by Tim Green
Not much changed in the lunchroom. I still had a celebrity status that made a lot of kids sneak glances at me, and the popular group still snubbed their noses. I wasn’t really concerned with what went on in school, though. It was football practice I was thinking of, and all the diagrams and plays in the back of my notebook that Jackson and I had created and that I’d perfected while my teachers droned on about long division, adverbs, and the postwar recovery of Europe.
The school day finally ended and I scrambled out of my last class, nearly skipping to my locker before heading directly to Coach Hubbard’s office. I hadn’t had gym that day, so this was my first time around him since he’d seen me with John Torres and the Cowboys’ GM. I marched right into his office and he looked up from the desk he was writing at. He whipped off a pair of wire glasses I hadn’t known about. His face actually turned red. He was embarrassed! To see me! I don’t think it was the glasses either.
“Hey, Coach.”
“Ryan . . .” Coach Hubbard rose and began tucking his enormous collared shirt into a pair of navy-blue coaching shorts that were ridiculously tight. “Good to see you.”
Coach stuck out his hand like it was the first time we’d met. I was a new person to Coach Hubbard, no longer a half-pint scrapper who was an annoyance. I was the kid owner. I shook his hand and plopped my notebook down onto his gray metal desk, flipping it open to the back pages.
“I’m worried, Coach.” I studied his face to see how high my stock had climbed. Before he knew I owned the Cowboys and before he’d seen John Torres in real life, I don’t think Coach Hubbard could have cared less about Ryan Zinna being worried.
“Well,” he said, “maybe I can help.”
Coach tucked the last remnants of his circus-tent shirt into the back of his pants, briefly exposing a butt crack I could no more ignore than I could the Grand Canyon. He turned a deeper shade of red and sat back down. The metal chair creaked beneath the burden.
I sat down, too. “Coach, I know I’m not the starting quarterback.”
I let that hang out there. Coach Hubbard blinked at me and shifted in his seat, sending up a flock of squeaks and rattles from the hardware below. “Okay.”
“But I’m thinking that—you know—if Estevan Marin were to get hurt, I’d have to go in.”
He nodded. “That’s part of the game.”
“Right, but if I have to go in, the offense we run . . .” Again, I let my words float out there between us, hoping he’d pick up the slack.
He didn’t.
“So, I was thinking about Bill Walsh’s book about the West Coast Offense, you know, Finding the Winning Edge? Kind of old school, right?”
Coach Hubbard let loose a blustery chuckle. “Bill Walsh was a genius, for sure. Joe Montana, Jerry Rice . . . that was a team.”
Coach sighed in honor of the good old days.
“So, if I do have to go into the game, I just thought we should be ready with some plays that I can do, instead of trying to do things I can’t. Bill Walsh said that’s one of the keys to a winning team.”
“Did he say that?” Coach Hubbard’s forehead rumpled like a gorilla studying a banana before I cleared my throat and his eyebrows shot up. “Yes. Sounds like him.”
“Look, I know I’m short, but so was Jeff Garcia. So Walsh put in a bunch of plays that let him roll outside the pocket.”
“Of course,” Coach Hubbard said.
I got excited. “So I was looking at these plays of his. I copied them down. Three or four people in the pattern, and you’ve always got a check down . . . a safety valve if all else fails. All rollouts.”
I flipped through the pages, pointing to plays I’d drawn.
Coach Hubbard’s brow rumpled again as he studied the plays. He hummed and nodded as if this was all old news to him, but really, the most complicated play he’d ever drawn up was a crossing pattern under a go route, which looked like an upside-down four.
“I didn’t know if you were thinking the same kind of thing.” I spoke fast. Coach Hubbard might lend me his ear because of my new status, but he was still in charge. “I just thought if I drew up some plays, it’d save you some time. I hope you don’t mind, Coach.”
It was a bold move, me showing up in the coach’s office with plays already drawn up, but if I was going to get my chance, I just couldn’t let it slip by without doing everything possible to help myself succeed. If we ran the same old offense, I’d be doomed. But if Coach Hubbard even put in a couple of my plays so that I could run them if I had to, I’d stand a chance.
36
Coach Hubbard’s small dark eyes narrowed.
I gulped. “Maybe we could try out a couple of these plays? Just an idea, Coach. Some teams do it. I know Marin’s got more experience than me and I’m not saying make me the starter, but if it looks good? Boy, what a one-two combination. Like a fighter. One-two pow!”
I stopped talking and lowered my fists and waited.
Coach Hubbard scowled and wormed his pinkie into one of the tiny ears plastered to the side of his big dome. “That’s a lot to learn, Ryan. Guys have been practicing these plays for weeks. Putting all these new things in would be tough to learn in a few days. I know you could do it, but the linemen . . .”
“I know, see?” I flipped the pages, excited. “I’ve got it so the line calls are all the same, color-coded like the offense we run now so everyone knows who to block. When we roll out to pass, it’s really the same blocking as the zone sweep play we run right now, and all the linemen know how to block it. That’s part of the beauty!”
Coach Hubbard went after his other ear now. “You’ve got receivers and running backs, too. They’d have to learn—”
I nodded. “I could work with those guys. Also, I was thinking about the run game out of spread formation. See, ’cause if you look, these plays all call for the quarterback to be taking a shotgun snap, and with four receivers spread wide, there’s just one running back, but Bill Walsh has some awesome running plays.”
“Run game?” Coach stopped drilling his ear. “West Coast is a passing offense.”
“But fifty percent of the time—if you do it right—you run the ball. A lot of people think this kind of offense is all passing, but it’s not. Here, look at these one back running plays.” I flipped the pages again to show him. “And that’s another thing I was thinking about, Coach. I mean, you probably thought of this, too, as soon as we started talking about a spread offense. We’ve got the perfect guy to be that single back.”
“Griffin Engle?”
“Aw, Coach.” I reached out to pat his shoulder but pulled back and tapped the desktop, not wanting to go too far. “You’re testing me, aren’t you?”
Before he could speak, I continued, “Jackson is so obvious. It’s amazing, isn’t it? A guy his size who can run like that?”
“He is amazing, but . . .”
“In a conventional offense, of course, he’s a lineman, but in a spread? Wow. Who’s gonna tackle him when the box is empty with the defense out covering all our wide receivers? Coach, it’s really a great idea. Ha! You almost had me with Engle, and sure, he could do it, but with his speed he’ll be the best of our four wideouts, a big-time weapon.” I flipped a few more pages, to some running plays that used a single back. It was simple stuff: an inside trap, a cutback, the zone runs we already had only without a fullback, a simple counter, and a draw. It was stuff a barnyard animal could learn.
Coach Hubbard just blinked. Then he looked at his watch. “Mind if I keep these papers?”
“Yeah, sure. They’re yours, Coach.” I popped up. “I figured I’d just save you the time of copying them down from Coach Walsh’s book and matching up the line protections with the ones we already have.”
“I kind of like it,” Coach Hubbard said as I reached for the door. “No reason we can’t try a couple out and see how it goes.”
“Great, Coach. Thanks!” I started through the door, heading for the locker room to change.
�
�Ryan.”
I stopped and looked back.
“How was it? I mean, the Cowboys and John Torres and everything?”
I took a breath and shook my head, staring into space. “Dream come true, Coach. A dream come true.”
Coach Hubbard had stars in his eyes, too, and he looked not at me but possibly at some kind of magical halo that he imagined over my head. “Yeah . . . I bet.”
“And even if my stepmother does end up controlling the team, I’m still going to own a pretty big hunk of it, which is kinda cool,” I said.
Coach Hubbard’s eyes widened and his head nodded on its own.
“See you out there, Coach.” I turned and headed into the locker room, and didn’t bother to look back.
37
If I could write the story I wish had happened, I’d tell you that my copied plays and the spread were a knockout success. But they weren’t. I knew how to run the spread, and honestly, the plays we tried to run weren’t that hard, but you’d have thought my teammates, and my coaches, were trying to recite the Gettysburg Address in Chinese. It was downright silly.
Guys went offside. Guys ran into each other. Guys dropped passes. Guys missed blocks. They tripped. They stumbled. They fell.
The spread died a quick death out there that very first day, and the sound of my own voice trying to pump it up began to annoy even me. It certainly annoyed Coach Vickerson. He had no patience for anything he didn’t understand, and it was easy for him to laugh at Coach Hubbard when Jackson lined up at running back. Coach Hubbard raised his chin and said he wanted to try something innovative. Jackson ended up slipping on the first play, fumbling on the second, and having my screen pass bounce—literally bounce—off his helmet on the third play. Coach Vickerson hooted and howled out loud.
“Enough innovation yet, Coach?” He gasped with laughter as he tore up a hunk of sod and tossed it for emphasis. “This isn’t the winning edge, it’s the edge of doom!”
Coach Hubbard’s face went red and he gave me a dirty look like I had planned to embarrass him. “This isn’t the Cowboys, Ryan. We tried, but I think it’s time to go back to the old offense.”
I wanted to kick Coach Vickerson in the shin. He must have read my face because he turned his scorn on me. “Minna Zinna, you trying to mess with our offense so you can see over the line? Rolling out? One back? Four wide receivers? Don’t you worry yourself. Estevan Marin may not own an NFL team, but he’s not going to get hurt, and Simpkin will be back next week.”
Coach Vickerson turned to Coach Hubbard. “Come on, Coach. We got defense to work on.”
I trudged along to a fresh spot on the turf with my head hung when someone banged into me from behind. I spun and jumped up, ready for a shoving match. It was Markham, and he stood immovable as a granite block.
“What are you doing?” I spoke with the firm tone I thought fitting for an NFL owner.
“Cut it out, half-pint,” Markham growled. “I don’t care if you own the entire state of Texas—you’re a bite-sized dingle berry and you better thank your lucky stars you won’t be out there playing quarterback Saturday, because I’ll help the guy I’m supposed to block get in your face and smash you into the dirt.”
“That’s garbage. We’re on the same team, Markham.” I stayed standing straight, but my backbone was quickly turning to jelly.
“Team? You’re not a football player.” Markham snorted. “You got to hang around the past few years and watch because no one wanted to listen to your mommy crying. Yeah, you might be the ‘kid owner’—or you might not be, right?—but you’re not a player.”
“Markham!” Coach Vickerson shouted from the defensive huddle. “Get over here so we can run the play! Don’t tell me you’re under Zinna’s spell, too! The Dallas Cowboys aren’t gonna win this game on Saturday. We gotta do that!”
Markham gave one final snort and banged into my shoulder on his way past. I took my spot on the scout team offense with the other backup players, looking at the diagram of the play we were to run off a card Coach Hubbard held up high in our ragtag huddle. Suddenly it seemed like I’d made no progress at all. I tried, but I had failed. Now I might lose not only the Cowboys to a nasty woman but also my own middle-school team to a boneheaded coach and a bully. I bit my tongue for the rest of the practice, ran my sprints, and kept to myself as everyone changed in the locker room. Jackson gave me a sad look.
“What?” I asked.
“I liked being a running back in those new plays,” he said in a low voice.
“Would’ve been nice if you could’ve held onto the ball. That’s an important part of it, in case you didn’t know it.”
Jackson just nodded his head like it was a lesson learned. I snorted like Markham and realized what I’d done. They say that kids who get bullied become jerks themselves, and I think sometimes that’s kind of true. It’s like playing hot potato. You want to get rid of it, pass it on, as fast as you can.
“I’m sorry, Jackson,” I said softly. I was disappointed in myself.
“That’s okay.” Jackson shrugged it off. “Maybe we’ll get it right tomorrow. Maybe they’ll realize how smart you are with the plays and all that.”
“Maybe the sun will turn purple.” I looked up at an imaginary sky.
Jackson wrinkled his brow.
“I’m kidding, Jackson. I’m being sarcastic. They won’t realize I’m smart because they can’t see it. They’re not even smart enough to know they’re not smart. They see you and they see a big kid who should play on the line. They see me and they see a kid too short and small to play anything but receiver, set way out on the edge of the formation, as far from the action as humanly possible.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“They’re the coaches.” I cut him off with a grouchy wave of my hand.
“I wish there was another coach, or a coach for the coaches or something. I don’t know.”
I perked up suddenly. “Dude, you’re brilliant!”
Jackson nodded enthusiastically and chuckled, then stopped and gave me a puzzled look. “I am? Why?”
“I think I have an idea.” I smiled.
38
My mom picked me and Jackson up from practice. When we pulled in through the gates to my house, there was a black Mercedes SUV in the circle.
“Who’s this?” My mother spoke under her breath, pulling the truck right up behind the Mercedes.
I watched Coach Cowan climb out of the SUV. He wore not a warm-up suit, as he had at the Cowboys complex, but jeans, loafers, and a simple white button-down shirt. It was as perfect as it was unbelievable.
The Cowboys’ coach marched right for my mother, extending a hand. “Felt like we got off on the wrong foot yesterday.”
My mother blushed, a rare thing for her, but in the sunshine, wearing normal clothes, Coach Cowan looked less like a caged predatory bird and more like a minor movie star, even with those close-set dark eyes. He had a confidence about him that made you want to listen.
“It was a shock for me to see you all yesterday.” He turned now and shook my hand. “I didn’t expect you to stop by, and I’m sure you know that Bert and I don’t see eye to eye. When a team loses—especially a team like the Cowboys—people start pointing fingers.”
Before I could speak, he held up both hands. “I’m not here to do that, Ryan. I just want you and your mom to know that I’m not the aloof Ivy Leaguer some of the sports radio personalities are making me out to be. I wanted you to know that I’m somewhat of a regular guy.”
“Ryan may not even own the team, you know,” my mother said.
“Mom.” I scowled at her.
“Maybe he doesn’t, but maybe he does.” Coach Cowan gazed right at her. “Funny things happen. Either way, it bothered me how I acted.”
“Well, would you like to come in and have some coffee and talk?” My mother had recovered from her blush and was back in control.
“Sure. Thank you. Coffee would be great,” he said, turning to face Jackson, eye to e
ye. “And your name is?”
“Jackson Shockey, Coach.” Jackson stepped right up to the coach, grinned and nodded and shook hands.
As we followed my mom into the house, Coach Cowan looked from Jackson to me and back again. “And you’re Ryan’s . . .”
“Teammate,” I said. “Jackson and I play football together, Ben Sauer Middle School’s seventh-grade team.”
Coach Cowan’s eyebrows went up and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because he was surprised that a boy my size could play football, or that a boy as huge as Jackson could actually be my teammate. My mom waved us to the kitchen table, where we sat down across from Coach Cowan.
“He’s twelve,” I said. “Big, huh?”
“Real big.”
“He’s fast, too. The fastest kid on the team.”
“Seriously?”
“The smartest, too. Can you imagine him running the ball in a one back set?” I folded my hands and laid them on the table.
The plan began with Jackson’s idea of a coach for our coaches. Now the idea came to life right in front of me: Coach Cowan could help me sell the spread offense to Coach Hubbard. I could only imagine Coach Hubbard’s face if he got to sit down with Coach Cowan, a real-life NFL coach. (If you know anything about coaches, they’re even more impressed by NFL coaches than the players.) I had General Patton’s flanking maneuvers fresh in my mind from history class. I could outflank Coach Vickerson with superior firepower in the form of Coach Cowan.
The only problem was, I had no idea if Coach Cowan would go along with it.
I had no idea if he’d even care.
39
A light seemed to blink on in Coach Cowan’s eyes.
“You’re like Ironhead, Jackson,” Coach Cowan said, sounding kind of excited.
“Ironhead?” Jackson rumpled his face.
“Ironhead Heyward,” Coach Cowan said. “Played for the Saints back in the nineties. I loved watching him. Big as any lineman, but fast. Used to knock people over like bowling pins.”
