The Extra Yard

by Mike Lupica

  After the waitress walked away, Teddy fixed his eyes on the TV set showing the football game, Pittsburgh against North Carolina.

  “So,” his dad said finally, as a way of bringing Teddy back into their booth.

  “So.”

  Teddy looked across the table and saw his dad’s smile fixed in place, as usual. By now Teddy knew you could knock that smile off his face. But it wasn’t easy.

  “How do you think it’s going so far?” his dad said.

  “You mean in football?”

  “We can start there.”

  “I feel myself thinking more like a quarterback,” Teddy said. “Using what Jack calls the quarterback brain I didn’t know I had. And the big thing is that I realize I don’t have to see the whole field at once, even though I want to.”

  “You can only control what you can control.”

  Teddy almost said, “Tell me about it.” But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Maybe it was because Jack made it look so easy. I had no idea there was this much to it, on every single play, even a running play off tackle.”

  “When people say it’s the most important position in sports,” his dad said, “they’re right. Even at this level.”

  “No pressure,” Teddy said.

  “Don’t look at it that way,” his dad said. “Are you kidding? You gotta treat this like some surprise package that got delivered out of the blue.”

  “My life is just full of surprises these days,” Teddy said.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. You tell me.”

  Then he turned to look up at the TV set. Pittsburgh’s quarterback had just completed a long pass. By the time he got home, he knew, the NFL Thursday night game would be starting, Packers against the Lions. He couldn’t wait. He loved watching Aaron Rodgers play, now more than ever. He was the guy in the NFL who made playing quarterback look easy.

  “Are we still just talking about football?” David Madden said.

  Teddy sighed and turned back to him. “It’s never just about football,” he said, “even when we’re on the field. I know you want to help me get better. But you think I can’t see you trying to win me over at the same time?”

  “And that,” his dad said, “is a bad thing?”

  “It may be working out great for you with my friends.” Teddy took in some air, then let it out. “But you didn’t leave them.”

  Now the smile on his dad’s face was gone.

  Underneath the chatter coming from the people at the bar, he said, “I didn’t think of it as leaving you. I left because I couldn’t stay.”

  He waited while the waitress put their plates in front of them. When she was gone, he said, “Does that make any sense at all?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “Whatever I think about it or whatever I say about it, it’s not going to change anything.”

  “It might at least get you to understand where I’m coming from.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything okay between us?” Teddy said.

  “I’ve told you this before, or at least tried to tell you,” David Madden said. “I realize I can’t fix the past. It’s like trying to go back and do things differently in the game you already lost. I know what I’ve lost with you. I do. But all I can do is work on right now, the way we’re working at football.” He leaned forward, his own big hands on the table. “And whether you like it or not, you know we’re doing that together.”

  “I’m happy this has all worked out for you,” Teddy said, knowing how sarcastic he sounded, knowing sarcasm still came way too easy to him.

  They ate in silence for the next few minutes. Back Street got more crowded. The front room got much louder. Somehow it made the quiet in their booth seem less awkward to Teddy. He wondered if it would ever be as easy for them to have a conversation away from the field as it was on the field.

  “I want to help you get better,” his dad said finally. “Because I think getting better at quarterback is something that will make you happy.”

  Teddy had started to take another bite of his burger, but he put it back down.

  “Now,” he said. “Now you want to help me be happy, when it’s convenient for you.”

  His dad started to say something. Teddy stopped him by putting his right hand up. “Please let me finish,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  The words came out of him fast and hot. “The way you’re always talking about missing high school football? Being that guy? Well, guess what? That’s the way I used to miss you, at least until I didn’t.”

  He wondered if his dad might say that he’d missed Teddy, too, because he’d never said that.

  He didn’t now.

  “And I’ve got to wear that, like guys your age say,” his dad said. “I know how much I’ve screwed up. But as much as you think I’ve screwed you up, I happen to be looking across the table at a pretty great human. So how about we just agree for the time being that what I’m not doing is screwing you up as a football player.” The smile came back. “At least not yet.”

  His big right hand came across the table. “Deal?”

  Teddy put out his own hand, hesitating just slightly, and shook it.

  “Deal,” he said.

  Teddy wasn’t going to admit it in the booth at Back Street, but it happened to be a good deal for him. Maybe even a great deal, because he was getting better as a quarterback, in just one week.

  It wasn’t the way he’d ever expected, but his dad was finally here for him.

  TWENTY

  On the way to Holzman Field for the game against Rawson, Alexis Madden said to Teddy, “I’m very proud of you for the way you’ve accepted your dad.”

  “Who said anything about accepting him?” Teddy said. “You mean like an invitation? I don’t remember being invited to anything. How about we go with tolerating him?”

  She smiled. “How about we go with the fact that he doesn’t seem to make your head explode the way he did when he first came back to town?”

  “I don’t want you to think that just because he’s helping me be a better player, that means I think he’s a better dad,” Teddy said. “They’re two different things.”

  “You never know,” she said as they pulled into the parking lot. “Sometimes they can turn out to be the same thing.”

  “I’m not going to ask you again whose side you’re on, because I already know the answer.”

  “You never know,” she said. “Maybe being on your side will turn out to mean I’m on everybody’s side.”

  As he got out of the car, she said, “Oh, and one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Beat Rawson,” she said.

  “Now, that,” Teddy said, “I can totally accept.”

  He got out of the car and went to start his first game at quarterback.

  • • •

  Halfway through the second quarter Teddy had figured out exactly how a good quarterback was supposed to do it.

  There was just a slight problem:

  He wasn’t the one doing it.

  The Huskies’ quarterback, Chris Charles, was a tall, fast left-hander. Watching him play, you couldn’t decide whether he was better running the ball or throwing it. But what wasn’t in dispute, at least so far, was that the Wildcats had no idea how to stop him from doing either.

  It was 20–7, Huskies. The only reason the Wildcats were on the board at all after falling behind 20–0 was because Gus had made the kind of crazy catch that one of the Seahawks, Jermaine Kearse, had made against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Teddy had thrown the ball as far as he could on a straight-up fly pattern, Coach Gilbert and Teddy’s dad hoping to catch the Huskies napping a little on second-and-one. But the kid covering Gus ran right with him down the sidelines, then timed his jump perfectly as the ball was on its way down. Only he didn’t knock the ball down in the process, even as Gus stumbled and fell trying to catch the ball himself.

>   The ball went straight up. When it came down, it hit off Gus’s right knee. Then he tipped it with his left hand as he tried to control it. When it finally came to rest, it hit Gus’s stomach the way your head hits a pillow, and it was a touchdown for the Wildcats. On the next play Teddy ran a quarterback draw for the conversion.

  When Teddy came off the field, he said to his dad, “I know we got lucky and scored. But when I saw how covered Gus was, that was a time when I should have eaten the ball, right?”

  “Wrong,” David Madden said. “We were down three scores and needed to take a chance. I know rule number one is supposed to be holding the ball when in doubt. But I neglected to tell you rule number two.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sometimes you gotta give one of your guys a chance to make a play.”

  “And I was that guy!” Gus said, slapping Teddy on the back.

  Chris Charles finally made his first mistake with three minutes left in the half. He was the one who should have pulled the ball down under pressure. But he hadn’t been missing all day, making one kind of hero throw after another even when the Wildcats’ defense was all over him. He tried to make another one of those throws now with Max Conte up in his face.

  He ran to his left trying to elude Max and threw across his body, hoping to hit his tight end. But the ball floated just enough for Gregg Leonard to pick it off, like it was a ball he was running down in centerfield for their baseball team. Gregg caught it in stride, and by the time one of the Rawson wide receivers caught up with him, he was at the Huskies’ forty-yard line.

  Jake Mozdean took over from there, starting with a twenty-yard run off tackle. Then, instead of sending Brian in with the next play, Coach left Jake in there, and Teddy knew what that meant:

  He wanted them to run the same play with Jake again.

  They did. Jake found even more daylight this time, Nate Vinton threw a great downfield block, and Jake finally cut the play back to the inside and scored. It was 20–13. On the conversion, Teddy faked a handoff to Jake, straightened up, and hit a wide-open Mike O’Keeffe—and they were down six at the half.

  Teddy’s dad came over to him after he’d gotten a drink.

  “It’s a fair fight at quarterback now,” he said. “Wasn’t at the start. Now it is.”

  “You’re wrong,” Teddy said. “The other guy’s better.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” his dad said, some bite in his voice, not smiling now. “There’s a lot of things I don’t know very much about, and you’ve already figured out some of them. But about this, I do know a lot. And what I know is that you’re gonna outplay that guy the second half.”

  Teddy knew this was no time for a debate. He could see on his dad’s face, hear in his voice, that David Madden was in no mood for a debate.

  “Okay,” he said, before adding, “Coach.”

  His dad said, “The way he ran it for most of the half? I think you can do the same now that you’ve made them respect your arm.”

  Then he was the one giving Teddy a good whack on the back, saying, “Let’s do this.”

  He looked and sounded as excited as Teddy felt about the second half. And he looked happy. One more time Teddy wondered if his dad could ever be quite as happy anywhere else.

  • • •

  Chris Charles wasn’t giving up after one bad throw, though. He took the Huskies down the field to start the third quarter, throwing now more than running. It was as if he was trying to keep Coach Williams and the guys on the Wildcats’ defense off balance.

  Teddy’s dad had Teddy stand next to him on the sideline, so he could explain what the Huskies were doing—and trying to do—on offense.

  “See,” he said, with more than a little admiration in his voice, “it’s not just all the game he’s got. It’s his feel for the game. That’s a pretty dangerous combination.”

  “I see what you mean,” Teddy said. “He acts surprised when he doesn’t make a play.”

  Then they both watched as Chris faked a throw on the run, pulled the ball down, and ran in for the score that made it 26–14 for the Huskies. It stayed that way when Andre Williams elevated at the line of scrimmage and knocked away Chris’s pass to his tight end for the conversion.

  “Okay,” Teddy’s dad said, almost as if he were talking to himself. “We score twice, the defense shuts them down from here, and we win.”

  “You sound like you’re playing Madden,” Teddy said. “But this isn’t Madden.”

  “No, kid,” he said. “It’s way more fun than that.”

  Maybe it was because his dad’s belief was this strong. But in that moment he made Teddy believe too. Maybe, Teddy thought, it was what made him such a good salesman. He made it sound as if Teddy had no choice but to buy in and win the game.

  On the next drive Teddy ran the ball three times for big gains, completed passes to Gus, Mike, and Nate. Just like that they were inside the Huskies’ ten. On first-and-goal Teddy rolled out to his right and froze the linebacker closest to him, who’d decided that Teddy was going to run the ball again. Only he stopped and hit a wide-open Nate Vinton between the goalposts. Brian McAuley ran behind Charlie Lyons for the conversion. With a minute left in the third quarter, it was Rawson 26, Walton 20.

  Coach Gilbert came over and pumped Teddy’s hand when he was off the field. “Now it’s like you’ve been under center your whole life,” he said.

  “Not even in my dreams,” Teddy said.

  Chris Charles got the Huskies driving again, and Teddy was worried they were going to be two touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter, but he threw another interception, off a deflection. The ball ended up in Henry Koepp’s hands. Except Teddy gave the ball right back, fumbling after taking a huge blindside hit on a blitz, no chance to fall on the ball after getting blasted sideways.

  Rawson ball, midfield, five minutes left. Teddy was slapping the side of his helmet, hard, as he came off the field.

  “I should have known they were coming,” he said.

  His dad laughed. “Seriously?”

  “You think this is amusing?”

  “Nope,” he said. “But Tom Brady would have coughed it up on that hit.”

  “We gotta get the ball back.”

  “We will,” his dad said. “How many scores did I say we were gonna get after they scored their last touchdown?”

  Teddy held up two fingers.

  “And how many do we have so far?”

  “One.”

  “It’s just simple math,” his dad said.

  The Huskies made a couple of first downs, but then the Wildcats’ defense made its best stand of the whole game. The guys rushed Chris Charles into two incompletions, sacked him once, at the Wildcats’ twenty-five. The Huskies decided to go for it even on fourth-and-long, knowing that a first down for them might be the same as ending the game. They tried a gadget play, a halfback pass, but before the kid could get the ball off, Max Conte came flying in from middle linebacker and leveled him.

  Two minutes and twenty seconds left. Wildcats ball. Sixty-nine yards away. Teddy started to run back on the field but felt Coach Gilbert’s hand on his shoulder. “You got this?”

  “I got this,” Teddy said.

  His dad said, “Is there any play you don’t think you can run?”

  Teddy turned and looked at him. Now the bite was in his voice. “I said I got this.”

  “Music to my ears,” his dad said.

  Jack was there too. “Hey,” he said.

  “What is this, a quiz?” Teddy said.

  “Simple question,” Jack said. “Would you have signed up for this when we were down 20–zip?”

  “Totally.”

  “Good answer.”

  Teddy hit Nate for six yards on first down, missed Gus—badly—on second. The Huskies were looking for a pass on third-and-four, but Teddy gave it to Jake, who wouldn’t let them tackle him until he had the first down. Teddy hit Mike O’Keeffe, and they were in Huskies’ territory. They were moving. But so was the c
lock.

  A little over a minute left. Two time-outs in Coach Gilbert’s pocket. But Teddy wasn’t looking at him—or Jack—when he looked over to the sideline. Almost despite himself, he was looking at his dad. For the last time today, he was trying to make David Madden’s belief his own. He’d try to figure out later what it meant. Just not right now at Holzman Field.

  He hit Gus in traffic in the middle of the field, no fear in the throw, none. He looked over to the sideline, seeing if Coach wanted to use one of his time-outs, fifty seconds left. All Coach did was nod and keep Brian McAuley next to him.

  The nod meant throw the same pass to Gus again.

  The Huskies weren’t expecting that, so Gus was more open this time. A lot more open. Now they were at the twenty. Clock running. There were no time-outs for first downs in their league. The clock kept running.

  Finally Coach called one.

  Teddy sprinted over to the sideline. When he got there, Jack handed him his water bottle. Teddy tipped his helmet back on his head and took a long swallow.

  “We could run it and run some clock,” Coach Gilbert said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Teddy’s dad said. “They’re done whenever we score.”

  When. Not if.

  “Then why wait?” Coach Gilbert said. “We never did in the old days.”

  “How about the last play we ran for a touchdown, to Nate?”

  It was like they were having a private conversation, and Teddy was just there eavesdropping.

  “Love it,” Coach Gilbert said.

  He gave Teddy a small shove back toward the field. “Go win the game,” he said.

  Teddy rolled to his right, pulled up, threw a slightly longer pass to Nate this time. He was open again, right there between the posts. And they won the game.

  “Told you,” Teddy’s dad said to him when he got back to the sideline. “Simple math.”

  Then, before Teddy could do anything about it, his dad hugged him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  On days when there was no football practice—or even when there was a late practice—Teddy and his friends threw themselves into their production of The Voice.