“So, Landon.” Jonathan turned to face him. “Forget what I said before. You block for five seconds and then stop. That’s the length of an average play. Can you count that in your mind? Just one, two, three, four, five; then you get off the block. That’ll fix it. Can you?”
“Sure,” Landon said.
Coach Furster opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out except, “He . . . uh . . . uh . . .”
“Coach, you line my man and Brett up next to each other?” Jonathan shook his head with the slow wag of a dog. It looked—and kind of sounded to Landon—like he whistled. “Man oh man. You got yourself a juggernaut. Yes sir, one of them unstoppable, rolling battering ram things that just crushes everything in its way. You tuck your runner up behind ’em? My man!”
“It’s an idea.” Coach Furster seemed to slowly be regaining his control of the situation. “Let’s see how he does, though. Let’s see about this five-second thing.”
Jonathan clapped his meaty hands. “I like it, Coach. That’s just what Coach McAdoo would’ve said.”
Coach Furster lost his fight not to smile at the comparison, and the toot of his whistle was a little less strong than usual before he barked, “Okay, let’s get it back in the huddle. Forty-eight sweep! Let me see it!”
Jonathan winked at Landon and shooed him toward the huddle.
It all happened so fast. Skip called the play in a mutter. Brett pointed at him and smiled from the other side of the huddle. They stepped to the line. Gunner Miller hunkered down in his stance with trembling legs, ready to explode, ready to take revenge. Part of Landon was scared. Part of him wanted to explain to Gunner that he only wanted a true place on the team, not to actually take his job. But part of Landon got mad, and he asked himself, why should he go through life being picked on and being left out? Why shouldn’t he win the day? Win the battle? Win the war? Landon saw the other linemen drop, so he did too, more ready this time for action.
And in that instant, he felt it.
He went batty with anger.
Nasty.
Even though he couldn’t really hear the cadence, Landon exploded at the first sign of movement, low and hard. This time there was no neutral, momentary stand-off. This time Landon plowed through Gunner so fast and hard he fell down. Landon went over him like a lawnmower, let go, and pitilessly grabbed the next body he came upon, Timmy Nichols. Landon manhandled him, driving him three yards back before tossing him to the dirt.
He was huffing and puffing and he stopped and stood up straight, fearful that he might have gone over a five-second count. In truth, he hadn’t counted at all. All he knew was that Layne Guerrero was wiggling his butt in the end zone. Landon turned.
Coach Furster looked amazed, but when Landon detected the small smile in the left corner of Jonathan Wagner’s mouth, it filled him with joy and pride. Brett was slapping him on the back. Landon turned.
“Dude! You crushed them. Two pancakes in the same play? Ha-ha! I never had two pancakes!” Landon’s cheeks burned. He shrugged and headed back toward where he knew the huddle would be, unable to keep a huge grin from blooming around his mouthpiece.
Practice went on just like that.
Get the play. Line up. Five seconds of nastiness. Do it again.
Landon kept expecting something bad to happen, some problem to pop up and ruin everything, but by the end of the evening Jonathan Wagner had taught them all four new running plays from an unbalanced line that put Landon and Brett right next to each other to open massive holes in the defense to run through. Landon could see that Coach Furster didn’t really like the whole thing, until Jonathan showed them a counter-play that had the quarterback handing the ball off to the wide receiver on an end around to the weak side.
That was a play where Mike would shine.
“See?” Jonathan explained excitedly. “The defense is going to have to shift to this unbalanced line, and when they start getting chewed up by your two monster hogs, they’ll overshift. Then you come back at them with this wide receiver end around, and they may just lay down on you and quit.”
They ran the play, and the grin on Coach Furster’s face when his son scampered into the end zone could have lit a Christmas tree.
“We really are a passing team, though.” Coach Furster scratched his head.
Jonathan shook his head and frowned. “There’s no such thing, Coach. You can ask Coach McAdoo or Eli Manning. You can ask Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady. Even the so-called ‘passing’ teams know you gotta run the ball to set up the pass. No one ever won a championship any other way.”
Landon looked back to Coach Furster to see his reaction.
What he saw, he never expected.