“Quarterbacks.”
After the guy walked away, Percy gave David a curious look.
“Did he say quarterbacks?”
“I think he did,” David said.
“I hope you know that I don’t give a shit if you wear a red vest or not. In either case, I’m going to knock you on your ass.”
That was the general consensus from all the guys around his locker. They all knew that this was what David had been waiting for, but that didn’t mean they would go easy on him. David grinned. This was why he loved football.
’Bring it on!’ he thought.
Coach Clayton must have talked to the other quarterbacks because they didn’t act surprised when David showed up for drills. He did note that Matt Long was right there, watching him like a hawk, though Matt wasn’t suited up. David observed that as practice went on, Matt would take a moment to talk to each of the starting receivers.
David knew what Matt was up to. It became apparent when they started dropping his passes or running their routes wrong to make him look bad. He decided to nip it in the bud.
They were running a drill where the receiver ran a simple five-yard down and out. His current receiver was the starting slot, Tyrell Mulford. He was the speedy guy David had surprised last week when David defended him.
“Go!” Coach Thomas, USC’s offensive coordinator, yelled.
Tyrell went eight yards before he cut towards the sidelines. David held the ball.
“How deep is your route supposed to be?” David asked.
Tyrell looked over at Coach Thomas, who didn’t look happy with him, so the receiver answered David.
“Five yards.”
“Where are you standing?” Coach Thomas asked.
Tyrell got a defiant look, and David, for a moment, thought he was going to mouth off to his coach. His brain engaged instead.
“Eight yards.”
That led to a very lengthy and unpleasant ‘learning moment’ for the offense. David felt terrible for Tyrell when Coach Thomas was done.
The next time David was up, Amari Weeks was his receiver. He was a tall, lanky guy that Coach Thomas had playing wide receiver. Coach liked his height when going up against defensive backs. The last few times David had thrown him the ball, he’d gotten alligator arms and couldn’t seem to catch David’s passes. Anyone else, and he had no problems.
“Go!”
No one else wanted to listen to Coach Thomas go on for five minutes about how they were running their routes wrong, so David knew that Amari would break at five yards. When he was about to reach the point where he would cut to the sidelines, David unleashed a rifle shot of a pass.
Amari planted his foot, turned, and was all but taken off his feet when the ball hit him in the facemask.
“What the heck, Dawson?!” Amari barked.
“Now that I have your attention, do you think you can catch the ball?” David shot back.
“Enough of that!” Coach Thomas said, taking control.
David didn’t care. The message had been sent.
Towards the end of practice, Coach Clayton brought the defense and offense together for a quick scrimmage. Travis trotted out with the offensive starters to huddle up.
“Dawson, go in for Barry!” Coach Thomas called out.
When David entered the huddle, he saw that Matt had been in their ears. He could understand supporting the guy you knew would be starting. But that didn’t mean David was about to let them mess up his chance.
“A couple of things. First is that Percy Wilkes told me that he planned to embarrass you, John. He said that he didn’t care if I wore a red jersey, none of you could stop him.”
“The hell you say?” John said, getting mad.
“The defense doesn’t respect you guys right now. They owned you last week,” David continued. “How about we turn this around, and when Matt comes back, we just continue to show them that you’re better than you’ve shown?”
“You’re not trying to take Matt’s spot?” John asked.
“No. The coaches asked me to do this in case Matt gets hurt next year. I plan to play defense,” David shared. “In fact, all my practice has been on defense.”
They all looked at each other, and David could see they remembered the taunts from the defense last week, and the memory wasn’t a pleasant one. Fortunately for him, he hadn’t been among those doing the taunting. Coach Thomas had been listening, and he’d waited until David said his piece before calling the play.
David took his spot in the shotgun and checked the defense. They were in their base, so he figured they would play it straight for a couple of plays to see what he had. That didn’t mean the defense didn’t run their mouths about what they planned to do.
The play called for Tyrell to line up inside, with Amari outside. On the snap, they were supposed to cross, and their defenders would get tangled up, freeing one or both of them to pop open.
When the ball was snapped, Percy exploded off the line and bull-rushed John. David was glad to see his talk in the huddle worked because John dug in to hold Percy off. The play was slower to develop than most, so David wasn’t surprised when Percy was able to fend off John and go around him. David stepped up to change the angle Percy had to take, which allowed John to reengage.
Out of the corner of his eye, David saw Percy reaching for his helmet. He could only imagine how bad it would be if Percy got his giant paw into his facemask. Percy might actually rip David’s head off. He ducked and felt Percy’s hand brush his helmet, but his momentum carried him past David.
Tyrell had come free, so David threw him the ball. David did a fist pump when Tyrell turned on the jets and raced up the sideline for a long gain. When David turned around, he saw that Matt wasn’t a happy camper. On the other hand, the offense was ecstatic. After a week of listening to the defense yap at them, it was time for payback.
By the end of practice, it hadn’t entirely gone the offense’s way, but on the whole, they’d outplayed their counterparts.
While David was glad to finally be under center, he wasn’t happy with how he’d performed. Not practicing with the team showed. It didn’t have anything to do with his athletic ability, it was that the Trojans’ offense wasn’t something you could pick up simply by working out with Ridge.
College ball was also much faster than high school. David knew he could handle it, but he needed to make his reads and react faster than he had in the past.
Coach Farrow also upped his game on the defensive side. The previous week, he’d worked out of their base defense because he knew that Travis and Jaden weren’t good enough to hurt them. After David had burned his defense with a couple of long gains, Coach Farrow had proven why he was USC’s defensive coordinator. He adjusted.
David was quickly hit with every sneaky scheme Coach Farrow had up his sleeve. David knew he was in for a long day when they came out in their base set, but then after he’d read the defense and set the offense, they shifted. The ball was snapped, and David had to understand that they’d switched to a zone, which had different reads.
Instead of getting frustrated, David took it as a challenge. The cat-and-mouse games were on. Unfortunately, David was the mouse more than he wanted to be.
When the day ended, David saw the smiles on the offense’s faces. He was glad to see that Matt’s poisoning of the waters hadn’t worked. He knew that he still had a mountain to climb if he planned to start, though, despite Matt’s stature with his teammates having been damaged by the fight video. Matt had a significant lead on David right now, most especially with Coach Clayton. But David was smart enough to know that this was going to be a marathon. Right now, the starting job was Matt’s when he came back from his injury.
Developmental Editors: XofDallas and Bud Ugly