The Underdogs

by Mike Lupica

  Will could never see himself warming up to the guy, even if he did seem to be working on keeping his temper—and mouth—under control. But there was no getting around the fact that Toby’s dad was as much a reason for the shutout at Camden as anybody else. And why the Bulldogs held LaGrange to just one touchdown the next Saturday in a 14–6 win at Shea.

  The LaGrange Jaguars only had one win on the season coming into the game but played out of their minds, especially on defense, and had a chance to score and maybe tie the game with a two-point conversion in the last minute before Toby stepped up and just crushed their tailback on a fourth-and-one from the Bulldogs’ five-yard line.

  When it was over, Will asked his dad if he could give Mr. Keenan the game ball. Joe Tyler said, have it. But Mr. Keenan shook his head, wouldn’t even put his hands on the ball.

  “Players win games,” he said, “not coaches. Always have, always will.” He gave a nod to Toby. “You want to give it to somebody so bad, give it to him.”

  Will did that as Mr. Keenan walked away.

  Joe Tyler leaned down and whispered to Will, “Still a work in progress.”

  “Little like our team,” Will said.

  “Which still has a lot of work left,” his dad said.

  He was talking about the game against Morganville next Saturday, which was the same as a conference championship game that could put you in the Super Bowl.

  Win and they were in the West River league version of the Super Bowl.

  When they got back to Forbes, Will and his dad went for pizza at Vicolo’s. On the way home, Mr. Tyler said he wanted to take a slight detour, backtracking to the middle of town, to the park known as McElroy Square, across the street from the Forbes Flyers factory.

  Will assumed there was a reason for this; his dad hardly ever did anything without a reason. Without some kind of point he wanted to make. When he shut off the car, on the McElroy Square side of the street, Will just waited to find out what it was this time.

  “There was a time,” Joe Tyler said finally, “when this part of Forbes didn’t just feel like the center of town, it felt like the center of my world.”

  He hit a button on the side of the seat, pushing the driver’s seat back as far as he could so he could stretch his bad leg a little.

  “Forbes really was a pretty happening place once,” he said. “Until it wasn’t.”

  Will knew that, of course. Knew the story. But his dad’s own story was part of it, and that’s why Will never got tired of listening to it.

  “I hated watching that factory go belly-up, and the town nearly going belly-up along with it,” Joe Tyler said in a soft voice. “But the truth was, I hated that factory long before that. Hated that I had to go work in it when I came back after I messed up college. Because that factory—in my mind, anyway—meant that I was a failure. I hadn’t turned out to be the football player I wanted to be. Worse than that? I hadn’t turned out to be the person I wanted to be. I’d go into that factory long before it ever closed and think that I was the one who’d gone belly-up.”

  Will just sat there, slightly turned in his seat, watching his dad’s face, the windows down, the park empty, the sidewalks empty in this part of Forbes that was once the center of everything.

  Will had never heard his dad tell it like this before.

  Joe Tyler turned now.

  “This making any sense to you?”

  “A lot.”

  “Liar.”

  Will smiled and said, “Now you really do sound like Hannah.” His dad smiled back.

  “You know,” Joe Tyler said, “when I was playing on the high school team, when we won the state title the year before I got hurt, they started having pep rallies in the Square on Friday nights. The factory would keep all its lights on and there’d always be this huge ‘Go Falcons’ banner stretched outside the top two floors. And it would seem as if half the town, or even more, came out to cheer us on.”

  Joe Tyler paused and said, “We used to think Coach Carson gave better pre-game speeches to the crowd on Friday nights than he did us on Saturday afternoon. Now he’s retiring after the season, Coach is, he announced that the other day. One more part of my life that will be gone.”

  “Those pep rallies sound like something out of Friday Night Lights,” Will said.

  “I never thought of it that way, but yeah, it was.” He was smiling again. “We made some noise in those days.”

  Will said, “I’ll bet.”

  His dad turned to him, eyes bright. “Let’s make some of our own now,” he said. “Let’s us make some noise in this old town, so people know it hasn’t closed up. Or given up.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Will said to his dad.

  Then his dad started up the car and pulled away from McElroy Square, Will thinking that his dad had started out telling his own story tonight and then it had changed. Into their story.

  His and Will’s.

  “Everybody around here has been down a long time,” Joe Tyler said as he made the turn past Shea toward Valley Road. “Let’s see if we can make them stand up and cheer.”

  CHAPTER 30

  They fell behind early against Morganville, which turned out to be as big a team, size-wise, as they had faced all year, especially in the offensive and defensive lines.

  It made Will think of one of Tim’s favorite lines when they’d go up against much bigger players, in any sport:

  “I think my dad went to college with some of those guys.”

  Funny how often Tim’s voice was still inside his head, even when they weren’t talking every night on the phone, or on the computer, or Facebook.

  But Tim wasn’t going to help them beat Morganville’s Jaguars today. Tim was in Arizona and Will and the other Bulldogs were behind 9–0 at the start of the second quarter. The Jaguars had scored a touchdown on their second drive of the game, then got a safety a few minutes later, Hannah trying to punt out of their end zone, and Wes’s long snap nearly going through the uprights.

  It looked as if the Bulldogs were finally going to score on their last drive of the half, their best drive of the game so far. But on third-and-eight from the Jaguars’ twenty, Chris threw one behind Toby on a crossing pattern, the ball bounced off Toby’s back shoulder, went straight into the air, came down into the waiting arms of the free safety.

  Half over. Jaguars still leading, 9–0.

  The game had started later than usual, three o’clock. By then, all of the Bulldogs knew that Becker Falls had already won its game against Merrell. So if the Bulldogs didn’t come back in the second half, it would be Becker Falls hosting the championship game next Saturday.

  Totally unacceptable.

  Will’s dad didn’t make any rousing speech at halftime, didn’t even act as if they were behind. Or that their season might have just one half left to it. He just gathered them around him and told them that once they received the second-half kickoff, they were going to run the stinking ball right down the Jaguars’ throats. Show them that the only thing making them tired was losing the battle at the line of scrimmage, that even though the Bulldogs were smaller, they were going to beat them with smashmouth football.

  When he finished, he looked right at Will. “I’m gonna be asking a lot of you in the second half,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t want it any other way,” he said.

  Chris Aiello gave Will a playful shove. “You got us into this,” Chris said. “Now you get us out of it.”

  They ran the ball ten times on the drive that took up most of the third quarter. Other than a quarterback sneak from Chris on a third-and-one play and one cool inside reverse to Toby, Will carried the ball on eight of those plays.

  The last one was from the Morganville seven-yard line. Will got jammed up trying to go off-tackle, bounced the play to the outside. Ended up one-on-one in the open field with one of the Morganville linebackers.

  It was just big fun from there.

  For Will, not the linebacker.

  Will ha
d been running hard to his right trying to get to the edge and around the corner. But now he planted his left foot, nearly coming to a dead stop, even switched the ball to his left hand to sell the fake a little more. The backer went for it, squared his shoulders and lowered them, going for Will’s legs, wanting to wrap him up.

  And tackled nothing but air.

  Will had made one of those cuts he could make on the fly, to the right sideline, the kind of cut you had to be born being able to make. There and gone. Completely dusted the kid, didn’t even bother switching the ball back, could have walked into the end zone. Lined up in the slot while Hannah kicked the extra point.

  It was 9–7 now.

  Game on.

  The Jaguars didn’t stop playing just because Will had his team on the board. They drove down the field, deep into Bulldogs’ territory, before Toby forced their quarterback to fumble on a blindside blitz Dick Keenan had called out to Toby right before the snap.

  So now the Bulldogs were driving again—before they were the ones turning the ball over—Johnny Callahan making a great catch on a deep post but getting pancaked between two defenders and coughing up the ball, slamming the grass hard in frustration after he did.

  Here came the Jaguars again in the fourth quarter, keeping the ball on the ground themselves, starting to wear down the Bulldogs for real. Finally ending up with a third-and-goal from the five-yard line. Not wanting to take any chances, they tried to run a simple sweep for their tailback, but there was Toby again, exploding the blocking in front of him, dropping the kid in his tracks for a three-yard loss.

  Fourth-and-goal from the eight. Will knew they weren’t trying a field goal; the kid kicking off for them couldn’t even make the ball go thirty yards. But a touchdown here for the Jaguars made it a two-score game, with four minutes left. A stop here and the Bulldogs still had to go ninety-five yards to win the game.

  The Jaguars tried to throw the ball in Hannah’s direction, to the wide receiver on her side. Throw it up and let their kid go up and get it. But the quarterback didn’t get enough air under the ball, and Hannah timed her jump perfectly and broke it up.

  She didn’t celebrate when the ball ended up on the ground or act surprised that she’d made the play.

  Just turned and pointed at Will.

  As if to say: Told you so.

  It wasn’t a two-score game. Still just one.

  Go the length of the field and get one more touchdown and get their shot at Castle Rock next Saturday.

  It’s like they always told you, Will thought:

  Go big or go home.

  In the huddle Will said to his teammates, “We didn’t come all this way to lose.”

  Will took his stance behind Chris, thinking about how all along Hannah had been saying it was his team. If she was right, it had to be his team now.

  On first down he took a simple 34 Dive and ran twenty yards with it, their free safety lucky to trip him up with a diving tackle from the side. Then they ran a play called Sweep 7, the “7” meaning to his left. He got ten yards. Then they ran it to the other side, Sweep 8, and Will got fifteen more.

  Just like that, they were on the Morganville side of midfield.

  Less than two minutes left.

  Chris hit Toby on a fifteen-yard buttonhook, then handed off to Will on a counter that went for nine more. Now they were at Morganville’s twenty-six-yard line. One minute left. The Morganville coach called one of the two time-outs he had left, stopping the clock.

  Joe Tyler called for another counter to Will, who saw his blocking take shape and blew through the hole all the way to the Morganville fifteen. Now it was his dad’s turn to call a time-out.

  Thirty seconds left at Shea.

  On the next play, what was going to be a 38 Toss to Will, Chris got anxious and pulled away from center too quickly, dropping the ball. Like he was putting their whole season on the ground.

  Fortunately Jeremiah Keating was there to fall on it. Joe Tyler called the second of his three time-outs.

  Seventeen seconds left.

  Second-and-twelve.

  Chris gathered himself and threw a short, safe pass to Will in the flat. Will managed to turn up the field and get to the fouryard line before getting knocked out-of-bounds.

  First-and-goal from there.

  Eight seconds left.

  Will figured they had two shots from here, even with one time-out still in his dad’s pocket.

  “38 Toss,” Chris said in the huddle.

  Another pitch to Will. Get to the end zone or get out-of-bounds behind all the blockers he usually had on one of their go-to plays, a sweep to the right.

  On their way out of the huddle Chris leaned over to Will, like he was giving him last-minute instructions. But he really wasn’t.

  “Thrill, the only block you’re gonna need on this sucker is mine.”

  Chris took the snap, turned and pitched the ball, busted it getting out in front of Will. Will watched him go low and hard into the Jaguars’ middle linebacker. Toby Keenan cleared out everybody else, made the rest of the defense look like bowling pins scattering. Will took a hard hit at the one from somebody. But Troy Polamalu and James Harrison weren’t going to stop him getting in from there. Neither was the old Steel Curtain defense. Will got knocked sideways a little, but when he came down, he saw that his whole body was across the new chalk goal line at Shea.

  Bulldogs 13, Jaguars 9, only zeros showing on the clock.

  Toby got to Will first, lifting him up in the air as easily as he would have a baby, spinning him around.

  It was when Will was facing the field again that he saw that Chris Aiello was still sitting at the three-yard line, his right leg stretched out in front of him.

  “Dude, put me down!” Will said to Toby.

  “Sorry. Got carried away.”

  “No,” Will said. “Something happened to Aiello.”

  “Yeah,” Toby said. “The best block of his life, that’s what happened.”

  “No,” Will said. “I think he’s hurt.”

  They both ran to Chris. So did the rest of the Bulldogs. Chris had his helmet off, his face contorted with pain, eyes red. He was trying to catch his breath, or maybe just trying not to cry in front of his teammates. Will’s dad and Mrs. Accorsi, the team’s medical trainer, were with him now.

  When Mrs. Accorsi saw the angle of Chris’s leg, she told him not to move it.

  When Chris spoke, it was to Will, almost as if he were apologizing for something.

  “I think I broke my ankle,” he said.

  Eventually Will’s dad and Toby’s dad got Chris’s arms around their shoulders, helped him to his feet, Chris keeping his right leg off the ground as they walked him to the parking lot, the Bulldogs walking behind, Mrs. Accorsi telling them they were taking Chris straight to the hospital.

  It wouldn’t be official until his doctor looked at the X-ray an hour later. But he’d broken a bone in his right ankle.

  Just like that, they were ten.

  CHAPTER 31

  At Monday night’s practice, Joe Tyler wouldn’t allow any of his players to start feeling sorry for themselves.

  “The only one we feel bad for here is Chris,” he said to the team. “He’s the one who lost his season here. And believe me, I know what that’s like. You know that line people use, about feeling somebody’s pain? Well, in this case, I can feel his.”

  The players were kneeling along the forty-yard line closest to Arch Street. Toby’s dad was standing behind Will’s dad, holding an old-fashioned black-and-white school notebook in his hand. When Will had asked him what was inside the notebook, Mr. Keenan had said, “Blitzes, for the first ten-man defense in history. Because defense still wins.”

  But for now he listened to Joe Tyler along with the rest of them.

  “Chris lost his season, but we didn’t lose ours,” Will’s dad said. “We’ve got one more game left to play. You know what old guys like Dick and I would give to have one more game like this? Anything
.”

  He turned and said, “Am I right?”

  Dick Keenan said, “I ran into Coach Carson, who used to coach Joe and me, the other day. The old man is retiring at the end of the year. He asked me how I liked coaching. Wanted to know if it was anywhere near as good as playing. Good thing I’m not still playing for him, because I said, ‘Coach, all due respect, but you must be losin’ your mind. Nothing is better than playing.’”

  “Coach Keenan is right,” Will’s dad said. “There’s nothing better than playing a game like this, against who we’re playing it. On our field, in front of our fans. So the Bulldogs are underdogs again. So big deal. Been there, done that. It’s like Will says: Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  It sounded like he was finished. They all started to get to their feet. But there was one more thing he wanted to tell them.

  “We’re not winning this game for Chris on Saturday. We’re winning it for us. And for every other team that ever got told it wasn’t good enough. All the other teams who had that chip on their shoulders that we got.”

  He put his hand out. “Now bring it in,” he said.

  They did. Put their hands on top of his. Then it was just left to Will to put an exclamation point to the longest speech he’d ever heard from his dad.

  “Bulldogs,” Will said.

  The rest of the Bulldogs shouted it back at him, louder than they ever had before.

  Before Dick Keenan could show off his ten-man defense, all the fancy blitzes he had come up with for them and for Castle Rock, there was a much bigger job, especially on the Monday night before the championship game:

  They had to officially name a quarterback to replace Chris Aiello.

  They had started out losing last year’s quarterback and now they had lost this year’s quarterback. On Sunday, Will and his dad had gone over every possible replacement for Chris, including Will.

  They had finally come up with what they thought were their two best candidates: Jeremiah Keating and Johnny Callahan. Jeremiah had been the backup quarterback on the sixth-grade team last year. Johnny had never played quarterback in his life but had shown off a pretty decent arm as his Little League team’s best pitcher.