year, Dave Verkland and Brad Yarmouth, asking them if they’d changed their minds about playing football.

  This was at lunch on Friday.

  “Thrill,” Dave said, “I’m not gonna risk my season for your season. I’m rooting for you, dude, but there’s no way you guys finish the season.”

  “And don’t you get hurt,” Brad said, “because we’re gonna need you at point guard.”

  “Nice talking to you,” Will said, getting up from the table.

  “Hey,” Dave said, “we were just kidding around.”

  Only none of this was funny to Will.

  On his way to math he saw Toby Keenan in the hall. Will had been giving Toby room, not pressuring him, hoping that he’d come around on his own. Now he asked him if he had a second, told him about getting shot down by Dave and Brad all over again, asked if Toby had given any more thought to not only joining the Bulldogs, but making them better the first day they got him into the uniform they were saving for him.

  “I have thought about it,” Toby said, staring down at his sneakers. “But I haven’t changed my mind.”