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They settle in around the room, and I begin the words I’ve rehearsed.
“Congratulations, men. You’ve done something millions of people only wish for. You’re a player in the National Football League. You’ve worked hard to get here, and I’ve watched every single one of you put in the work in the offseason. You’re ready. We are ready. We are the next generation of this team, and we are going to go out there and show the fucking world what we’re made of. Stay focused, execute those plays, and give it everything you’ve got. Are you ready?”
The team responds with a loud cheer, and they’re fired up. They’re ready. I’m ready.
“Then let’s fucking go!” I put a hand in the middle, and everyone gathers round as best they can considering there are fifty-three men in here plus my entire coaching staff. “Aces wild!” I yell.
“Vegas style!” they yell back.
“Let’s fucking go!” I yell, and they all yell it back.
And then we head out of the locker room and through the tunnel, where the starters await their introductions while the coaching staff heads to the sidelines. The rest of the team forms a line for the starters to run through.
It’s fucking game time.
I pull on my headset and check my tablet to be sure I can communicate with the coaches upstairs, and everything’s in good working order.
The players run onto the field, and the enthusiasm from our fans gathered here at the stadium is both electrifying and energetic. We feed off that shit, and the noise in here simply makes us want to win even more.
We opt to get the ball second, and the first half is flawless. It’s beautiful. Miles is playing his heart out. He’s rushing, he’s finding holes, he’s throwing perfect spirals down the field when we need him to. He memorized those plays, and it shows.
We head into the locker room and we’re up seventeen to zero. I give another speech about how just because we’re shutting them out doesn’t mean we’ve got this in the bag. I talk about how I want them to keep playing the way they did that first half, and I don’t even have any notes on things we need to correct. We’ve held them to zero points. We haven’t made mistakes. We’ve only drawn one flag up to this point, and it was what I believed to be a fairly ludicrous pass interference call.
It’s like all the stars aligned and these guys actually listened to the shit I said in meetings and in practice.
If only the sentiment could last.
On the first snap of the second half, Miles bobbles the ball a little, and it slips out of his hands. He dives for it, but not before a defender from the Seahawks breaks through a block Austin Graham misses, and the three hundred pound lineman barrels toward Miles, jumping on top of him in an attempt to sack him before he hits the ground or to recover the ball for his team.
More players race for the ball, jumping on top of the pile while others stand around the pileup and point in the direction of their end zone to indicate who has possession of the ball, but no one will know for sure until the officials pick through the pile of men to determine the answer to that.
And when they pick apart the pile, it’s Miles who has the ball. He’s clutching it in his arms, but even when the group is dismissed and he should get up with the ball victoriously…he doesn’t.
He stays down.
Fuck.
Fear filters through me as I watch my carefully crafted season go down the drain.
Maybe he got the wind knocked out of him. Maybe he’s just catching his breath.
But once he’s been determined to have had the ball in his possession, he drops it and reaches down to clutch his knee.
Fuck no. Not the knee.
“Fletch!” I yell to Brandon Fletcher, who races over to me. “Start warming up.”
He looks concerned, but he nods.
I blow out a breath as I race over toward Miles with Adrian, our team trainer. I can see the pain all over this kid’s face. He’s a mere twenty-two, and we’d banked a whole lot on him leading this team to victory this season.
Adrian kneels down beside him and starts examining his knee.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Devlin plowed into it,” he pants. “I felt a pop when I went down.”
Fuck. Not the ACL, not the ACL, not the ACL.
