“I need to play the following week,” I reminded him.
“You don’t need to do anything. You want to play, I understand that. I’m afraid you might need a full six weeks before you can get back onto the football field if you don’t want to risk permanent damage.”
“You’re killing me, Doc.”
“I’ll make you a deal. If you follow my treatment plan, I promise to get you on the field as soon as I judge you can safely do so. You might still be in pain, but I can help you with that if we have to. The main thing we need is to get your ribs healed. Right now, if you were hit just right, they could break again and do serious damage. The ribcage protects body parts that you actually need to live,” he said with a pointed and penetrating look.
He held that look, and I knew it was in my best interest to cave—for now.
“Okay, okay … I get it.”
“I’ll see you again Monday,” he said and left me to contemplate my injuries.
If he was serious about six weeks, then we were so dead. We would have to survive the first two games in the state playoffs without any contribution from me. If we got a bad draw, we could easily be done.
The promise of Doc helping with the pain made me decide that I would follow his plan and take it easy until he saw me again on Monday.
◊◊◊
If I wasn’t able to contribute on the field, I would have to find other ways to support my teammates. While they practiced, I spent time in the film room and broke down Riverside, this week’s opponent. Coach Hope had been smart and had trained Coaches Stevens and Stork on how to load film into our software. It had lessened the impact when Alan had left.
Riverside had been an easy win the last two years. I remembered thinking last year that it felt like we were in a game with our JV team. I was sure our team was confident that we would win easily. That, in and of itself, had me worried, because Riverside was well aware of how we beat them. This year, they would be gunning for us because they could go after Trent, my replacement.
I watched the film we had on Riverside’s individual plays on both offense and defense. I took notes on the keys I could identify that would help us know what they planned to do. One big tell for their offense was that their offensive linemen had different stances for the pass and run plays. For runs, they would square up their feet in anticipation of firing off the ball. When it was time to pass, they appeared to be back on their heels and dropped their outside foot to help them move back into pass protection faster. I was sure that Tim could use that information to help get our defense in the position to defend.
I simply shook my head at Riverside’s offensive playbook. They’d run four running plays and two passing plays all year. I was sure our freshmen had three times that number of plays they could call. I could only come up with one reason for Riverside to limit themselves to such a small palette of plays. Their coach must have felt that if they ran them with precision, they would gain yardage.
I decided that I wasn’t going to learn anything more by watching individual plays. Instead, I elected to go old-school and watch the games from beginning to end at high speed. After watching the third game, I noticed something interesting.
By now, practice was over, and I spotted Dare and told him to get the coaches.
“What did Doc Grog say?” Coach Hope asked when he came into the conference room.
“He was all doom and gloom and wants me to get well before I play. I’ll see him again Monday, and I’m hoping he has better news.”
“When can you play?” Coach Mason asked.
“He hinted it might be the full six weeks.”
The coaches all looked at each other, worried.
“I’ll be back sooner, I promise.”
That didn’t seem to help, so I changed the subject.
“Did you know that Riverside runs the same ten plays to start each game?” I asked.
“Surely not,” Coach Rector said skeptically.
“Yep. Regardless of how successful they are with them, Riverside runs the same ten every game. I mean, I’ve only looked at the first three games, but I double-checked, and they’re scripting their plays regardless of down and distance.”
They didn’t believe me, so I wrote the ten plays on the eraser board in order and then ran the game film for the first two games.
“It’s the same for the third game, too,” I said.
“I expect we can game-plan for this,” Coach Rector said with a devious grin.
“Ya think?” Coach Hope asked.
“I’ll watch the other games tomorrow to confirm it. I did find a couple of other reads that might help.”
Then I showed them what I’d found. Coach Hope looked at Coaches Stevens and Stork. It was their job to scout the other teams. From his expression, they hadn’t done a very good job this week.
Coach Mason and I usually spent time looking at the opponent’s defense. He was training me to be able to watch film and laying the groundwork for when I played at a higher level. A big part of what a quarterback did was to prepare by watching game films. There’s an art to doing it right, according to Coach Mason.
“I’ll have our coaches check out the other games Riverside played this year. Now, I want you to check out St. Joe, next week’s opponent,” Coach Hope directed me.
“I think we’ve been relying on the software too much. We need to look at the game as a whole,” I suggested.
“There are no shortcuts,” Coach Hope said meaningfully.
“And the buck stops here,” I said to smart off.
“And you can rot on the bench.”
Coach Hope had no sense of humor today.
◊◊◊
I had Japanese class tonight. Both Brook and Cassidy enjoyed spending time with Hana Yamamura, Shiggy’s niece, who was also my interpreter/language instructor. We’d received the scripts for the J-drama I would be filming, starting in just nine weeks. Part of the deal I’d struck with Hana was that I would cook her dinner. Mom, Dad, and Peggy had discovered this arrangement, and it was now my responsibility to cook dinner on Wednesday nights by myself.
I had outsmarted all of them because I utilized both our bread maker and slow cooker. We walked in the back door to the smell of my version of goat curry and an herb bread I’d made with basil, rosemary, and oregano. I must admit that I stole both recipes from Mary Dole. I knew they would be good if I simply followed her directions. All I had to do was make rice, and dinner would be ready.
As soon as Hana saw me get the rice out, she had to step in.
“Stop. You do it all wrong,” she declared.
My dad came in with Duke and saw that Hana had taken the bag of rice away from me.
“He won’t listen to me. Hopefully, you can teach him how to make rice correctly,” Dad teased.
I gave everyone dirty looks because I’d made rice many times, and no one had ever complained before. I shrugged and bowed to Hana.
“You have him well-trained,” Hana said to Brook.
“I think his mother had something to do with it,” Cassidy shared.
“Hey,” Brook and I said at the same time.
Speak of the devil. Mom came in the back door with the boys. She’d gone to Greg and Angie’s place to watch all the little ones today. The preschool was slowly working through the flu issues and hoped that everyone could come back next week. It seemed we weren’t the only ones concerned with this round of flu. Chuck came in lugging diaper bags and groceries.
“There’s more in the car,” he told me.
From the look of him, I decided I would let that slide and walked out and got the rest of the groceries. It did take me longer because I could only carry one bag at a time. Mom had put him to work helping her with the ankle-biters, so he wasn’t a great deal better off than I was.