Game Changers

by Mike Lupica

  And then Ben had his answer.

  There was his answer as plain as day on the field below him, without Shawn or his dad having to say a single word, to Ben or anybody else.

  Ben didn’t see Mr. O’Brien trying to be Shawn’s quarterback coach. Or even trying to be the coach of his team today. Just being Shawn’s dad.

  Not showing Shawn how to grip a ball today or throw one. Throwing the ball to him instead. Both of them looking as if they didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Like the two of them were finally where they were supposed to be.

  Watching them now, Ben thought of the times at practice when he’d sneak a look at Coach O’Brien, back when Shawn was still the quarterback and would make a good throw. And Ben would see Coach smiling.

  He was smiling like that today. The only difference was that Shawn was finally smiling back.

  Ben stayed behind the tree, poking his head around the trunk enough to see Shawn’s dad throwing long. And short. Making Shawn dive sometimes. Making him jump. No mechanical receiver on the field today. No need for Chad Ochocinco on Wheels.

  Just Shawn O’Brien.

  One time Coach threw a ball to Shawn on a post pattern and even though Shawn caught it, his dad yelled, “Is that your idea of a sharp cut?”

  Shawn yelled back, “I caught it, didn’t I, old man?”

  They both laughed.

  Ben stayed behind the tree a long time, stayed until he figured he had to be getting close to the start of the Packers’ game. Waited until Coach O’Brien dropped back and threw one more deep ball, Shawn running under it and catching it in stride.

  Then Ben made a clean getaway.

  He made his way back up the hill toward the house, taking his time, still hearing shouts from behind him, and cheers, and more laughter.

  Ben thinking to himself that this was the way all sports were supposed to sound, not just football.

  He was on his laptop later, watching Flutie, telling himself he didn’t have to wait until the season was over, he was a quarterback now.

  Not the Flutie who played with his dad at Boston College, the little big man who threw the Hail Flutie pass that time against Miami. No, tonight Ben was watching highlights from when Doug Flutie played in the Canadian Football League, when he was one of the greatest players in the whole history of that league.

  Ben loved watching Flutie’s old CFL highlights on YouTube even now:

  Twelve guys to a side, everybody allowed to be in motion before the ball was snapped, the end zones twenty yards deep, the field 110 yards long and wider than the regulation fields for American football.

  It was like watching a football video game, just with real players. All that room for Flutie to make things up as he went along. All that pure fun for him, even if he had only gone up there to play — Ben knew from his dad — because he got tired of the NFL telling him he was too small to play quarterback. This was way before he came back later with the Buffalo Bills and proved everybody wrong by taking the Bills to the playoffs one year, before a dumb coach put him back on the bench and the Bills lost to the Tennessee Titans.

  One more dumb coach, Ben knew by now, who couldn’t see the quarterback Flutie was born to be.

  Here was Ben up in his room, loving on Flutie’s CFL highlights, when his mom poked her head in and told him that he had a visitor.

  “Your coach,” she said.

  Coach O’Brien was at the bottom of the stairs, talking to Ben’s dad.

  “I kept hearing about McBain Field from Shawn,” he said. “Checked it out when I got out of the car. Pretty cool.”

  “Not as cool as your field,” Ben said.

  “From what I hear about what goes on with you and your buddies over there across the street,” he said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  Then to Ben’s parents he said, “Can I borrow your boy for just a minute?”

  Beth McBain said, “You can. But we’re going to have to insist that you return him.”

  Coach and Ben went outside, sat down on the top step of the front porch.

  “Thank you,” Coach said to Ben.

  “Coach,” he said, “you don’t have to thank me for anything.”

  “Actually, I do,” he said, “now that Shawn told me every- thing.” He put his head down, gave it a quick shake, said, “Everything I should have been able to figure out on my own.”

  “It’s all good,” Ben said.

  “Now it is,” Coach said. “Thanks to you.”

  Adding: “I couldn’t see what my boy wanted because of what I wanted for him.”

  “No worries,” Ben said. “He’s gonna be great now, wait and see.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Coach said. “But what I do know is that he’s gonna have a great time trying.”

  He turned and put out his hand and Ben shook it, making sure to look Coach in the eyes as he did, the way his parents had taught him.

  “You called that audible on purpose,” Coach said, “didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Ben said.

  “To open my eyes.”

  Ben said, “Maybe open everybody’s.”

  “I didn’t see him, I didn’t see you,” Coach O’Brien said. “Some coach.”

  Ben smiled at him. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “Being a grown-up is hard sometimes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Now Coach O’Brien stood up, walked down the steps, turned around.

  “Even before I put you behind center,” he said, “I thought you were one of those guys who could really see the field. I just didn’t know how much until now.”

  Ben stood up now on the top step, looking down at his coach for once.

  “If you don’t keep your eyes open,” Ben said, “you might miss somebody finally breaking into the clear.”

  Championship Saturday at The Rock.

  Parkerville had ended up with the best record, its only loss to the Rams, and normally would have had home-field for the championship game. But the Patriots played their home games on the town’s high school field, and the high school team needed it, so the big game had been bumped over to the Rams.

  Robbie Burnett and his guys had stomped Kingsland in their last regular-season game. The Rams had beaten Glendale by two touchdowns in their last game, breaking a tie in the fourth quarter, both of the scores coming on passes, one from Ben to Sam, the other to Shawn.

  So here they were.

  Here they were having won out after being 0–2, here they were coming into the big game feeling like they were the best team in the league even if the team they were playing had the best record and had Robbie Burnett, whom everybody thought would be the best quarterback in the league coming into the season.

  Just not according to Cooper Manley.

  “We’ve got the edge at QB, most definitely,” Coop was saying on the walk from the parking lot to the field with Ben and Sam, the three of them the first to arrive, as usual.

  “You sure about that?” Ben said.

  “So sure,” Coop said. “He’s bigger, you’re better.”

  “We’re better,” Sam said. “About to prove it.”

  Man of few words, as always.

  They started to warm up, soft-tossing with Ben’s ball, Ben having brought the ball from home for good luck today. A few minutes later Coach O’Brien and Shawn arrived, Shawn running out on the field to join them, as if that was the most natural thing in the world now.

  The four of them tossed Ben’s ball around and, when they were done, went over and sat down on the bench.

  Shawn said to Ben, “I’ve been feeling pressure like you can’t believe since I woke up this morning. Like, woke up as early as if it were a school morning. Without my parents yelling at me to get up.”

  “Dude,” Ben said, “this isn’t pressure today. This is like finally getting to the good parts of the movie.”

  Coop said, “Seriously? Pressure was when you hated on football and we hated on you.”

  There
was no hesitation: Shawn laughed along with everybody else. Ben decided that if he was faking it, it was the best fake he’d made all year in football.

  Sam said to Shawn, “Sometimes Coop manages to make sense. It’s like that one you always hear from your parents, about the blind squirrel occasionally finding the acorn.”

  “I’m in too good a mood for you to hurt my feelings,” Coop said. “So there’s no point in even trying.”

  Ben said to Shawn, “Listen, everybody’s feeling some pressure today. But it’s the good kind, when you’re, like, stupidly excited about something.”

  Ben McBain was stupidly excited.

  Had been all morning. Waiting to leave for the field once he woke up early. Waiting for the game to start now. Watching as people, from both towns, started to fill up the stands. He was excited even watching Robbie Burnett and the rest of the guys from Parkerville warming up at the other end of the field now that their bus had arrived.

  His dad really was always telling him that he was only going to get so many Saturdays like this in his life, so he better appreciate them. Ben thought: I’ve been appreciating this one all day, let’s play the game. Now.

  Finally it was five minutes to one and Coach O’Brien was gathering them around him, about ten yards onto the field.

  “Gonna keep it simple today,” he said. “I can see, just looking at you, how ready you all are. I know because I’ve been there, had my own share of big-game days like this in my own life. For some of you, this is the first time you’ve had a game like this that feels like a Super Bowl. But I’m gonna say the same thing to you as I’m saying to everybody: Enjoy every minute of it today. And know this from your old coach: I’d much rather be playing this one than coaching it.”

  He put his hand out in front of him. The guys crowded in, put their hands with it.

  “Ram tough!” Coach O’Brien shouted.

  The Rams shouted back even louder.

  Big game, big day, no more waiting, let’s do this.

  When they pulled away from Coach, Ben said to Sam Brown, “You ready?”

  “You know it.”

  Then Sam said, “By the way? You are better than Robbie Burnett.”

  The Rams scored the first two times they had the ball.

  The Patriots scored the first two times they had the ball.

  It was going to be one of those games, like both offenses planned to be on the fast break all day long, running up and down the field like there was some kind of shot clock on them.

  At one point, Ben and Sam both back at safety, both of them unable to stop Robbie Burnett from completing one pass after another, Sam said, “Didn’t we cover these guys the last time we played them?”

  “It seems like there’s more of them this time,” Ben said. “Like they’ve got us outnumbered, even though it’s eleven on eleven.”

  “Good news?” Sam said. “The guys on their defense feel the exact same way.”

  But Robbie just kept spreading his passes around. Wideouts, tight ends, running backs. Doing it like a pro. Like he really did think he was the best quarterback in the Midget Division. No way to guess where he was going to go next. And just when they thought they knew where he was going next, he’d pull the ball down and run.

  The good news for the Rams was Ben was playing the same game, running with the ball even more than Robbie was, keeping the Patriots’ defenders off balance every time he’d roll out again, their guys unable to get a solid read on whether he was running or passing.

  A good thing, for the Rams, anyway.

  With two minutes left in the half, Coach sent in a play that gave Ben the option to run or throw to Sam on a third and six. But as soon as Ben got outside the pocket, he saw enough room for him to keep the ball and make the first down himself. One pretty awesome head fake later — Ben had to admit to himself — and one equally awesome cutback in the open field, he had run forty yards for a touchdown. Then threw it to Sam over the middle for the two-point conversion.

  Rams, 21–13.

  “Let’s see Robbie Burnett bust a move like that,” Coop said.

  “Let’s just get a stop,” Ben said.

  They didn’t. They had their chance, had the Patriots at fourth and two at the Rams’ nineteen with thirty seconds left in the half, packed the line sure that Robbie would run the ball, especially since he still had two time-outs left. Only then Robbie executed an all-world fake — “all galaxy,” as Coop called it after the play — to his fullback, straightened up, and threw a perfect pass to his tight end, who’d run right past Ben and Sam.

  On the conversion, Robbie did hand it to his fullback, who ran up the middle and right through Cooper Manley and into the end zone with the two points that made it 21–21 at halftime.

  Ben and Sam walked over to where Coop was still on the ground, each put down a hand to lift him up.

  Coop said, “You know what I really hate? When the other team really does want to win as much as we do.”

  “No,” Ben said to him, “they don’t.”

  After they’d all gotten drinks, Coach O’Brien told them something they all knew already: They needed stops if they were going to win themselves a championship today.

  “I did a lot of subbing on defense, as you guys probably noticed,” he said, grinning as he added, “Not that it helped out a whole heck of a lot. But I did it because I want everybody fresh the rest of the game. Anybody who thinks he needs a blow for a play or two, don’t try to be a hero, let me know. Because one tired play could be the difference between winning or losing.”

  He got down on one knee then, looked up at them.

  “The team I believe you guys are?” he said. “Go out there and be that team now.”

  Before they took the field, Coach grabbed Ben by the arm and said, “And you be the quarterback you always believed you were.”

  But on the fourth play of the second half, the Rams having driven the ball over midfield again, Ben threw a little hook pass to Shawn on the left side, about five yards past the line of scrimmage, a nice safe play on third and three.

  Only when Shawn turned it upfield, he saw he had some room to run, and took off. One of their safeties was coming up from his left and when Shawn saw that, he shifted the ball into his right hand. Small problem? As he did, a linebacker he didn’t see came from Shawn’s right and put his helmet directly on the football, like hitting a nail with a hammer.

  Shawn didn’t see him, didn’t have a chance to hold on to the ball, it really was a direct hit. Ben watched the rest of it like it was happening in slow motion, like it was some weird sort of trick play. The ball popped straight up in the air, the safety who’d been running hard at Shawn from the left caught it in perfect stride.

  Defense turning into offense that fast.

  And the kid who had the ball now was real fast. Ben turned out to be the one with the best angle on him, did his best to get across the field and cut him off. But before he could try to cut him down he got leveled by a block from his blind side, laid out, Sam telling him when the play was over the block had been thrown by one of the Patriots’ defensive ends.

  There was nothing between the safety and the end zone after that except a lot of green grass. For the first time in the championship game, the Patriots were ahead. At least Sam managed to break up the conversion pass.

  It was still Parkerville by six, 27-21.

  “Told you I was feeling the pressure,” Shawn said when they all got to the sideline, the refs deciding to give both teams a breather with an official time-out. “Different position, but same old Shawn.”

  Ben was about to tell him to forget it, there was way too much football to be played to start feeling sorry for himself, but Coach O’Brien was the one who spoke first, having overheard what his son just said.

  He spoke to Ben, not Shawn.

  “First play of the next series?” he said. “Throw that same hook again. Somebody showed me a couple of weeks ago that it’s pure genius sometimes running the same play t
wice in a row.”

  Then walked away, Ben almost positive he heard him whistling.

  On first down, Ben threw the same pass to Shawn, who clamped two hands on the ball, ran right over the safety who’d just scored the touchdown, ran fifteen yards after that. When he got back to the huddle Ben bumped him some fist and said, “Well, you were right about one thing.”

  “What?”

  Ben shrugged and said, “Same guy.”

  The Rams then took it the rest of the way down the field. When they got to the Patriots twelve-yard line, Ben was supposed to look for Sam in the end zone. But the Patriots had Sam completely surrounded. There wasn’t enough time for Ben — feeling surrounded himself — to look for anybody else, so he was forced to scramble, reversing his field, running hard to his left now.

  A linebacker had him lined up, but Ben was still behind the line of scrimmage. So Ben brought the ball back up. Only he knew he was faking a throw to absolutely no one. But it froze the guy just enough, and in the next moment Ben was past him, sprinting for the orange pylon at the goal line, diving at the last second and putting the ball right on top of it like a cherry on a sundae — touchdown.

  Darrelle was wide open in the corner on the conversion. Ben couldn’t have missed him if he wanted to. Just like that it was 29-27, Rams, at The Rock.

  Coach took Ben out for the kickoff, giving him a quick breather, even if it was for only one play. When Ben got to the sideline he got a quick drink of water, then allowed himself to look up into the stands to where he knew his parents and Lily were.

  Jeff McBain was standing along with everybody else. When he saw Ben looking up at him, he just nodded, tapped his heart twice with his fist. Cheering quietly to the end. Ben’s mom was holding her trusty video cam, always saying that recording the game made her less nervous.

  Lily? It was as if she’d been waiting the whole game for Ben to look up at her. She smiled at Ben now, stepped forward just enough to show him she was wearing her favorite London T-shirt, from a trip she’d made there with her own parents last summer:

  The one with “Big Ben” written over a picture of maybe the world’s most famous clock.