Senior Year Box Set

On the next play, they ran the sweep to my side. Don was looking for a little payback and was waiting for me as I sprinted down the line to contain Ty. I gave him a head fake, and he lunged. I neatly stepped around him. Yuri had Ty running for his life. If I were him, I would have just run out of bounds and taken the small gain. Ty was an All-State running back for a reason. He stopped on a dime and cut back. I won’t repeat what Yuri said, but he was all smiles when I exploded into Ty.

“What the hell, Dawson?” Ty complained.

“Next time, just run out of bounds,” I said, and he gave me a look. “No, seriously. I know what you’re capable of. Sometimes it’s better to just take what the defense gives you.”

I knew he wouldn’t listen to my advice now, but after the game, he would think about it. I wanted Ty to play with me all year, not get hurt early in the season for a stupid reason.

It was now a passing down. I had planned to tell Trent about his tells—dropping his right foot and staring at the receiver he intended to throw to. But Tim had reminded me that Trent was going to be our opponent tonight. I’d fill him in Monday morning at our voluntary practice.

Tim saw it when Trent dropped his foot and looked at Ed. He raised his fist and looked at Yuri, who’d seen it as well. On the snap, Tim shot a gap to chase Trent down. I stepped back to cover the middle of the field. Don made a shallow cut and started to cross in front of me. Since he was within five yards of the line of scrimmage, I could touch him. I popped him in the shoulder pads and sent him sprawling.

Trent saw that Yuri had snuck out to help cover Ed, so he looked for his second option, Don. Tim was in his face, and I’m not sure what Trent was thinking. He tossed the ball toward where Don should have been. It was almost out of my reach, so I dove for the ball. I thought I got it, but the back judge ruled that I’d trapped it.

For punts, they moved the ball forty yards downfield, so we were starting on our 38 yard line.

This time, they solved the puzzle of our running up the middle by bringing a safety up to defend against it. As soon as I saw that, I changed the play at the line.

“Orange, Ooorange!”

Wolf shifted to the slot, and Phil lined up behind him.

“Blue!”

… I called, and the ball was snapped. The defense scrambled to rush me. Our tackle let the defensive end go, and I held the ball as long as I could before tossing it to Phil for the bubble screen. The tackle shot downfield to get into position to block while Wolf took on the safety. Phil cut inside and got behind the tackle, who got a piece of the outside linebacker. The kid made a heroic effort and caught Phil’s ankle, or else he would have been gone.

Coach Rector was determined to prevent the run, and he put eight men in the box again. I just called our run/pass option (RPO) plays. That way, I didn’t have to be obvious that we were passing. As we marched downfield, I hit Phil, Roc, and finally Wolf for the score.

On the next series, they rode Ty’s talent down the field. Tim, Yuri, and I made him earn it, but he was probably the best running back in the state. He finally broke a big one when he pushed all the buttons on his Xbox and made this spin, hop, and juke move on me. Ty left me shaking my head as I completely whiffed when I tried to tackle him.

When I got up, Tim was there to lend a hand.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I have no idea, but let’s just be happy that we don’t have to play him next week.”

Ty had moved here from Washington. Tim was right. If Ty were on their team, he would have me worried.

Towards the end of the half, it looked like everyone was sucking air except for Yuri, Roc, Phil, and me. We’d been practicing in 90-plus degree weather in both Houston and Monterrey, Mexico. We were up 28–14 with forty seconds left. Coach Mason wanted to see if we could get a first down and then pick up enough yards for a field goal.

I tossed the ball off to Jake so he could run off tackle. He picked up five yards. I told them that I wanted them to hustle to the line so I could spike the ball to stop the clock if Jake didn’t make it out of bounds. We only had one time-out left, and Coach Mason wanted to save it for the field goal.

We hurried to the line, and I saw the defense was standing around with their hands on their hips. I made sure everyone was set and had the center hike the ball. Instead of taking a step back to spike it, I stepped between the center and guard and sprinted upfield, and the defense was slow to react. When you had someone with my size, you didn’t expect them to be as fast as I was. I was ten yards downfield before anyone touched me. The safety tried to dive for my legs and bounced off my thigh as I powered past him. From there, it was a footrace that I wasn’t going to lose. We went into halftime up 35–14.