Chapter 86: Them Boys Serious

The kickoff should have been uneventful.

The Galena Park North Shore Mustangs won the toss and deferred until the second half. They must have been paying attention to past Roosevelt Rough Rider game films because they opened the game with a successful onside kick.

The special teams were too hyped up for the beginning of the game, and the Rough Riders were caught unaware with the onside kick. The ball was purposely kicked to bounce high into the air and travel at least ten yards, making the ball eligible for either team to claim. They also aimed their kick at the tiny receiver, whose lone game highlights would be on special teams, and the Mustangs used three different players to attack him. The ball bounced twice, with the second bounce shooting high into the air. While he made a play for the ball, he could not control the bouncing ball, and no other Rough Riders were in the area, so three separate Mustangs could attack from different sides. When the ball fell, a Mustang could easily gather it in before any Rough Rider could challenge for it.

“No problem,” the Rough Rider defensive captain Frank barked to his team before taking the field, sounding like the announcer for the UFC. “Defense! It’s tiiiiiime!”

Tim thought while jogging onto the field that imitation is often considered the sincerest form of flattery.

The two teams faced off across the line of scrimmage, and Tim sensed their opponent was ready to play. He did not recognize that feeling with his team. The first play would set the scene for the first half of the game for both teams.

Galena Park North Shore High School, a suburb east of Houston, was a highly-regarded football program in Texas. Their name was often heard toward the end of the football season. This season was an outlier, as no superstars were graduating this season, but the team was full of good high school football players. At the beginning of the season for the Mustangs, many internet high school football experts had considered this to be a down year, talent-wise, but no one told the Mustangs.

The football program had a long history of producing multiple four- and five-star players year after year. This year’s team featured no superstar players. According to internet recruiting experts, this season’s Galena Park North Shore football team’s top player was a wide receiver ranked as a high three-star or low four-star player for recruiting purposes.

While the internet experts did not favor this year’s Galena Park North Shore Mustangs, the team had always been very well coached and prepared for every opponent they had beaten this season. However, they had earned a bit of a “cardiac cowboy” reputation by winning their last game of the season in overtime. They made it to the playoffs and pushed each playoff game to the final minutes to reveal the winner. Each of those games was won by less than three points, and they were all low-scoring games, at that. These Galena Park North Shore Mustangs won with grit, attitude, pride, and a healthy amount of luck.

“And at the halfway mark, we find ourselves watching one heck of a football game between a storied high school football program and an upstart program with a superstar player practically dragging his teammates kicking and screaming with him to the state championships. The game is tied at 7-7 with the Roosevelt Rough Riders kicking the ball to start the second half in a few minutes,” the TV host announced.

“Hi, everybody! Welcome back to our show. I’m Greg Tepper, the managing editor of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine, joining you for this look back at what happened in the first half of a fascinating game. The winner will face the much-heralded Duncanville Panthers in the 6A State Championship game in Cowboys Stadium in two weeks. Galena Park North Shore is no stranger to the playoffs, but San Antonio Roosevelt most certainly is new to playing this far into the season.

“Oh, wow, do we have one heck of a game tonight! The Galena Park North Shore Mustangs, a perennially favored program from the Greater Houston area, is known for producing top-notch football talent year in and year out on their way to long trips deep into the state championship playoff of Texas.

“The San Antonio Roosevelt Rough Riders feature one of the top up-and-coming football players to ever play Texas high school football. Tim ‘Mayhem’ Murphy, a moniker earned from his teammates, has been destroying offenses all over the San Antonio area, and now into the playoffs, he has left a wake of destroyed offensive lines in each playoff game he’s played,” the lead announcer for the broadcast of the game proclaimed.

“Wow!” Tepper paused and let out a large breath, smiling while risking a glance at his co-host, who agreed with the sentiment, answering the unspoken question with his subtle laugh. “I guess that says it right there, football fans. Even though the scoring is at a minimum, this is easily one of the best football games I’ve ever had the privilege of watching in person. Now let me reintroduce my co-host in the booth tonight, Coach Chuck Gibson, a legendary Texas High School Football coach with 40 years of experience in high school football and six state championships under his belt.”

“Thanks, Greg. You hit the nail right on the head about this game.” The deeply-tanned senior citizen seemed just as charged up from the first half of the game as his co-host. “This is easily one of the best halves of football I’ve ever had the privilege to watch. The regular football fans are watching two teams simply play each other to near perfection. Yet, these two teams seem like exact opposites of each other, and it’s their ‘weaker’ teams that are the difference so far in this game. The Rough Riders have been winning their games for the majority of the season by simply stopping the opposing offenses. The Mustangs have run their way with pure and complete team offense. So far, both teams’ strengths have nullified the other. As a former coach myself, it’s very interesting to watch the coaching staffs playing three-tiered chess against each other. “ Coach Gibson explained.

“How so?”

“Well, the strength of the Roosevelt team is their defense. The absolutely phenomenal Tim Murphy – whom his teammates have christened with the nickname of ‘Mayhem’ – is the complete package for a defensive linebacker, and the Roosevelt defense puts him everywhere up and down the defensive line. The fact that this is apparently the first year he’s ever played football is outrageous.”

“Why do you say that, Coach?”

“Well, I’ll admit, when I first heard some of the stories about this young man, I was convinced he simply used his obvious superior athleticism, strength, and speed to win individual battles along the defensive front. It’s not altogether that original of a story. I’ve seen and coached – against and for – others like him, but color me changed. This amazing young man has used his athleticism, but he’s also using picture-perfect defensive technique to make his opponents look almost foolish. The only way the Mustang offensive line is holding up so far – against him and his fellow Rough Rider defenders – is by using near-perfect offensive line technique,” the coach explained. “Let’s re-watch a couple of plays from the first half, and I’ll explain what I mean.”

“This first play shows a toss to the running back to the right side of the offense, which is the side away from Mayhem’s normal position,” the legendary coach illustrated on the screen for the home viewer. “The left tackle for the Mustangs is a good player; not a superstar, but a better-than-average Division 2 prospect, for sure. He has excellent technique and above-average strength. He should be able to take on and defeat at least 98 percent of all defensive ends he’s faced while in high school, but Mayhem is not in the 98^th percentile. Murphy is easily the best defensive player that the North Shore offensive tackle has or will ever see,” the coach emphasized. “I say that will be the truth even if he makes it to the NFL. Murphy is simply the best I’ve ever seen – in person – play defense.”

“Those are strong words, Coach Gibson. While he is great, from what I’ve seen in this game so far, he has been pretty much nullified as a threat to the offense,” the host added. The side eye from the Coach actually caused the host to lean away from his co-host for a moment. “Hey, Coach, I’m just saying what we have been hearing all season about Murphy destroying teams in San Antonio we have not seen here tonight.”

“Greg, what the Mustangs are doing to ‘nullify’ Mayhem, as you put it, is some top-notch blocking from not just the linemen but perfectly-timed and executed help blocking from the rest of the offense. The Rough Riders move Mayhem up and down the line of scrimmage to try and get him a better shot at stopping the offense. The Mustang offense has prioritized the blocking scheme before the selection of the play. You either attack him with three or four different blockers, or you allow him to put pressure on the quarterback, who will try to get the ball somewhere behind Mayhem as he leaves the line of scrimmage. The offensive line shifts their attention to him, and the play moves either to the opposite side or they try to go around him. So far, the Mustangs have accumulated nearly one hundred yards of total offense, but that is way more than any other team that has faced the Riders so far this season with ‘Mayhem’ Murphy in the lineup.

“As a longtime coach, I’m seeing subtle moves from both coaching staffs as they play chess against each other, trying to figure out how to neutralize the Rider defense or the Mustang offense. It is definitely getting the competitive juices flowing, that’s for sure. I’m anxious to see the changes in the second half from both teams.”

“What would you do if you were the Roosevelt coaching staff to better utilize Murphy for the second half,” Tepper challenged.

“Oh, there’s tons of good ideas on how to use him. I’ve seen it earlier in the year they lined him up on offense. They have not done any move like that so far. I’d expect to see them try something like that in this half as a way of giving a jump start to their own offense and to force the Mustangs to do something besides staying away from the animal on the left-hand side,” the coach offered jokingly.

Tim Murphy grabbed two cups of Gatorade, quickly downing one and tossing the empty cup in a nearby trash can before sitting on a bench beside the other defensive linemen. There wasn’t room to sit, but he went to his regular spot and began lowering himself. The others made room for him.

The voices were raised when he entered the halftime locker room. Several players were attempting to blame others for the tied game and their lack of a sound lead. The team had become used to knowing the game was already well in hand by halftime during the regular season. The majority of halftimes this season featured heated discussions about which celebration party to attend.

“And I told you already, I’m blowing out of the hole. You just have to power through after me and watch out for his weak-ass dives at your feet,” Jeff Smith was just short of yelling at Frank off to the side of the room. Tim noticed they separated themselves from the rest of the group to have their discussion.

“You ain’t doing shit to him, Jeff! He’s diving under your hits and going after my feet. He keeps cutting me off from filling the hole before that little motherfucker can scat through the opening,” Frank tried to explain calmly, but his voice kept rising through his explanation.

Coach O’Shaughnessy got a hold of the two and whispered into their ears. The two looked at the eyes of their teammates staring back at them, and they swiftly sat down where they usually did for halftimes. Tim felt his anger growing at his teammates.

“Okay. Guess what, everybody. We got ourselves a game!” the interim head coach pointed out to his team. “Didn’t we tell you they had worked as hard as you to get here? Didn’t we tell you they could play? But y’all didn’t pay attention, and where are you now? Them boys serious! You’re in a fight to go to the state championships, and you’re fighting with each other rather than with that team on the other side of the stadium!” The coach’s voice rose like Frank’s as he explained the team’s current conundrum.

“Now, the good news is, even though we are playing like we forgot how to play our game,” the interim head coach stared right at Tim before pointing to the other side of the stadium. “They haven’t been able to figure out a way to start beating us. However, this is the area of a game where they excel!”

The veteran coach took in a deep breath and noticed a couple of small, worried thoughts fleeting across the faces of some of the team. He knew he needed to nip those thoughts in the bud.

“All those stories we’ve all read and seen on the internet about how North Shore always figure out what they were doing wrong in the first half, correcting it, and then destroying their opponents in the second half ... all those come from their coaching staff and the adjustments they make,” Coach O’Shaughnessy illuminated. He reached back, and one of the other coaches handed him a tablet to control the computer on screen.

“There is nothing in the rules that says we can’t do the same thing, you know!” The coach emphasized his point with a smile. The tension in the locker room seemingly evaporated immediately as the head coach began correcting the problems he saw in the first half.

The moment the coach was done with one problem, Tim sprung to his feet and seemed to levitate to the front of the team. “I guess I must have been making it too easy for y’all when I started playing! Did you guys fucking forget what it was like to face off against a team that is equal or perhaps even better than you?”

Mayhem’s staring down of the team dared anyone in the locker room to say something, even glaring toward the gaggle of coaches in the corner, initially reticent toward a player taking over their precious coaching time.

Tim pointed toward the Mustangs’ side of the stadium. “They are playing great team football.” Mayhem paused for a moment for effect. “They aren’t playing to just win a game,” Tim began to explain his meaning but saw nothing but confused faces staring back at him. “They are playing together and striving for a common goal. They want a state championship. They’ve already done better than what was expected of them. They can lose, and it’s okay to the fans who point toward the experts and say it was supposed to be a down year for them. They turned right back around and said, ‘bump that.’ We were supposed to be the ones doing that tonight. They are big, bad Galena Park North Shore. ‘We send twenty players into college football every year. We are supposed to win!’” Tim accentuated everything he was saying with finger quotes.

“We knew this was gonna be a dogfight when we found out who we were going to be playing just to get a shot at the state championship. We knew that,” Tim proselytized to himself even. “But that’s okay. We needed a hard team to face before we faced the hardest team we’ve ever tried to face, but before we even start thinking about that, we gotta muzzle these Mustangs.” Several players clapped and barked their agreements.

“But we started slow. We started real slow, and that’s alright. That’s okay because there are times in life you’re gonna start slow. We just gotta tell ourselves that now we’re gonna go fast. It’s okay to start slow, but we will always finish fast!”

Tim was on a roll but was also getting positive feedback from his teammates.

“Damn straight!”

“That’s right!”

“You know it!”

“Preach, brother Mayhem! Preach!”

That last one got a few chuckles, even a couple from the gaggle of coaches in the back of the room watching quietly.

“That’s all it takes! All it takes is attitude! We might start slow, but how are we gonna finish!?!”

“Fast,” several players spoke up.

“How are we gonna finish!?!” Tim yelled.

“Fast!!!” a larger bunch answered. A few were now standing as they could not bottle in their emotions.

“How are we gonna finish!?!” he roared.

“FAST!!!!!”

Everyone, to a man, was now back on their feet, jumping up and down and chanting.

Coach O’Shaughnessy grabbed Tim by the arm before he could join his teammates to take the field for the second half. He waited for the rest to clear out, so only the two of them were in the room.

“Nicely done,” the coach said while waving his hand, indicating what had just happened in the halftime locker room, “but son, are you okay?”

“Confused,” Tim answered truthfully, “Sure, coach. I’m fine. I’m just a little anxious to get back out there and start turning this game around.”

“Oh, I understand your meaning, son, and after what you just did for your teammates, I can see it ... but your play, so far today, hasn’t shown it.” The veteran coach stared quietly into his star player’s eyes without saying another word.

“Am I doing something wrong, Coach?”

“No, but you aren’t playing with that fire you usually have.”

The longtime coach was about to say something else. Then he caught himself, and a breath later, he seemed to make a decision. “I’m yelling at myself not to ask this, but are you still mad from our misunderstanding?”

He didn’t think the previous night was anywhere near his thoughts at the time. Yet, the young man took a moment to respectfully question himself if something was going on in his feelings. The coach waited patiently for an answer.

“Honestly, Coach, in my head, I’m over it. I understand where you are coming from and how you could have made that mistake, but in my heart, I might still be a little bit apprehensive over it.”

The head coach nodded his understanding and pulled the two back toward the computer they had just used for the halftime coaching.

“I want you to watch a few plays, and you tell me what is going on in your head,” the coach said before starting the focused plays. An average fan would not notice anything wrong with Tim’s play. They would see that the other team was using multiple players to keep Tim bottled up and away from the play.

“I figured they were using multiple people to block me, but earlier this season, when the other team did something like this to me, I’d fight through whatever blocking scheme they used and destroy their rhythm,” the young superstar said. At the same time, his bottom lip quivered nearly imperceptibly, and a nervousness entered his voice.

It was the first time Marty O’Shaughnessy had ever heard Tim Murphy not fully believe in himself or his capabilities. The older coach suddenly saw the eighth grader he had heard about, who looked like a pear with toothpicks for appendages. “Yeah, it looks like you’re playing strong, but I’ve seen you play before, and this looks almost ... uninspired?”

“Maybe, deep down, I’m still percolating some mad about yesterday. I know it was an honest mistake, and we both went a little overboard, but maybe I’ve been holding back.” Tim took the tablet from his coach, pulled up several more plays, and watched how he was playing: a solid, stiff arm to push the initial blocker off of him, a swim move to move past the second set of blockers coming at him.

That was when he noticed a couple of plays where it looked like he took the plays off and only half-assed his way through them. The quarterback was throwing to a receiver coming into the middle of the field right behind where Tim was attacking the offense. He should have known to jump up and knock the ball out of the air or maybe even intercept it. He watched the quarterback throw the ball barely over him, and fortunately, the pass was incomplete, but Tim instantly knew he would have intercepted the ball and ran through any wannabe tacklers for a touchdown the week before. Tim handed the tablet back to his coach and nodded.

“I’m hurting the team, aren’t I?” Tim asked meekly.

“No, son, we are hurting the team, but you know what? I’m happy about it.”

Tim’s confusion looked like he had been slapped across the face. “It means you ain’t perfect, dummy! And I get a chance to actually coach you up a bit,” the coach emphasized his joviality by shaking the teen’s shoulder pads. “Crisis of faith averted?”

Tim smiled, and the coach got out of the young man’s way to jog out and rejoin his teammates.

He stopped before pulling open the door. “Coach, to tell you the truth, I think I had already pulled myself outta my head when I picked up the team. I have been holding back, but now, I think I’ll try opening it up a bit and see how she feels.”

The two shared a smile, and the superstar yelled out his regular “HA-OHH” chant as he charged out the door.

“Everything good, Coach?” Coach Barrett asked as he re-entered the locker room to help take down the audio/video equipment and pack it for the bus.

Coach O’Shaughnessy was initially caught off balance by the coach’s entrance but quickly smiled from his last thoughts.

“Oh, Mario. Yes, everything is good. Get all of this shit put away and get your butt back up to the coaches booth, I have a feeling Tim Murphy is about to turn it on for this half, and you don’t want to miss it!”

The Mustang offensive coaching staff believed that they would need to establish the run, thus keeping the ball from the Rough Rider offense for as long as possible, for their team to win. While they understood their opponent’s strength was their defense, their offense was nothing to sneeze at.

After receiving the second-half kickoff, the Mustangs decided to continue testing the middle of the Rider defense. They attacked Jeff Smith, the senior defensive tackle, who was right beside Mayhem Murphy. The North Shore coaches felt Jeff was the most vulnerable spot along the defensive line.

The Mustang quarterback faked a handoff to a fullback who, along with the center and the left guard, all plowed into the Rough Rider defensive tackle Jeff Smith, trying to open a hole at the line of scrimmage for the running back. The quarterback handed off the ball to the running back, who followed his blockers up the middle of the field between the center and the left guard. Jeff realized what was happening when both the center and the guard fired out of their sets at him, followed right away by a third blocker attacking him on the line. Jeff instinctively knew they would try to focus their offensive attack on him, at least for this first play.

Jeff was able to hold up under the attack from the two blocking linemen but was being pushed back off the line and into the linebackers behind the defensive line. The fullback added to their momentum when he slammed into all three of them.

Tim perceived the developing hole where the three used to be standing. However, the senior middle linebacker and defensive captain also saw the hole in the defense and bull-rushed past the three bodies to plug the hole and stop any run. The running back initially saw the hole and rushed into the opening, but he also saw how quickly it would close. The young running back decided to try to announce his presence with authority by hitting the hole with as much power as he could muster. Frank growled and roared out loud when he was about to make contact with the running back.

Tim shed his block and positioned himself behind Frank just in case the runner got away from him. The crashing of pads and helmets reverberated throughout the stadium. The whistle ended the play, and bodies were carefully pulled away from each other. Frank was on top of the running back, and the two were barely a yard forward of the original starting line. It was now second down and nine yards to go for a first down.

The fans in the stands witnessed some drama when Frank and the running back stood and stared at each other for a few seconds. To them, it must have looked like the two were about to start throwing fists, but Frank and the running back were gleefully grinning as they gave each other a fist bump before returning to their respective huddles.

“What was that, Frank,” Jeff Smith asked in between deep breaths.

“Oh, that was just respect between the two of us. We both just hit each other twice as hard as we have so far this game,” Frank explained while adjusting the fit of his pads. “We just understand that we both are in this for the rest of the game.” Frank looked at a still-confused Jeff. “It’s a warrior thing.”

Some of the defense laughed, and others shook it off as Frank being Frank.

Now, second down and nine yards to go for a first down for the Mustangs, their coaches were still convinced their running game was the correct way to go. They called a carbon copy of the previous play, but this time, the initial block on Jeff by the two offensive linemen successfully moved him away from his spot on the line of scrimmage. Frank, once again, moved into position to tackle the running back as he barreled into the open hole. However, with Jeff successfully moved by just two blockers, the fullback could concentrate his entire block on Frank, and the two bulls found themselves in the same China shop.

The running back saw the gaping crack in the line and, after taking the handoff, and upped a gear to make sure he was well beyond the open hole before someone else could close the hole. He didn’t see Tim had shed his block and followed Frank into the opening. When the two players clashed, the running back was not prepared for the impact. There was nothing illegal about the hit; it was just unbelievably physical. On film, it looked like the young man ran full speed into a brick wall he didn’t know was there!

The whistle signaled the end of the play, and the young scat back was slow to get up off the ground. Tim looked at the running back’s face and saw the telltale signs of a probable light concussion.

While pulling himself up off the running back, Tim asked, “Hey, man, are you okay?”

After a couple of seconds, the runner reached up and unsnapped the chin strap from his helmet. “Yeah, I’m good if I don’t have to get up from here for like a week or so. Fuck. That hurt.”

Tim smiled and offered a hand to help the running back up off the field.

“Dude, you need to tell your coach to call something else, or you might not make it to our celebration at the end of the game,” Tim joked.

“Yeah. Fuck you very much,” the running back, now back on his feet, offered with a quick fist bump which Tim returned.

The Mustangs had just lost their gained yard from the previous play, making it third down and ten yards to go for a first down.

The Rough Rider defense finished congratulating themselves on a well-played stop. They each understood that the play’s success wasn’t due to just Tim destroying everything but rather the defense covering for each other as it was designed.

“All right. Let’s help Tim get some recognition for his season from the press,” the defensive captain announced to the majority grinning huddle. “Tim, Jeff, you two stunt, so Tim is plowing up the middle. Everyone else, base defense. Ready. Break,” Frank barked out the orders for the next defensive play.

For the Mustangs’ third-down play, the coaching staff decided their initial ventures into running might not work well. So they decided to attack the Rough Rider defense through the air.

The shotgun snap from the center was clean and caught perfectly by the quarterback. The quarterback began to survey the different spots on the field where his receivers were supposed to go. On the offense’s right side were three different receivers, two wide receivers, and a tight end.

The outside receiver on the right side was to run a quick hitch route. The hitch route is usually run to about a five- to six-yard depth where the receiver pivots toward the quarterback and stops, expecting the ball to be thrown to him very right away.

The other wide receiver lined up between the outside receiver and the right-side offensive tackle along the line of scrimmage and was set to run a slant route. The slant is a short route that breaks in at roughly a 45-degree angle and is designed to give the quarterback a way to get the ball out of his hand quickly.

The tight end was running a stick route, a short route in which the receiver will either stop suddenly at about five yards in between zone defenders or break away from the middle of the field against man coverage. All of these routes were also designed for the quarterback to get rid of the football in a hurry. They ran the three receivers on the right-hand side, away from Tim’s side of the field.

Their star wide receiver, RaeSean Smith, was lined up alone on the left side and was supposed to run a go route. The go route is a deep pass route designed to get the ball to the outside receiver deep down the field.

The go route is a low-percentage pass that can create big plays if the quarterback and receiver are on the same page and if the pass is thrown away from the defender covering the receiver. The receiver’s goal is to outrun the defensive backs and catch an undefended pass for a touchdown. Against the other teams the Mustangs had faced this season, they could usually rely on this play because of the skill and athleticism of their lone ‘star’ player. So far this season, it worked. The Mustangs had faith in this play. It has worked. It can work. It will work.