Chapter 16

Scooter

We played Deerwood that Friday. I was nervous, but I couldn’t figure out why. As far as I could tell, Coach Douglas had no plans to put me in the game. All week I’d taken part in drills, but that was it. Jeff got all the carries when we ran plays in practice.

For good reason too. The guy is a beast. And he’s even more intense in actual games.

He spent the first half against Deerwood colliding into their defensive line, wearing them out. His legs never stopped churning. It always took more than one guy to take him down, and even then, he always fell forward—never backward.

That was Coach’s plan all along: ram into the defensive line until it started to give in. That’s how he laid it out for us at practice, and it’s exactly what happened. We didn’t score in the first quarter but we scored twice in the second—a bone-bruising six-yard touchdown run by Jeff and a thirty-two-yard field goal. In the third, we broke the game loose. It’s not that we scored that many points; it’s that Deerwood couldn’t get our offense off the field. Jeff ran for first down after first down. He routinely got past the line and into the secondary, where he’d steamroll two or three defensive backs before they collectively brought him to the turf.

By midway through the fourth quarter, we’d had drives that lasted seven and ten minutes. We were up 24–3.

A few minutes later, Coach called my name: “Williams! Go in there and run out the clock!”

“I got this, Coach,” Jeff said. “Let me finish what I started.”

“You’ve done enough, Stoddard.”

“They know we’re running out the clock, Coach,” Jeff said.

There was panic in his voice, and it took me a second to figure out why. If they knew we were running, Deerwood would put extra players in the box to clog the running lanes. Jeff was worried that I was going to get crushed.

Which made me mad. I mean, I knew his heart was in the right place, but I wasn’t a baby. I didn’t need his protection. How pathetic did he think I was?

“Are you up for it, Williams?” Coach asked.

The true answer was that I wasn’t sure. But the true answer wasn’t the right answer. If I wanted to play in the future, I knew what I had to say. I had to prove to Jeff—and even myself—that I could do it.

“Absolutely, Coach.”