One Hundred Twelve
I’D PASSED MY physical the day I arrived in Birmingham. Once the league commissioner had allowed the Stallions to use the injury exemption that did enable them to sign me off the street this late in the season, I signed what was essentially a one-game contract.
The semifinal game went as Clete Raymond had predicted it would: the Stallions playing themselves into the title game by beating the Memphis Showboats.
By now I’ve made it through almost two weeks of practice, before and after the Memphis game, spent what felt like a month looking at film with the team’s defensive coordinator.
And spent a lot of time, the first week especially, getting my ass whupped by the loads in Clete Raymond’s offensive line, who took immense pleasure in doing that every single time.
But I keep getting back up. And little by little, I also feel as if I’ve shown the coach of the Stallions that I just might be able to do the job he’d brought me here to do—and not embarrass either myself or him on national TV, as the game is being televised on FOX.
It’s already generated more pregame interest—because I’m playing in it—than any other championship game in the short history of the league.
Today I’m sore as hell, and as excited as I was the first time I ever played in front of a real crowd at Cross Rivers High.
Clete Raymond calls us all around him in the middle of the locker room before we’re about to go back on the field for real, having been out there already for pregames.
Vince comes over to stand next to me. He’s smiling, but then he has been since Taylor and I got to town.
In our rented house, the three of us concentrate on prepping for this game.
“There’s not any words that are gonna get you boys even readier than you already are,” Clete says.
“But I want to tell you one more time before we get out there that the reason Silas Tucker is in uniform today, and one of us, is because I believe he gives us our best chance to be holding that trophy in a few hours.”
“Hell yeah,” Vince says quietly.
“Now, most of you guys are too young to remember a baseball player named Rick Ankiel,” Clete Raymond continues.
“Big-star pitching prospect with the Cardinals. Biggest arm in the world, like Silas had once. Couldn’t throw strikes over home plate without a GPS.
But here’s the thing: he reinvented himself as a hitter and an outfielder and went on to have a fine second career for himself doing that. ”
He looks at me, and then the rest of his team. I just look down because I can feel them all looking at me. Just not in the same way my teammates had always looked at me. They had always known what to expect from me, how much game I had. How they could count on me.
The men in this room, in this moment, have no idea. I’m feeling that right along with them. In addition to so many other feelings making my head spin so much I’m glad I have a stool underneath me.
“Some people called Ankiel ‘the Natural’ when he made that comeback,” Clete says. “I think that’s what Silas can be for us today.”
One of the offensive linemen, Hatim Jackson, the one who’s taken the most delight in knocking me down in practice every chance he gets, says, loud enough for everybody to hear, “Bull. Shit.”
To Clete Raymond’s credit, it gets a grin out of him.
“You make a good point there, Hatim,” he says. “But let’s us all hope not today.”
Finally, I’m standing in the runway with the rest of the Stallions, waiting to take the field for the three o’clock kick, having been at the stadium since nine.
Everything is coming back to me now, all the other times I was in a runway like this, the crazy combination of nerves and confidence and anxiety—the not knowing what was going to happen over the next few hours—flooding back over me in waves.
I’m feeling even more lightheaded than I had in the locker room a few minutes ago. Knowing something else:
It wasn’t just my teammates who had known what to expect from me. So had I. You always hear the expression about a whole different ballgame. This was it.
I was about to step into a whole new world.
I think of Taylor’s parting words as I’d left the rental house to drive over here with Vince:
“Think of how much money you would have paid a year ago to have one more game.”
Echoes of the wisdom of the Original Silas Tucker.
And then it’s all happening fast, faster than I can believe, the way it always had, and I’m doing my best to shake off my doubts, if not nerves, jangling around inside of me like loose change.
Then I’m charging out there at full speed and the anthem is played and the Stallions have won the toss and elected to kick off so we can get the ball to start the second half.
Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe.
Clete Raymond had decided, after having looked at the Steelers video, that the best spot for me is as his edge rusher from the left side of the defensive line.
After the kickoff has gone through the end zone, I take one last look back to where I know Taylor and Jake Courville and EJ are seated, EJ right there next to Helene Mayes in her new red Stallions sweatshirt.
I see Taylor smile at me, and wave, and then, just like that, everything drops away except the game.
The Renegades run the ball to the other side of the field, away from me, on their first two plays. The next play is a screen to my side, the ball going to the Renegades’ star running back, Callum Saint-James.
Even looking at the play from this side of the ball, having only ever thrown screen passes or seen them in the game I was watching—almost as if I’m watching it all play out in reverse—I still manage to read the play perfectly before it even unfolds, get over there quickly, and think I have the tight end lined up.
Only then I find out that even in this league, the game is being played at a fast-forward speed that I never experienced in college.
Like football just got shifted up into another gear.
I get blasted off my feet, a massive blind-side block, perfectly legal, from Arlington’s tight end, Tyler Moss. I don’t know what happens on the play after that because not only have I been knocked flat on my back, I feel as if I’ve nearly been knocked out.
Three plays in.
When I look up, Tyler Moss is standing over me.
“Welcome to the pros,” he says.
He doesn’t offer to help me up.