With less than five minutes left in the game, we finally got our offense rolling. I marched us right down the field. From their 27 yard line, I was flushed from the pocket. Washington was so focused on covering our receivers I was able to sprint ten yards down the field before anyone saw me. Both their linebackers tried to cut me off, but I was too fast for them and evaded them. Their defensive backs came to their senses, so I still had a gauntlet of defenders to get through. They were smart in that they forced me towards the sideline. The smart move would be for me to step out of bounds. Instead, I cut upfield and was met by three defenders at the 3 yard line. I crashed into them and forced the pile towards the end zone. When I got up, the line judge indicated a touchdown.
There were two and a half minutes left on the game clock, and we were up 34–31. I’ll give Washington credit, they never gave up. They drove down the field and kicked a field goal with twenty-eight seconds left on the clock. The game was tied 34–all.
Coach Crouch may be a jerk, but he was a smart coach. He kicked the ball out of bounds on the kickoff. Even though it gave us the football at the 35 yard line, there was no way they would give Ty a chance to run one back on them. Before we went out, Coach Hope and Coach Diamond gathered us around.
“The smart play would be to run out the clock and win it in overtime,” Coach Diamond said.
“No, we’re going to take a shot at winning this now,” Coach Hope said. “David, call the plays when you’re at the line. The clock stops when we go out of bounds, incomplete passes, or first downs. We have one timeout left. Try to save it so we can get the field-goal team out there.”
“If you get in trouble, throw the ball away. We can’t afford a sack. If that happens, we play for overtime,” Coach Diamond gave his final instruction, and then gave us the play to run.
I had the offense huddle up so I could talk to them.
“No holding! If someone gets past you, sing out so I know to get moving. Get out of bounds if you can. If you can’t get a first down, then everyone hustle to the line. We’ve practiced this. This is Our House! No one is going to win when they come to Lincoln. On two, break!”
The play Coach Diamond called was to have Mike go into motion and line up behind Roc, and then Ed would go into motion right before the snap and end up behind Ty. This put four receivers on the left side of the football and left Wolf all alone on the right. With the stacked receivers, it was harder for Washington to cover them as we flooded the zone.
The hope was that Ty and Ed would be covered by linebackers and could use their superior speed. Washington had come out in their base defense because they expected me to just kneel down. If they had thought that we were going for it, they would have had more defensive backs on the field.
On the snap, Ed was at full speed and cut straight upfield. I hit him five yards down the field, and he used his speed to pick up enough for the first down. I sprinted to the line and called the same play. Washington was caught with too many men on the field on the snap as they tried to swap out a linebacker with a defensive back. Unfortunately for us, Wolf dropped the pass.
We were on the 50 yard line after the penalty, with fourteen seconds left. Coach Diamond swapped out Mike and Ed and brought in Jake and Bert to give us fresh legs. When we got into the huddle, I shared my plan.
“We need to pick up twenty-plus yards to give our kicker a chance. I’d feel better with thirty. Now let’s go get it done.”
The next play was intended to pick up ten yards and relied on Wolf being one-on-one with a smaller defensive back. Washington was smart because as soon as the pass was targeted at Wolf, they tackled him. I just threw the ball out of bounds. It was better for them to take a fifteen-yard penalty than to allow our best receiver a chance to score. The play had only consumed four seconds. We were now on their thirty-five with ten seconds left. With the timeout, we could get off one, maybe two, more plays.
On the next play, Washington blitzed, and I was blindsided, though I managed to hold on to the football. Coach Hope ran onto the field to get the timeout called. We only had three seconds left, and we were out of field goal range. The discussion on the sidelines was brief. We had nothing to lose by going for it, so Coach Diamond called for the Hail Mary, where all the receivers would head for the end zone.
When we lined up to run the play, Washington only had three linemen to rush. That meant they had eight defensive backs in the game. My five receivers would all be covered, and they would have three more to stand in the end zone and prevent the score.
On the snap, I dropped back and was surprised when Washington ran a line stunt, and one of their down linemen flushed me from the pocket. Everyone was covered, so I rolled right and was almost to the line of scrimmage, having half-decided to just run it and see what happened. Then I saw Roc cut hard at the 10 yard line and get some separation. I threw the ball towards the goal line.
That was when Washington made their mistake. They bunched their defenders behind him. We’d been taught to have someone in front as well to make it much harder. If they had done that, the chances of Roc catching the ball would have gone down considerably. It would have forced the football version of a jump ball. Roc caught the ball on the 2 yard line and lunged for the goal line. He was hit, and I saw him reach for the score when the ball was knocked loose. The crowd for each team went nuts, thinking we had either been stopped or we had scored.
One line judge held his hands up, and the other made no indication. The referee got all the officials together and discussed it. I would later see on TV that Roc hadn’t scored. The Washington defender had knocked the football out of his hands six inches from the goal line. It was a good thing there was no review allowed in high school because the referee stepped out of the huddle and indicated touchdown! We had won 40–34.
Washington was not happy. They refused to shake hands after the game and ran into the locker room. I was surprised at their lack of sportsmanship.
Fox Sports caught me before I got off the field. I smiled when someone put on the song Our House over the stadium PA.
“How does it feel to win a game in that fashion?” the reporter asked.
I hated questions like that. It felt great! I timed my response for when the song hit the chorus of Our House.
“They came into Our House, and we took care of business. We have a long way to go, though. I’m sure we’ll work hard this week and fix everything that went wrong.”
I was swarmed by my teammates, and the reporter gave up trying to interview me. The locker room was a madhouse. You would have thought we had won State. They started chanting “Our House” until Coach Hope quieted us down.
“Good game! The game ball was easy to decide tonight. We put the game in his hands, and he delivered: David Dawson,” Coach Hope announced as he handed me a football.
This was why I played footbalclass="underline" the way you felt after a hard-fought game—there was nothing like it. Jim found me after I’d taken my shower, gotten treatment from the training staff, and was getting dressed.
“Are you going out tonight?”
“No, I’m beat. Plus, we have to get here early so we can be in East Lansing on time.”
“Mona sent me in to make sure you were going to her party tonight. She said it would be worth your while. I can only imagine what that means,” Jim said with an appropriate leer.
I almost caved in, but really did need to get some sleep or tomorrow would be a struggle. I thanked Jim and told him I would see him tomorrow.
◊◊◊ Saturday September 12
We took Mom’s car since it was much more comfortable for my long legs. Brandon had stopped at the local 7-Eleven and picked up various newspapers. Jeff Delahey had broken the story about what Coach Crouch had said at Washington’s fundraiser. Over the next week, Jeff would run more stories as he dug deeper into the matter. The one that caught my interest in today’s paper was where he talked to each person who voted for All-Conference and found the selections would have been very different if Coach Crouch’s brother-in-law hadn’t rigged the voting.