by Mike Lupica
“Yeah,” Teddy said, “I did that on a baseball field after supper, throwing to a—”
“Uh-oh,” Jack said.
Even though Teddy hadn’t finished his thought, he knew he was in trouble. He saw Cassie’s eyes narrow to slits. “I am going to pretend I didn’t hear what I almost just heard,” she said.
Teddy grinned. “What I was about to say was that I was throwing to a gifted wide receiver who’d make anybody throwing to her look good.”
“You’re not him,” she said, jerking her head in Jack’s direction. “But you could do this.”
“We already have a quarterback.”
“No,” Jack said, “we don’t.”
Teddy asked if they were done. Cassie said of course they were done, she’d proven her point, and her parents wanted her home before it started to get really dark. They walked through the door in the outfield fence and through Teddy’s backyard and around to the front of the house, where she’d left her bike. Jack had called his mom, and she was on her way over to pick him up.
“This is crazy talk,” Teddy said to Cassie, “even for you.”
“Not if you want to win,” she said.
Then she hopped on her bike and sped away down Teddy’s street. As she was about to turn the corner and disappear, she yelled one more thing over her shoulder.
“Maybe being a QB runs in the family!”
Then she was gone.
“She does like to get the last word,” Jack said.
“So I’m not allowed to say no to her?”
“I haven’t found a way to yet,” Jack said.
“What if I ask Coach to play quarterback and then I can’t do it?”
“You mean like you couldn’t play catcher, and you couldn’t make the football team?” Jack said.
Teddy shook his head. “Forgot who I was talking to for a second.”
Gail Callahan pulled up in her car. Jack said they could talk about this more tomorrow, before practice. But he told Teddy to think about what was best for the team. And what was best for the Wildcats was him at least taking a shot at being their quarterback.
“You really want some advice?” Jack said when he got to his mom’s car.
“Whatever you got.”
“Go ice your arm,” Jack said. “We may need it on Saturday against Moran.”
FIFTEEN
By the end of the first quarter it was 13–0 for the Moran Mustangs. It wasn’t all Danny Hayes’s fault. But it was mostly his fault.
He had thrown an interception that led to the first Mustangs score. When he had the Wildcats driving the next time they had the ball, he got hit hard from both sides at the end of a nice scramble. The ball popped straight up into the air and into the hands of the Mustangs’ middle linebacker, who ran sixty yards for a touchdown. The play turned around so quickly that Teddy, even chasing the play as hard as he could, was still fifteen yards behind the kid when he crossed the goal line.
When Teddy and Gus got back to their bench area, Gus said, “We’re going to lose 50–0 the way things are going.”
Teddy’s head whipped around, just to make sure Danny Hayes wasn’t close enough to have heard. But he saw that Danny had already taken a seat at the end of the bench, where Coach Gilbert was kneeling and talking quietly to him.
“He’s got to get better,” Teddy said.
Max Conte had walked over to join them. “He can’t get any worse.”
Gus, keeping his voice down, said, “Listen, this has nothing to do with what kind of guy he is. We all know he’s a great guy. But he’s not a quarterback. At least not on this team.”
Andre Williams, Coach Williams’s son, had told them during the week that Coach Gilbert had talked to his dad about bringing Bruce Kalb, the other kid who’d tried out for quarterback, up from Pop Warner. But they’d decided, at least for now, to leave Bruce where he was and just trust that Danny would figure things out. While he did, they were going to have Jake Mozdean be their backup quarterback.
Only Danny wasn’t figuring things out. He was getting worse instead of better.
“Maybe they’ll put Jake in,” Teddy said.
From behind them they heard Jake say, “But Jake doesn’t want to go in. Jake wants to stay at halfback, where he belongs.”
Teddy turned around. “I hear you,” he said.
He looked up into the bleachers behind Jake on their side of the field. Moran was more than an hour away from Walton, but most of the parents had still made the trip. Even though Jack was hurt, Mr. and Mrs. Callahan had still driven him here. They were in the top row, along with Gus’s parents and Teddy’s mom. His dad had been standing next to Coach Gilbert from the start of the game. Now he was sitting next to Danny on the bench, an arm around his shoulder, clearly trying to give him a pep talk.
Teddy hoped it was a good one. After Danny had thrown his interception, Teddy had said to him, “You’ll play your way through this.”
Danny, head down, said, “It’ll be basketball season by the time I do.”
Right before the half, Danny seemed to find himself, completing a couple of short passes, one to Teddy, one to Gus. But mostly the ’Cats were running the ball, nothing fancy, almost all off-tackle stuff for Jake and Brian. The only time they ran wide, it was a little pitch to Gus that he nearly broke for a touchdown, but he was tripped up from behind by one of the Mustangs’ outside linebackers.
But with thirty seconds left and the Wildcats with a third-and-goal at the Mustangs’ eight, Danny rolled to his right to escape pressure from a blitz. But instead of just throwing the ball away, as he was taught to do near the goal line, he stopped and just flung the ball across the field in Gus’s general direction.
And got intercepted again.
Of all the bad balls he’d thrown so far, this was by far the worst. The Mustangs’ quarterback took a knee, and that was the end of the half.
When Danny got back to the bench along with the rest of the guys on offense, Coach Gilbert spoke to him again, and then turned and told Jake to start warming up. Jake nodded his head.
But as soon as Coach turned away, Jake looked at Teddy and shook his head before grabbing a ball and waving Gus to soft-toss with him.
Jack was standing behind the bench. He waved Teddy over to him.
“Now or never,” Jack said.
“In the middle of the game? Without having taken any snaps at practice?”
“We should be out of this game already,” Jack said. “But we’re not. We can still win. If you don’t want to ask Coach, ask your dad what he thinks.”
“That would be a first.”
“Go,” Jack said.
Teddy took a deep breath, walked past where Jake was throwing with Gus, and walked around the bench, to where his dad was flipping through the pages of Coach Gilbert’s playbook.
“Talk to you for a second?” Teddy said.
His dad stopped what he was doing, a surprised look on his face. Once the game had started, they hadn’t talked at all. But then they hardly spoke at practice, either.
“What’s on your mind?”
“We’re gonna start Jake at QB in the second half?”
“Looks like. Dick—Coach Gilbert thinks the best thing for Danny, and for the team, is if he watches for a little bit.”
Teddy took another deep breath, like he wanted to swallow up all the air around them before he said what he was about to say.
“Put me in,” he said.
“Really?” his dad said.
“Really,” Teddy said. “I’ve been practicing on my own, just in case. I can do this.”
• • •
Teddy’s dad walked over to Coach Gilbert and told him what Teddy had just suggested.
“You want to play quarterback?” Coach said.
“I didn’t say I wanted to, Coach,” Teddy said. “I just told my dad that I think I can.”
Coach Gilbert turned and looked at the scoreboard clock. There were just under five minutes left before the second ha
lf started. He turned back to Teddy.
“It’s one thing to know what you’re supposed to do on a given play,” he said. “Where you’re supposed to be. It’s another to know where everybody’s supposed to be.”
“But that’s the thing. I do.”
“You do.”
“I learned the playbook the way Jack did,” he said. “I do know where everybody’s supposed to be and what they’re supposed to do.”
Coach stared at Teddy. He looked at David Madden, who smiled and shrugged. Coach said to Teddy, “You think you can do this.”
“Here’s what I know,” Teddy said, knowing there was no turning back now, and knowing they were running out of time. “I know that Jake doesn’t want to play quarterback. I know we’re better off with him at halfback. So we’d be hurting two positions by moving him.”
“It makes sense,” Teddy’s dad said. “He must get his common sense from his mother.”
“Teddy,” Coach said, “we all know by now you can catch it. But can you throw it?”
“Oh, he can throw it,” Jack Callahan said. “Coach, you gotta trust me on this. I saw him throw out guys in baseball after he hadn’t ever really played baseball. He can play quarterback even if he’s never played quarterback.”
Nobody said anything. Now Teddy checked the clock. Two minutes until the second half.
Finally Coach Gilbert laughed. “Why not?” he said. “Why the heck not? Teddy, go take the ball away from Jake and warm up. Quickly.”
Teddy said to Jack, “You want to hang around down here?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” Jack said.
Teddy ran down and said to Gus, “I’m going in at quarterback.”
“Are you buggin’?” Gus said.
“Nope.”
“Word!” Gus said.
He did warm up his arm as quickly as he could, putting some zip on the last few throws. Then Charlie Lyons came over, Teddy got behind him, and Charlie snapped the ball to him five or six times. When they finished, and the Wildcats and the Mustangs were lining up for the second-half kick, Teddy said to Jack, “I actually feel pretty good.”
“When you get out there, don’t think the first time you throw. Just let it go.”
“Thinking not always being my strong suit in sports?”
“Comes and goes,” Jack said, and then carefully put out his left fist so Teddy could bump it.
The Wildcats were receiving. Teddy could feel his heart inside his chest like it was somebody beating on a door. When the ball was in the air, his dad came over and stood next to him.
“I can help you,” he said.
Teddy tried to swallow, couldn’t. His throat was that dry. “I know.”
“So you’ll let me?”
“Yes,” Teddy said.
There was a huge cheer from the Wildcats fans as Jake Mozdean returned the second-half kickoff to midfield, giving them great field position.
“Just remember when you get out there,” his dad said. “Don’t pull back from center without the ball securely in those big hands. Don’t leave it on the ground. Just turn and hand it to Jake on first down and get out of the way.”
“Got it.”
“You’re playing the most fun position in sports,” David Madden said. “Go have some fun.”
“This is fun?” Teddy said.
He sprinted toward the huddle, thinking Jack had been right, as usual.
Now or never.
SIXTEEN
Teddy handled the first snap from Charlie just fine, but then nearly fumbled the ball when he handed it off to Jake, way too high with the ball, almost hitting Jake in his right shoulder pad.
Jake managed to hold on but was dropped for a two-yard loss. It was second-and-twelve. Brian came in with the play.
“Slot screen right,” he said.
It was a short pass to Gus. Mike O’Keeffe, in for Teddy now at tight end, was supposed to get out in front of Gus as quickly as he could, briefly screening the kid covering Gus. It couldn’t be a block, and Mike had to act like a receiver running out on a pattern so that the refs wouldn’t call an illegal pick. What Mike could do was become a blocker as soon as Gus caught the ball, if he did.
Teddy had seen Jack successfully run the play in practice plenty of times: straighten, turn, throw.
Teddy didn’t baby the throw at all. He trusted it, the way Jack had told him to. He probably threw the ball harder than he needed to, not taking any chances that the first pass attempt of his life would be picked off. But Gus caught it. Mike threw a good block. So did Brian, busting it out of the backfield. Gus ran for fifteen yards and a first down.
As Gus ran back to the huddle, Teddy found his mom’s face in the stands. She put up her fist. Teddy did the same. He was one-for-one.
The rest of the drive was like a roller coaster ride. Two plays later he did pull away too quickly from Charlie, in too much of a rush to drop back to pass, leaving the ball on the ground. He managed to fall on it right before the Mustangs’ nose tackle did. But Jake cleaned that up for him on the next play, running for twelve yards on a quick pitch. Teddy hit Mike on a curl after that. Coach Gilbert—or maybe it was Coach Madden—called for a post pattern, wanting to go for a touchdown right here. Teddy never came close to getting the pass away, buried by a blitzing linebacker. But he held on to the ball.
They finally ended up with first-and-goal at the two. Teddy was sure they’d just give it to Jake and have him pound it in from there. But when Jake came in with the play, Teddy nearly laughed.
“Really?” Teddy said.
“I’m just the messenger,” Jake said.
“Let’s do this.”
He pulled away from center, put the ball in Jake’s gut, then took it out as Jake plowed into the line, bent over, like he still had the ball. Only Teddy had the ball on his hip, the way his dad had shown Jack how to hide it. Naked bootleg. Touchdown. This time he looked over at his dad, who shrugged and held out his hands, as if he hadn’t been able to help himself.
I’ll go back to being angry at him later, Teddy thought.
For now they had a game they were trying to come back and win.
Brian got to the outside for the conversion. It was 13–7. They were on the board. Coach Gilbert had been right. It wasn’t the season any of them had expected.
But it sure wasn’t dull.
• • •
The story of the game for the Wildcats for the rest of the third quarter and into the fourth was the way their defense was playing, doing everything it could to give the offense a chance to take the lead.
Teddy was totally clueless about how good the rest of the league was. He didn’t know if Moran was one of the best teams or one of the worst, or how much an early-season loss would hurt them later on. But he couldn’t worry about games they were going to play later. He just wanted to win this one. He wanted to see if he could actually be the kind of quarterback, even in his first shot at it, who could bring his team back from being two touchdowns behind and win.
He’d been intercepted once, at the end of the third quarter, trusting his arm too much, trying to squeeze a ball in to Mike O’Keeffe between two defenders. Their safety cut in front of Mike and picked the ball off. But then the Mustangs fumbled the ball right back to the Wildcats three plays later.
On the sideline his dad said, “Sometimes the smartest decision a quarterback makes all day is eating the ball.”
“I’ve been telling myself not to overthink this deal,” Teddy said. “That time I underthought.”
“Welcome to the club, kid,” he said. “There isn’t a quarterback alive who hasn’t done the same thing, no matter how long he’s played the position.”
Jack had stayed on the sidelines, as Teddy had asked him to do. He had tried to stay out of the way, especially when Coach Gilbert and Teddy’s dad were talking to Teddy. It was as if Jack knew enough not to give Teddy too much information. Teddy told him at one point that he was afraid his brain might be running out of stor
age space the way his laptop did.
But before Teddy went back on the field, Jack got with him and said, “If you get a chance, take a shot down the field with Gus. That kid can’t cover him deep.”
“I’ve been a QB for about twenty seconds and now you want me to call an audible?”
“Are you kidding?” Jack said, shoving Teddy toward the field with his left hand. “This whole thing is an audible!”
It didn’t happen on that series because the Wildcats went three and out, Teddy overthrowing Brian badly on third down. They punted the ball back to the Mustangs, who went three and out themselves and punted the ball back.
Four minutes left in the game. The Wildcats were still down 13–7.
On the sideline David Madden said, “Okay, here’s what I think we should do.”
“Dad,” Teddy said. “Just send in the plays, okay? This isn’t English class. I don’t need an outline.”
David Madden gave him a long look. “You’re never easy, are you?”
“I’m me,” Teddy said.
David Madden gave him another long look. “I’m good with that.”
“Good.”
Both teams were tired. It had been that kind of game. But the guys doing the grunt work for the Wildcats, the big boys in the offensive line, seemed less tired than everybody else on the field. They started opening up huge holes for Jake and Brian, so there was no need for Teddy to put the ball in the air. He was happy to keep handing off the ball as he kept an eye on the clock.
He wasn’t out here to play a hero game. He just wanted to win. Somebody, probably Jack, had once said that a quarterback was like a point guard in basketball. The only stat that mattered was the final score.
After making five and six and seven yards a pop, the Wildcats finally stalled at the Mustangs’ thirty, just under two minutes to go. As Jake Mozdean came running in with the next play, Gus said to Teddy, “I can beat my guy.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go for it.”
“Let’s see what the play is.”
It was a pass, just not to Gus. Nate Vinton had replaced Mike O’Keeffe at wide receiver after Mike moved over to tight end. The play was called “wideout chains.” It simply meant that the intended receiver, Nate in this case, was to make a cut toward the sideline, and just make sure he was past the first-down markers.