The Walk On

by John Feinstein

  Alex didn’t say another word.

  The next two weeks could hardly have gone better for Alex—and for the team.

  Lansdowne and Haverford Station were as bad as advertised. Alex came out of the Lansdowne game with Chester Heights leading 42–0. Jake was in uniform, but Emmet Foley came in and simply handed the ball off for the rest of the night. The final was 42–7. A week later at Haverford Station it was 44–0 when Alex came out and Jake took his place. Jake did the same thing that Foley had done—kept handing the ball off to several backup tailbacks—until Foley came in to do the same on the final series of the game. This time the final was 44–7.

  Alex was hardly spectacular in either game, but he didn’t need to be. Coach Gordon’s game plan was simple—run the ball most of the time, mixing in an occasional pass to keep the defense honest. Alex only threw the ball deep once, and that was on an audible—where he changed the play at the line—because he noticed that no one from Haverford Station was anywhere close to Max Plesac. He faked a handoff to Craig Josephs, took a couple steps back, and lofted a pass to Plesac, who could have walked backward into the end zone.

  Other than that, it was an option play here, a pitch there, and putting the ball into Josephs’s stomach a lot. The tailback rushed for 294 yards in the two games, largely because Chester Heights’ offensive line completely dominated both opponents.

  Matt was off the crutches for the Lansdowne game and had started throwing again on Tuesday prior to the Haverford Station game. There hadn’t been any discussion about who the starting quarterback would be for the game at Bryn Mawr. Alex assumed that was because there wasn’t any doubt it would be Matt.

  On Sunday night, Alex received an email from Coach Brotman saying that he and Coach Gordon would like to meet with all three quarterbacks in the football offices Monday lunchtime. “I’m designated to bring lunch,” he wrote. “Matt’s a McDonald’s guy. Jake likes Burger King. You get the deciding vote. Tell me what you want.”

  Alex laughed. He liked Coach Brotman. He certainly wasn’t nearly as involved with the QBs as Coach Hillier had been. In fact, if Chester Heights had a quarterback coach, it was Matt Gordon.

  He wrote back that he preferred McDonald’s and told Coach Brotman what he wanted to eat. He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting all that much since he figured he knew what it was about. Still, the thought of not eating the cafeteria food was appealing, even if he would miss all the attention he was now receiving. Not only did people practically line up to sit with him and Jonas and Stephen, but he also had no fewer than twelve invitations to the holiday dance. Alex had told all twelve girls he couldn’t make a commitment, in part because the dance was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and he wasn’t sure he’d be home, but more importantly because it was the night after the state finals. He hoped they’d be having a big team celebration.

  There was another reason he was noncommittal: if he did go, the only girl he really wanted to go with was Christine Whitford. He had no idea if she would go with him, but he had decided to follow Matt Gordon’s advice and at least ask her. If she was going with Jake, fine, but he’d give it his best shot.

  “I think all three of you guys know why I asked you here, but just in case you don’t, it’s about who’s going to start on Friday against Bryn Mawr.”

  Coach Gordon had been sitting behind his desk, but now he stood up and walked in front of the whiteboard in the corner of the room, which listed all the players on the football team’s roster.

  Matt, Jake, and Alex were sitting on chairs in front of the desk. Coach Brotman was standing near the door. All three quarterbacks were gobbling French fries at that moment.

  “Honestly, Myers, this is more for your benefit than anyone else,” Coach Gordon continued, arms crossed. He actually appeared to be a little uncomfortable—which surprised Alex. “You did a great job bringing us back in the King of Prussia game and you’ve done everything we asked you to do the last two weeks. I have every confidence that anytime you’re in a game we have a chance to win.”

  He paused. Alex looked at Matt, who had his head down. Jake was sipping a Coke.

  “I think, though, as we move ahead, the most experienced guy needs to be our starter. I’m not a coach who says you can’t lose your job because you get injured, because—to be honest—if someone comes in and is better, he’s playing.

  “I talked to Matt about this last night,” he continued. “You know Matt’s your biggest supporter around here.” He paused. “When I told him he was starting against Bryn Mawr, he asked me straight out, would he be the starter if he wasn’t my son.”

  Coach Gordon paced back and forth for a brief moment. “I told him he was the starter in spite of being my son. And that’s the truth.”

  He stopped talking. Everyone was looking at Alex. Apparently, he was expected to respond.

  “Coach, if you had said anything different, I would have argued with you,” Alex said, realizing as the words came out of his mouth that he was telling the truth. “Matt’s the leader of this team. I couldn’t possibly have played as well as I did against King of Prussia if not for Matt.”

  “You wouldn’t have played at all if not for Jake,” Matt, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, added with a smile. Everyone laughed—even Coach Gordon.

  Alex thought for a moment before answering. In August, he probably would have said something like, Coach, it’s your call, you’re the boss, and left it at that, because back then he was convinced he was the team’s best quarterback. Now, even knowing he had the best arm and had played well in Matt’s absence, he realized he was not—yet—the best quarterback or even close to being the team’s leader.

  “Matt’s our quarterback, Coach,” he said finally—meaning it. “You didn’t need to explain that to me. But I appreciate it.”

  “Alex, you are a remarkably mature young man,” Coach Gordon said, surprising Alex by calling him by his first name. “I want you to understand, you’re still going to play. We’ll work you in for a series here and there to keep the defenses off balance. You are a perfect counterpart for Matt with the way you throw the ball. Plus, knowing you might play will make it tougher for teams to prepare for us.

  “So get ready every week as if you’re still the starter, because you are going to play.”

  “I’ll do that, Coach. Don’t worry.”

  “I know you will,” he said. “I’ll see you all at practice.”

  He sat down at his desk. The meeting was over.

  As the three of them walked out, Matt put his arm around Alex. “I knew the first time I saw you that you could play football,” he said. “I didn’t know what a good guy you were. Thanks for making that easy on everyone. You could have complained if you wanted to and it would have been legit. You played great.”

  “You are the leader of this team, Matt,” Alex said. “We’re better when you’re out there.”

  “I hope so,” Matt said softly. “I hope so.”

  With Matt back at practice, Alex’s role changed once again. Matt took about seventy-five percent of the snaps with the first team and Alex took the rest. Alex and Jake split the second- and third-team snaps, which meant Alex was still on the field a lot while the team was scrimmaging.

  Matt was held back a little bit in practice that week. The bolder play calls—the options designed to get to the corners and the play-action passes—were called almost exclusively when Alex was on the field. Every once in a while Alex caught Matt grimacing after he’d made a cut, but his movement looked fine to him.

  Not surprisingly, the Wednesday edition of the Weekly Roar was filled with speculation about who would start at quarterback. Coach Gordon had said only, “We don’t know if Matt will be ready next week. If he’s one hundred percent, I expect he’ll be the starter.”

  Steve Garland had written a column—a fair one, Alex thought—wondering if Coach Gordon would be affected in either direction by the nepotism issue: would he favor Matt because he was his son or be tougher on
him?

  Most players on the team believe that Coach Gordon holds Matt to a higher standard than any other player. It is one reason why Matt is so highly thought of by his teammates. And yet, one wonders, when crunch time really comes around, does Matthew Gordon think like a coach or like a father?

  With luck, we’ll never need to learn the answer to that question.

  Bryn Mawr Tech was not as bad as the Lions’ two previous opponents, but they were still no match for Chester Heights, which was 6–0 coming into the game and now ranked number fourteen in the USA Today national poll. The Chargers led 7–0 after Craig Josephs dropped a simple pitch midway through the first quarter that gave them a short field to work with. But the Lions came back quickly: Josephs went fifty-nine yards on a perfect option pitch from Matt Gordon, and then they killed a lot of clock with a twelve-play, seventy-one-yard drive that put them up 14–7. When Bryn Mawr punted with 2:38 left in the half and Chester Heights took over on its own 29, Coach Gordon sent Alex in to run the two-minute offense.

  “Nothing heroic,” he said as he sent him onto the field. “Take what’s there. If that’s nothing, throw the ball away. No turnovers!”

  What was there, not surprisingly, were a lot of short passes allowed by a backpedaling defense. The Lions moved to midfield with 1:09 left and one time-out remaining. On first down, Alex play-faked and then wound up as if he were going deep to Max Plesac. He then stepped up and spotted Jonas, who had also started to run a deep route but had pulled up and come back toward the ball. Alex found Jonas wide open at the 30, and Jonas made it all the way to the 18 before being wrestled out of bounds with fifty-two seconds to go.

  On the next play, Alex handed the ball to Josephs, running a straight draw up the middle, and he bulled to the five. Alex ran up to the line and spiked the ball with twenty-two seconds left, the plan being to save the time-out to get the field goal team on the field.

  Plesac raced into the huddle, delivering Z wide right. That play was a quick toss in the right corner to Jonas. Alex could see that the defense was rotating in whatever direction Jonas lined up. He nodded at Plesac, stepped into the huddle, and called, “22 draw, look—Y middle.”

  Plesac raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The play was a fake draw to Josephs with Mike Crenshaw, the second tight end—known as the Y for play-calling purposes—faking a block and then running to the goal line. With luck, the linebacker he was blocking would take the run fake and Crenshaw would be open.

  They came to the line and Alex took some extra time since the clock wasn’t running after the spike. The play clock was down to two seconds when he took the snap, turned, and stuck the ball into Josephs’s stomach. Sure enough, the linebacker had bitten on the run fake, and there was Crenshaw wide open at the goal line.

  Except he wasn’t wide open. Alex saw the safety coming up on him just as he released the ball, but it was too late. The safety stepped in front of Crenshaw and, before anyone in a Chester Heights uniform realized what had happened, the ball was in his arms and he was gone, racing down the sideline. Alex turned to chase but knew right away it was futile.

  Touchdown, Bryn Mawr Tech.

  Alex felt sick. He had overruled the coach’s call and had turned what should have been at worst a 17–7 lead into a 14–14 tie at halftime. Coach Gordon’s call, he realized, was the smart call: even if Jonas was covered in the corner, the pass would be likely to fall incomplete and the field goal team would have come on the field. And even if, by some chance, Alex threw a poor pass and it was intercepted, then the defender would have been leaping and diving in a corner of the end zone to make the play. There couldn’t have been a return. Alex’s call—a pass over the middle—put the possibility of a return into play, and worst of all, that was what had happened.

  He jogged to the sideline. Coach Gordon and Matt both met him as he arrived.

  “Was that an audible?” Coach Gordon asked.

  “No sir.”

  “So you just overruled my call in the huddle.”

  “I thought I saw something—”

  “Apparently, you didn’t.”

  The extra point sailed through to tie the game. The clock read 00:00. The teams started for the locker rooms with the Bryn Mawr crowd going nuts. Coach Gordon put a hand on Alex’s shoulder—not gently.

  “If both Matt and Jake get hurt in the second half, you’re not going in,” he said, not raising his voice but with razors in it. “You understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And Coach Brotman will meet you at school at six o’clock tomorrow morning. Once was okay, especially because you were right. Twice is unacceptable. I’m still the coach.”

  Alex had his head down.

  “Do you understand me, Myers?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The worst part of it, Alex thought as he followed his teammates to the locker room, was that poor Coach Brotman had to wake up at five o’clock on a Saturday morning. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that.

  Alex had.

  Matt Gordon took control of the game in the second half, leading two long drives and one short one that was set up by a Gerry Detwiler interception. The two captains got the game balls after the 35–21 victory and they were both deserved.

  Alex felt no joy in victory. Matt and Jake both told him it was okay, that this too would pass, but it didn’t feel that way. When he came out of the locker room, Steve Garland was waiting for him. He could see Christine talking to Detwiler.

  “Did you get benched in the second half?” Garland asked him.

  “If I did, I deserved it after the interception,” Alex said, not mentioning that he had changed the play. “It was a dumb play on my part.”

  “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?” Garland asked.

  “Probably not hard enough,” Alex said, excusing himself because he saw his mom and Molly standing nearby. They had driven to the game even though it was away from home.

  Although his mom didn’t really get football, she knew enough to know that Alex had messed up. He had told her—and his dad, on the phone—about the new plan for him to play a series or two each half.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Can we go home, please?”

  She nodded. Even Molly looked sad. “No party tonight?” his mom asked. “You did win the game.…”

  Alex had the usual array of Friday-night party invites on his phone.

  “Mom, I have to be at school at six o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  When he explained, she was silent for a moment.

  “Is he wrong to be angry?” she asked finally. “I don’t really understand.”

  “He’s completely right,” he said. “I got cocky and I paid for it.”

  He looked at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He’d have about six hours to sleep.

  Coach Brotman was waiting for him when he pulled up on his bicycle the next morning.

  “Coach said five trips up and down,” he said. “If you go hard, you can stop after four.”

  “Is that from you or Coach Gordon?” Alex asked.

  “From me. You messed up, Alex, and I think you know it. The important thing isn’t that you be punished but that you understand what you did wrong.”

  “I do understand,” Alex said. “I got carried away with myself.”

  “You get it, then,” Coach Brotman said. “By the way, you aren’t the first freshman to get a little bit of a big head.”

  Alex worked the steps hard. The sun wasn’t up yet since it was mid-October and almost time to set the clocks back. It was cool, very cool, and as he ran, he could see his breath. The workout actually felt good.

  “Okay, Alex, that’s enough,” Coach Brotman said after his fourth trip up and down the thirty-five rows of steps. “Locker room’s open. Go take a shower and get some rest. I’m going home.”

  “Thanks, Coach. I’m sorry yo
u had to get up early because of me.”

  Coach Brotman waved him off. “I’ve got a fourteen-month-old,” he said. “I’m usually up by now anyway.”

  He tossed Alex a towel and walked in the direction of his car.

  Alex took a long shower, actually reveling in having the shower room to himself. Some of Mr. O’s guys were in early cleaning uniforms, but the locker room was otherwise empty.

  The sun was just starting to come up when he pushed the locker room door open. He was glancing east, enjoying the sight of the rising sun, when he heard a voice say, “I’ll bet you could use some breakfast.”

  He turned and saw Christine Whitford standing there. He smiled.

  “You know, for some reason, I’m not surprised you’re here.”

  “I heard what happened.”

  “Of course you did.”

  She smiled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you know more about what happens on this team than most of the players.”

  She was still smiling the mesmerizing smile.

  “Isn’t that what a reporter is supposed to do?”

  She was wearing blue jeans and a blue-and-white Villanova sweatshirt. The sun was starting to warm the morning air, but it was still cool.

  “I don’t know what a reporter is supposed to do,” he said. “I’m not a reporter.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’re a football player.” She paused for a second before adding, “With a pretty good French accent.”

  That made him laugh. “You didn’t get up this early and come down here to compliment my accent.”

  “No, I didn’t. In fact, my story for Wednesday is about Craig Josephs and Gerry Detwiler and their chances to make all-state.”

  “Should be pretty good. We’re seven and oh and Gerry makes big plays in every game. Craig’s already rushed for almost a thousand yards.

  “Nine hundred seventy-nine,” she said.