Two-Minute Drill - Mike Lupica [23]
At least he thought he had.
They had gone a little longer than usual Monday night, Mr. Dolan having told them that their next opponent, the Lions, was the best team—besides their own—he had seen in the league.
“I scouted them Saturday afternoon,” he said. “And I’m here to tell you boys that we’re going to have our work cut out for us.”
Scott barely heard the part about them having their work cut out for them. He was stuck on what Mr. Dolan had said right before that, just like how Chris got stuck on words he couldn’t sound out.
Thinking to himself: You scouted them?
A bunch of sixth-graders?
He felt himself starting to giggle, the way you’d start to giggle in class sometimes without being able to stop yourself, and had to make it sound like he was coughing.
“You okay there, Parry?” Mr. Dolan said.
“Think I might have swallowed a bug, Coach,” Scott said.
Then Mr. Dolan was telling them that in addition to the Lions having good players on both offense and defense, and being well-coached, they had also returned two punts for touchdowns in their game against the Giants.
“Let me give you boys a heads-up,” he said. “Punt returns like that are not happening on Saturday.”
They had spent the last half hour of practice covering punt returns as if their lives depended on it, trying to contain Jeremy Sharp. There were a bunch of guys missing that night, because it turned out to be the night when the sixth-graders from Bloomfield South were helping pass out food at a local soup kitchen. So Scott had been in on every play for once, even though his job was the same every time:
Line up opposite Jimmy on the outside and try to slow him down before he went downfield and tried to tackle Jeremy. And, unfortunately for Scott, Jimmy had been taking the job seriously for a change, maybe because he saw how serious his dad was about covering these returns.
It basically meant he wasn’t going out of his way to dough-pop Scott every chance he got.
Dave Kepp was their punter. He couldn’t placekick to save his life, but somehow that didn’t prevent him from being a really good punter. And tonight it seemed like he was getting even more hang time than usual, giving Jimmy a chance to make one tackle after another.
One time when they were lined up, waiting for Dave to kick again, Jimmy said to Scott, “You know you’re catching a break tonight, right, brain? When my old man gets locked in on something like this, even I’m smart enough not to horse around.”
“Am I supposed to, like, thank you?” Scott said.
“Don’t push it,” Jimmy said, then gave Scott another head fake, as if he needed one, and went right around him again. Only this time, Jeremy ran for about twenty yards before Dave Kepp had to run him out of bounds. When the play was over, Mr. Dolan announced that he’d been ready to call it a night, but since Jeremy had nearly broken one, they were going to do it one more time.
“And maybe just this once,” Mr. Dolan said, “the outside guys on the return team could be something more than speed bumps for the guys on the kicking team.”
He was looking right at Scott when he said it.
“Don’t even think about trying to block me, brain,” Jimmy said just loud enough for Scott to hear. “Just get out of my way like you always do, or it will not be pretty.”
Scott didn’t say anything back to him, just decided this wasn’t going to be a play when he tried to slow Jimmy down, it was going to be a play when he put him down.
Sometimes Jimmy would fake to Scott’s right, toward the sideline, and then cut inside. Sometimes he would fake Scott to the right and go that way anyway. Waiting for the snap, Scott remembered something his dad said one time when they were playing tennis and Scott was up at the net.
“You might as well guess one way or the other,” his dad said. “Because if you just stand there in the middle, the other guy’s going to pass you every time.”
Scott was tired of getting passed.
He decided to guess.
The brain was finally using his on a football field.
As soon as Jimmy made