When You Loved Me

Ben

By the end of the third quarter, he doesn’t hear the crowd anymore.

He doesn’t feel his broken fingers, taped together in the first quarter, or the cut on his forearm, which the trainer stitched up at halftime.

The sutures have since burst, but the temperature now lurks around nine degrees Fahrenheit, accelerated by a steady wind off Lake Michigan, and that will freeze up your blood pretty good.

He’s aware of none of these things. Only afterward, as he watches the tape on repeat, will he notice such details.

That’s one thing he loves about playing football.

When you start the fourth quarter of a conference championship game, and you’re behind by a single field goal, and you jog onto the field after a thirty-two-yard punt return to face down a steaming, bloody offensive line protecting an arrogant twenty-three-year-old quarterback with a howitzer arm, first and ten on your own forty-eight-yard line, end zone at your back, snow driving like pins into your skin, you don’t think about anything else.

You don’t think about the tens of thousands of people on their feet in the stands or the tens of millions of people watching on live television.

You don’t think about your pain or the other guy’s pain or the weather or that missed tackle just before halftime.

You don’t think about your past or your future, or your mom’s high blood pressure, or the girl you’re about to marry, or the girl who got away.

You don’t think about anything except your job. What you need to do in this play, this minute, this second, to win the game of football.

—

The quarterback’s name is Garcia and he’s got some growing up to do, but with an arm like that his mental age is what it is.

Staring him down over the backs of the linemen, Ben feels like a grizzled veteran, a shrewd old man at thirty-two.

Garcia is a kid who wants to make the big play, to be the hero.

On first down, he shoots a bullet up the right side to his fastest receiver and overthrows him by at least five yards.

On second down, Ben blasts through a gap between the right tackle and the end and sacks Garcia’s ass before he sees Ben coming.

As he rises to his feet, Ben is aware of the deafening roar that surrounds him, but not exactly conscious of it.

He doesn’t spare a glance for Garcia, picking himself up from the frozen tundra.

What he feels is triumph. Adrenaline. Nailed him.

Nailed his cocky ass. He feels the congratulatory slaps of his teammates.

The awe that anoints him from the crowd.

The instant reversion of his brain to the next play, the moment right now, the job he needs to do.

Until he watches the tapes later, he won’t hear the announcers—the play-by-play guy who says And BIG BEN RESSLER gets in with a MONSTER sack, loss of eight, maybe NINE yards on the play, and the color guy who says OH MAN, that is VINTAGE Ressler right there, he saw that gap and shot in there so fast, he just LAID OUT Garcia on the grass and strolled away like he was out walking his dog, and that’s why he’s the best free safety playing in the league right now, Kevin.

The last nice thing anyone has to say about him.

—

Third and eighteen.

He needs to shut this shit down now so his offense can take the field and score. Win this game. Last year, they lost the Super Bowl in the final three seconds and he is not the fuck going to let that happen again.

But first you need to get to the Super Bowl. You need to win this game. You’re down three points in the fourth quarter, so what are you going to do to WIN THIS GAME?

You are going to shut this shit down. Now.

Nose tackle—juiced with adrenaline—jumps offside. Five-yard penalty and replay of down.

Third and thirteen. Offense needs a big play, a long pass from that gunslinger quarterback.

Ben looks to his inside linebacker, who looks back over his shoulder at Ben.

He and Darius joined the team together as rookies, started ten seasons side by side.

Thrill of victory, agony of defeat. Everything in between.

They communicate with nods, with flicks of fingers. With a glance like this one.

The defense organizes into nickel coverage, man-to-man across the line of scrimmage except for Ben, who sits up high by himself.

Darius will lock on the tight end. Cornerbacks will lock on the wideouts.

Protect the middle, that’s Ben’s job. Protect the middle and make the play on the long ball. Shut this shit down.

The huddle breaks. The offense spreads out for third and long, no surprise.

All week Ben has studied film. It drives his fiancée crazy, how he returns late from the practice field and bolts down dinner and watches film until bedtime, then gets up and works out and watches more film before he heads to practice.

But it’s the only way he knows. You need to get inside the head of the other team; you need to know how they’re going to move before the ball snaps.

You need to know where the quarterback is going to throw the ball before he moves his arm.

So Ben watches the offense spread out into the Arizona Right Max All Go formation and knows exactly what will happen.

Three wide receivers, one taking the place of the fullback.

Tight end makes four. The lone remaining running back will protect the right side—the strong side.

The offensive line will max protect to give the quarterback all possible time to drop back, read, hitch, make a deep throw.

When the ball snaps, all four receivers will sprint up the field. The tight end will release inside and then widen out to the hash marks.

Ben will have to choose where to go. Where he thinks the quarterback will throw the ball.

Follow the eyes, Ben knows.

All week, the coaches have been drilling down on Garcia’s tendency to look the safety to one side and then fire off the pass to the other side.

A veteran quarterback will know how to feign one way and draw coverage away from his intended receiver.

But Garcia is a kid with a big arm and a big ego and not a lot of cunning.

He relies on his arm strength and ball speed, not his ability to misdirect his opponent.

If you know what you’re looking for, you can read him like a traffic sign.

Ben positions himself eighteen yards off the line. Frozen ground like concrete under his shoes.

Quick count, single cadence, GO. Ball snaps.

Ben drops into his controlled backpedal and finds the quarterback’s eyes. There it is. Garcia looks left to his weak side receivers on Ben’s right.

Sure, kid. Try to fool me.

Ben plants his next backstep and angles left to the strong side.

In the same instant, Garcia snaps back and fires a line drive dart to the tight end racing up the seam, right where Ben is heading.

Ben tracks the ball in flight. It’s coming in hard and high—fucking gunslinger. He takes two more strides and launches his body like a missile as the tight end raises his arms and leaps for the ball.

This is the part Ben loves. Prey locked in your sights. You aim your shoulder pad right into the sweet spot, right between the two numbers on the jersey in front of you, and you drive hard, you commit your body to the collision, to the crunch of impact, the kill.

Not the literal kill, of course.

The figurative kill. Taking out the opponent. You don’t actually kill anybody, good God. You just want to shut this shit down.

You want to win the game and go to the Super Bowl and win that game and start all over again in the summer.

Over and over until your body is too old and slow and broken down and you retire.

Maybe you try coaching, or announcing, or opening a restaurant, or a car dealership.

In the meantime, you’ve gotten married during the offseason and had a few kids, also during the offseason if you’ve planned it right, and now that you’re retired you can spend more time with them, show them how to play ball, so they can go out and win games too.

But you don’t kill anybody.

Until you drive your shoulder pad right between the 8 and the 9 on the tight end’s chest, just as he’s stretching his body upward to find the ball that floats a few inches too high above his fingertips, thanks to his gunslinging quarterback.

Until your good mate Darius, who has been locked in man coverage on this same tight end, also launches his body at a horizontal angle behind the receiver.

And the tight end’s body, caught in a magnificent matrix between two defenders, receives this massive blow from Ben, this collision intended to shut this shit down, and flips backward in midair over Darius’s outstretched body while the ball bounces on the grass a few yards beyond.

And all two hundred and sixty-five pounds of muscle and bone converge at the point of impact as the tight end’s head thuds against the frozen ground.

Ben does not hear the neck snap. He can’t hear anything.

All he knows is he shut this shit down.

He hits the grass hard and springs to his feet and walks away, like he always does. No big deal. Just another vintage Ressler hit, the reason he’s the best free safety playing in the league right now. He will count his bruises later.

Still, the adrenaline surges through his body. The roar of the crowd penetrates even his deafened ears. His teammates mob him, hugging and high-fiving and ass-slapping.

He doesn’t notice when the crowd starts to quiet down. When the opposing players start to gather around the tight end, who lies motionless on the rock-hard field, the frozen tundra.

Only when the shouted Trainer! penetrates the fog of battle does he turn to look back on the scene of carnage.

But he’s hurt other players before. Other players have hurt him.

It’s the game of football. God knows he’s wound up enough plays flat on his own back, someone shouting Trainer!

Trainer! in the space above his head. There will be a short delay, maybe a commercial break, as the trainers assess what’s wrong.

Assess whether the tight end can get up and walk back to the sideline under his own power or require a helping arm from a teammate.

Then play will resume. Thanks to Ben, the other team failed to make first down, so they’ll have to punt. Ben’s offense will take the field and march down the tundra to score the go-ahead touchdown, God willing.

The minutes tick. More trainers run to the scene.

Ben sees some frantic waving. Now the trainers from his own side race on field.

The team doctors. All gathered around the tight end, number 89, a fourth-year starter out of Auburn, married to his high school sweetheart, who has already delivered him one cute-as-a-button two-year-old daughter and a son due in just a couple of months, during the offseason.

One by one, the players drop to their knees, facing the frantic knot of medical professionals all wound around the tight end. On his back. Neck bent at a sickening angle.

The tight end does not move. Not even a finger.

Ben drops to one knee.

The crowd is silent.

At some point, the adrenaline in Ben’s body turns into another kind of adrenaline. The adrenaline of fear. Stone cold fear.

Get up, he thinks. Move, goddamn it.

The tight end does not move. In the center of that frantic knot, he’s the only one not moving.

The crowd is dead silent.

Up in the booth, as Ben will later hear, the play-by-play guy says to the color guy, This doesn’t look good for number 89.

And the color guy says to the play-by-play guy, This doesn’t look good for Ben Ressler.