Chapter 79: The Legend Grows

“Um, Coach?” The senior center for the Rough Riders had gotten Coach O’Shaughnessy’s attention before the second half started.

“Yeah, Jennings, what is it?” The coach was reading something on his clipboard and only paying partial attention to the player talking to him.

“Um, who’s gonna take the snaps? It should have been Charlie Young with Troy down, but he quit the team. Remember?”

The long-time coach was amazed. “What do you mean he quit? When did he quit?”

“Back on Monday or Tuesday. I heard he was tired of not getting playing time with the varsity. Even when we were winning games big time, he never saw the field,” the second-year varsity center explained. “He didn’t want to be playing as a senior on the JV. I think he wanted to concentrate on baseball for his senior year, anyways.”

“That kid was serious? I didn’t think he was serious!” The interim head coach threw his head back and mimed asking a question to the heavens, but he quickly returned to the conversation at hand. “Do you know of anyone else who can take the snaps?”

The senior center shrugged with a bland teenage stare plastered on his face that teachers and parents have “loved” for ages.

Coach O’Shaughnessy took a moment to think and looked over the center’s shoulder toward the hyped-up team as it took its spot on the sidelines. “Holmes! Newsome! On me!”

After the two players jogged up as instructed, he challenged them, “Have either of you ever taken snaps as a QB?”

The two players looked like they had been slapped in the face with the question. A second later, the sudden realization they did not have a QB hit both of them. “Oh, shit. Charlie, you dumb son of a bitch,” one of them murmured. Both players looked back up to their coach, who was waiting with bated breath without an answer.

“Well, out with it,” the exasperated coach yelled.

The senior running back, Jimmie Holmes, shook his head no, but Rob Newsome responded, “I played QB in Pop Warner and through to the eighth grade. I could run good. I could throw good. I just couldn’t run AND throw good.”

He paused before remembering something. “Hey, we have the freshman QB. He dressed out for this game. He’s over there.” Newsome pointed to Alex Martinez, standing with a couple of the other freshman players the coaches had declared full of potential. The problem was they looked like freshmen playing as high school varsity players in size.

“Um, not really a good idea. We throw him out to the wolves, and we lose a QB for the next three years,” Coach O’Shaughnessy thought aloud in front of the other players.

Newsome appeared to dispair but instantly grew a pair of testicles. “I’ll do it, Coach, but we’ll have to keep the plays simple until I get my bearings.” He tried to sound confident, but the coach’s years of experience told him it was a young man faking it.

With no other options but having confidence Newsome inwardly lacked, the coach accepted, “Okay, son, you take the snaps. Get with Jennings and get to practicing snaps and warm up your arm.”

“But Coach, who’s gonna take over my position?”

“We got no shortness of receivers around here. I’ll get somebody,” Coach presented and was about to leave to find the other coaches. “Shit. We can play Murphy all game and not let his ass off the field except for special teams.” The teammates all nodded and smiled at each other.

While Coach O’Shaughnessy approached the rest of the team with a few other coaches intermingled within, he raised his hand, asking for quiet for a moment. It took a little longer than usual since emotions were riding very high.

“Men! After what happened in the locker room, we find ourselves in one hell of a predicament. We have no QB.” Coach paused briefly but not long enough for the players to begin worrying. “As y’all know, Charlie Young left the team earlier this week, and we have not had a chance to get another ready. With the exception of young Martinez over there, has anyone else taken snaps in middle school or when you were at some other high school?” Everyone looked around for any hands going up, but there were none.

“Okay, no problem. Newsome has volunteered to take the snaps. Martinez,” the coach stated and paused to catch the freshman’s eyes. “You are officially moved up to the varsity and the new backup at QB. Whadda ya say, men?”

The team roared, “HA-OOH! HA-OOH!”

Tim’s face shot straight up with a broad smile, then he glanced around at his teammates and then specifically at Johnnie Boynes, who was wearing an equally wide smile. The story of the freshman football team’s initial meeting had gotten around, and the rest of the team liked the sound of Tim’s impromptu cheer from that day.

Coach O’Shaughnessy raised his hands again to regain control over the team. When they quieted down enough, he continued his thoughts to the team. “Tim Murphy! Front and center!”

Mayhem rushed through the huddled teammates to stand before the apparent head coach. “Son, I know Big John was toying with the idea of having you play both ways. Do you think it is something you can really do?”

“Coach, right now, if you told me to chop down a tree, I would not need an ax. I’d bite the son of a bitch, and it would come down.”

The others around him started slapping Tim on his shoulder pads and the back of his helmet while encouraging him to say yes. His answer was mostly drowned out, but Coach O’Shaughnessy heard his “Yes!” loud and clear.

“Then it looks like we got the offense squared away, and I know the defense is gonna be ready.” The defensive side of the ball was a bit more of a rowdy group, and when in uniform, none were that shy. “I asked, are you ready?!?”

“HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!” Suddenly, fans in the stands joined in.

Tim Murphy’s halftime speech was a once-in-a-lifetime type of moment, and both of the Holden brothers understood what was currently saved on an SD card from their camera had viral internet moment plastered all over it. “Terry, please tell me you have a couple of other SD cards for the second half in your pocket,” Sam, the older brother, asked.

“Yeah, why?” Terry put down the camera to begin searching his pockets.

“We gotta get Mayhem’s speech out on the channel! I don’t think anyone else except us was taping him. We just gotta get an editor to pop on an intro in the beginning and an outro at the end, then we got ourselves an honest-to-God exclusive,” Sam explained.

“Do you want to wait for the game to end so we can report if Mayhem’s speech worked?”

Sam shook his head no with a giant smile covering his face. “We can always add another video right after that to show the results and even the first half,” Sam explained.

Terry smiled as he pulled his hand out of his pocket and showed three more unopened SD card packs. He immediately ejected the card with the speech from his camera and handed it over to his brother.

“Sam, you can go to the truck and upload the speech for the office. Call Jimmy back there and tell him exactly what you want.”

Terry nodded in understanding. Then he reloaded the camera, made his way to the sideline, and immediately started shooting the b-roll of the Riders highly emotional state.

He went toward the sideline, looking for Mayhem among his team, when he heard the defensive coordinator calling to the player. That was when Terry first realized Big John wasn’t anywhere on the sideline. “Where the heck is Big John,” Terry wondered to himself as he overheard the change in personnel.

The teams were lining up for the start of the second half when Sam jogged up behind his brother. Terry was setting up to shoot the kick-off when he exclaimed, “Damn. That was quick.”

“Yeah, the video went pretty easily, and Jimmy at the office verified he had it and would post the speech in a few minutes,” Sam explained as he pulled up the UTRHighlightVideos channel on the YouTube app from his phone.

Terry was watching the viewer on his camera right before the kick-off. “Hey, Sam, did you see Big John while going back and forth?”

“Naw, why?”

“I ain’t seen him since he followed Mayhem into the locker room at halftime,” Terry disclosed.

Sam took a few moments to search up and down the sideline. “Naw. I don’t see him. Maybe he went to the coaches’ box for a different perspective?”

Terry turned to look at his brother like he was growing a second head. “A position coach, sure ... maybe ... but the head coach?”

The brothers had set themselves up in a perfect spot to film the second half on the field and what happened on the sidelines.

“I don’t know what he’s gonna do next,” the once-optimistic Viper offensive tackle exclaimed while his coach led him away from the team to find out if anything was wrong with him. The young man was nearly shaking in fear. “We’re losing this game, and it’s all my fault!”

“Well, son, you were holding that monster to a minimum game very successfully in the first half. What happened?”

The high school senior looked toward a metal bench sitting on the sideline. The coach grabbed a water bottle from one of the athletic managers roaming the sidelines, and the two sat down. The coach showed his prevailing ability to wait out a kid’s answer. The young man was still shaking involuntarily, though it was less severe now as he removed his helmet and covered his head with a towel. A few seconds of silence and the crowd’s roar forced an appeal. “Talk, son. Talk!”

“I have no way of stopping him.” After the coach stared at the young man and waited for a few seconds for a further explanation, he continued, “In the first half, we could hit him with a second blocker or even a third if necessary, but now he’s not fuckin’ waiting for nothing! The second and third blocks just bounce off him. We just can’t stop him!”

The beleaguered lineman leaned back and poured more water into his mouth. He sloshed the liquid around in his mouth, spit it on the artificial grass before him, and took another long swig of water. After a few deep breaths, he expanded, “Coach, he ain’t waiting. He’s just firing out and destroying whoever is in front of him. Unfortunately, most of the time, it’s me!”

As he took in another drink, play after play on the field showcased the Roosevelt offense methodically moving the ball down the field. The coach and offensive lineman sat side-by-side and watched as the Riders’ offense did something they had not tried all game before this.

Now wearing number 25, the new quarterback caught the shotgun snap from his center and stood tall in the well-formed and non-moving pocket. He seemed to gather all his strength and flung the ball downfield as far as he possibly could. At first, it appeared the young man made a horrible mistake by trying to throw the ball too far or out of bounds to avoid losing it to the defense.

It was a surprising forty-yards downfield when the same animal that had been smashing the Viper offensive line was now running like a gazelle and eating up yards like a Hungry Hungry Hippo. When the nearly 300-pound man smoothly ran underneath the bomb, he cradled the ball and continued toward the end zone with no one near him.

While sitting on the sideline, the Vipers coach could not help himself and muttered, “Wow, the new high-resolution video boards caught every inch of the action.”

The crowd doubled down on its yelling when the replay showed just how wide-open Mayhem Murphy was as he left the defenders in his dust. It looked like rookie-season Minnesota Viking Randy Moss playing against the unprepared Dallas Cowboys.

With a good ten minutes of the fourth quarter left to play, the scoreboard for the regional semi-final game in the Alamodome showed the Roosevelt comeback well underway, 49-21.

The coach looked to his offensive lineman, who just watched the replay of the touchdown on the same video board the coach watched live. They were both just dumbfounded and both equally out of ideas.

“Son, you’re not causing us to lose this game. We tried our best, and today we ran into someone who just might be the best ever to play the game in high school football,” he commented, trying to reassure his young player. “Think of it this way: in 20 or 30 years, you get to brag to your kids and maybe grandkids about the day you beat ‘Mayhem’ Murphy for the first half. Then he pummelled you like an ugly, red-headed stepchild for the second.” The coach reassuringly patted the young man on his shoulder. “Get ready. You gotta go back in there in a minute.”

Luckily for the Viper players’ egos, the Rough Riders offense took the jets off and simply ran the ball for the rest of the quarter. The final touchdown was a 22-yard scamper down the sideline by Johnnie Boynes with less than a minute to go in the game. The game ended 56-21.

“Hey there, everybody! Welcome to Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Today! I’m Todd Dunsmore of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. Joining us on today’s show, kids, is our regular Wednesday guest, the Director of Recruiting for Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, Greg Powers. I know today is Monday, not Wednesday. Say hi, Greg.”

“Hi, Greg,” the guest answered in a monotonous, uninspired tone.

The host was amazed the normally straight-as-an-arrow high school football writer dared to go with such an old joke. Both hosts began laughing.

“So let me explain. I have Mr. Powers in the studio this Monday rather than Wednesday for his explanations of all things recruiting from Texas High School football,” Dunsmore continued.

“Well, you could say we needed an actual observer for what happened Friday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio. So, Powers,” Dunsmore paused for effect, miming straightening his tie before asking, “What the heck happened Friday night?”

Greg Powers took the cue from the host to jump into the conversation. “A lot, but I can give you an overview of what we think may have happened.”

“Excellent. Lemme get my popcorn, and then you get started!”

“At halftime of the playoff game between San Antonio Roosevelt and Austin Vandergrift on Friday night, Roosevelt left the field down 14-0 to the Vipers. The Riders had been riding a significant winning streak for most of the season. You could mark the beginning of the streak with one simple thing: a new addition to the Roosevelt varsity squad in Tim ‘Mayhem’ Murphy.”

“When Mayhem was promoted to the varsity squad, their team defense instantly gelled as one and became nearly unstoppable. They started pitching shutouts in some games, seeing the Rough Riders keeping their opponents to under twenty yards total per game. Murphy earned his moniker ‘Mayhem’ by simply being unblockable and stopping any offense before it could get started.

“So, cut to Friday’s playoff game against Austin Vandergrift, an early favorite for the state championship, mainly behind their overall team speed. The team features eight runners who can qualify for the state track and field competition later this season, and they are all vital members of the football team. It looked, at least on paper, as if the two teams were perfectly matched against each other, but the first half showed Vandergrift’s team speed was too much for the Riders to overcome. The Vipers were winning the game handily with a perfect blend of team speed and trick plays left and right.

“I spoke with one anonymous coach who was in the stands. I knew he was watching the game and chomping at the bit. He was standing up off the stand and yelling at the field. He wasn’t alone but seemed to be yelling differently than the others. ‘Get outta your head and attack!’ When the second half began, it seemed like the Roosevelt coaches were finally able to convince Mayhem, or he straight-up heard this dude yelling his lungs out.”

“Come on, Powers. Who was it?”

“No, no, I can’t say,” he paused. “I’ll tell you later. You’ll laugh.”

“Okay, okay, back to the story.”

“The third quarter quickly morphed into carbon copies of the other Roosevelt games from this season. Mayhem caused problems all over the field, and his teammates found themselves in the perfect position to make plays.”

“I guess he got outta his head and just dominated whoever was in front of him,” Dunsmore inserted.

“Exactly. It was a thing of beauty. It was a defensive coordinator’s wet dream: a superstar causing chaos and the rest of the defense doing what the coach drew up during the week. It was a lot of fun.”

“But that wasn’t the only story, was it?” Dunsmore threw the slow pitch over the plate, and Powers knocked it out of the park.

“No. There were rumblings at the beginning of the second half. People began noticing the Roosevelt head coach ‘Big’ John Fontana was nowhere to be seen on the sideline. I took a quick peek into the coaches box and Big John was no where to be seen. It was later confirmed he was not present for the entire second half of the game. What happened at halftime will, unfortunately, mar a beautiful come-from-behind victory for his football team.”