Junior Year Box Set

Jim and Neil were about at the end of their rope. They just couldn’t seem to corral the two speedy defensive ends. That was when Coach Diamond had a brilliant idea. We usually ran a trap play where the backside guard would pull and block the defensive tackle. The play was designed to be run inside. Why not run it so the guard would pull and block the defensive end? We would run the ball off-tackle. Brock and Bryan were more fleet of foot, and the play was designed to use the defensive lineman’s aggression against him.

Coach Diamond added a wrinkle. Ed would go in motion at full speed, and I would time the snap so that I could hand him the football on the jet sweep. My read was the defender that had him one-on-one. If I saw he kept up with Ed as he crossed the formation, I’d pull the ball and hand it to Ty who would run off-tackle. If the defender mirroring Ed were behind, I’d give Ed the football on the sweep. My action was to do the handoff and then curl the other direction with a fake. The final option would be for me to fake the handoff and then either run a counter around the other end or pass the ball.

We lined up, and on the snap, Ed’s man had him covered, so I pulled the ball back and handed it to Ty. I couldn’t help but grin when Nazareth’s defensive end thought he’d beaten Jim again and zeroed in on Ty. He never saw Brock. There are a few times in football when you catch a guy unaware and lay him out. Brock had to be delighted when he nailed one of the pests who’d been disrupting our offense. The poor kid was shook-up, but it had been a clean play, so he hadn’t been injured. Ty picked up five yards on his run.

I wholeheartedly agreed when Coach Diamond signaled in the same play but to the other side. This time we had Jake go in motion and his defender kept up with him, so I handed the football to Ty again. I will give Nazareth’s other defensive end credit because his head was on a swivel after he’d seen his buddy laid out. It didn’t matter, though. He had to either face Bryan and fight through his block to stop Ty or let him go to avoid the contact. Coming off the ball and engaging someone head-on is much different than allowing them to get a head of steam going and then facing them. Bryan had five yards to get up to full speed, and the defensive end was on his heels. Even with him being aware that Bryan was about to hit him, it didn’t make a difference in the outcome. Bryan put a tremendous shot on our biggest problem. Ty hit the seam, fought through an arm tackle by the linebacker, and was into the secondary where he was tackled by the safety.

We’d finally found a way to contain the defensive ends and began to march down the field. Ty was picking up four to six yards on every play. Nazareth decided to try something different: the man who would follow our motion held back to add a person at the point of attack. I read it and handed the ball to Ed, who picked up fifteen yards.

Nazareth’s next ploy was to shift their defensive backs towards our motion. That might have worked, but Coach Diamond’s genius had been to add my ball-fake to the backside. When I saw them start to shift, I simply kept the ball. In high school, you didn’t want a guy like me to ever get past the line of scrimmage. I was six-four, weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, and was just as fast as Ty. Their shift put them out of position, and I did my usual fake trot and then exploded into a full sprint.

The fans saw it before Nazareth did and started to roar, and the damned cowbells began to ring. Once I was past the line of scrimmage, it was all over. I was fast enough that none of their defenders could catch me. We were now up 14–9, and that was how the first half ended.

As we came off the field at halftime, it began to rain hard. When we got into the locker room, the coaches checked the weather on a tablet, and it looked like we were going to have to play in heavy rain. The hope was that there would be no more lightning, or there would be further delays.

Beginning the second half, the weather made things miserable. When you ran, water would actually splash up because it couldn’t soak in fast enough. All that water began to loosen up the turf, and the field became a mud pit. I have to applaud our fans for sticking with us through this. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have bailed.