Mayhem in a Pill
Copyright© 2015 by Shinerdrinker
Chapter 92: An Ascension?
Football is a team sport.
The Roosevelt Rough Riders, before the emergence of their super-freshman defensive lineman, were considered not much more than a possible playoff contender. However, that could only happen if a couple of other teams were affected by the injury bug at several positions.
The arrival of Tim “Mayhem” Murphy launched the team into the forefront of Texas High School football talking head conversations. The Riders had systematically destroyed each of their opponents, with the exception of their first-game loss. However, even before freshman Mayhem was on the varsity squad, every high school football coach was jealous because of the team’s reaction to obvious racist remarks made by the winner of the game.
Audio and video of what the Rider team had to deal with revealed them not only being beaten down handily on the scoreboard, but they also had to deal with racist comments and threats from certain members of the winning team. The Riders held their heads high in defeat and did not retaliate against the racist taunts. The football coaching community all openly praised the Rough Riders for how they held themselves up in the face of not only losing the game, but also dealing with openly racist taunts.
They won by losing.
The Duncanville Panthers had a well-deserved reputation as a juggernaut of high school football in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and the state of Texas. This was highlighted by three consecutive wins of the 6A High School Football state championship. While having several players earn football scholarships is not unheard of, each of the starters for the coming Duncanville state championship game had already accepted scholarships, which was remarkable. The Panthers famously had each starter on both sides of the ball earning scholarships to attend universities via playing football.
While not every player starting for the Panthers was set to matriculate to a major football university, the team had more than their share of players moving up to big-time college football. They were led by their all-everything left tackle on the offensive line, Antwaun Gibbs, a three-time consensus All-American offensive tackle set for the Southeastern Conference’s perennial apex predator, the Alabama Crimson Tide.
The first quarter was akin to a heavyweight championship fight between two comparable fighters. Both teams were equally adept at attacking and defending; however, the second quarter began to show the difference between the two. The Duncanville Panthers had won each game they played for the past three seasons. The majority of those were by double digits, and on their fourth consecutive season, they remained undefeated. Yet, for the first time in the past four seasons, the Duncanville Panthers were behind at halftime, 7-0.
The Rough Riders on both sides of the football seemed to be slowly losing ground to the heavily favored and much more athletic Panthers team. The Rough Riders were beginning to show a few cracks in their highly vaunted defense by allowing several runs to escape into their secondary. Those runs rarely happened this season for the Riders after the introduction of “Mayhem” Murphy. Slowly but surely, though, the superior athleticism of the Panthers began to wear down the Riders’ defense.
The Panthers’ offense took advantage of those opportunities, gaining a couple of yards more per run than at the beginning of the game. The Rough Rider offense was still unable to force open any cracks in the Panther defense. The Panther defense seemed to be growing in momentum and made headway with a few more flashy stops to add to their stifling of the Rough Rider offense. Overall, the Panthers seemed to be slowly but surely gaining momentum, and the halftime break was a godsend for the Riders.
Talking heads and fans of the Riders alike were openly calling for the head coach, O’Shaughnessy, to begin using their freshman superstar like they had earlier in the playoffs as a receiver and taking the caps off their offense. So far in the game, Coach O’Shaughnessy had not pulled the trigger and released what could be the best shot for the Riders to win the game. During the jog to the locker room at halftime, the fans showed Coach O’Shaughnessy that they really wanted Mayhem to make a flashy play on offense and put a nice cushion between the two teams.
Coach O’Shaughnessy heard someone calling out for him while he entered the locker room. He saw it was Mayhem’s father, Raymond. The coach immediately thought he had another case of an overzealous father demanding his son be put into the game if he wanted to win.
Both men were about to talk at the same time, but Tim’s father surprised the coach. “Coach, don’t worry, I’m not advocating for anything or anybody, but I thought I could help with motivation,” Raymond began to explain to the head coach. “I realized I never got a chance to send my son a song for the game. Could you tell him to check his email? A little late, but it’s in there.”
Coach O’Shaughnessy was confused, as he didn’t know anything about the song tradition. Still, Coach Alvarez and Coach Barrett, the two freshman football coaches, were also returning to the locker room for halftime from the coaches’ box high above the playing field. Coach Alvarez, overhearing the conversation, came forward to get the head coach’s attention.
“Boss, I got this. I’ll tell Murphy about the music. He’s been listening to a song sent to him each game by his pops here to get hyped up before the games,” Coach Alvarez explained.
He turned to Raymond and offered. “By the way, sir, you have excellent taste in music, and I’ve enjoyed listening, too.”
Raymond accepted the coach’s proffered hand. “Thanks, Coach, and hey, good luck in the second half. I sent my boy a new song, but he also might need this to help hype up the team.” Mayhem’s father handed over what looked like a small, green shaving kit bag. Coach O’Shaughnessy asked if it was okay to see what was in the bag, unzipped it, took a moment to think about how it could help with motivation, and smiled.
“Does he share the song with the locker room?” the older coach asked both Tim’s father and the other coaches.
“Individually. Tim told me earlier in the season that he didn’t want to mess with anyone’s thinking process too much,” Coach Barrett answered. Then he witnessed the head coach offer the superstar’s father his handshake, and turn to jog into the locker room with much proverbial pep in his step. “I ain’t seen that man jog in damn near a decade. What was in the bag, Mr. Murphy?”
“Get in there with the team and find out,” Raymond answered with a Cheshire grin before turning to join the nearby line for snacks.
Coach Alvarez admitted to himself that he had seen a younger version of that same grin a few times this season. The two younger coaches smiled and jogged after the head coach.
Coach O’Shaughnessy was just inside the locker room entrance searching the room for his target when he spotted him toward the back, all alone, and underneath some shower heads. “Hey, Tim,” Coach O’Shaughnessy interrupted his superstar defensive lineman early on in his process for mentally preparing himself for the second half. “Your old man asked me to give this to you,” the interim head coach said with a mischievous smile. The old football coach turned to the two coaches trailing closely behind him.
“Oh. Did he have anything else to say, Coach?”
“Yeah, he said something about how y’all forgot the weekly music before the game.” Coach Alvarez was right behind the head coach with a little grin on his face. Tim, though initially upset that someone was messing with his process, looked up in realization that his father was right. They had forgotten their weekly hype song.
Coach Alvarez handed over the small, green travel bag from Raymond. Tim unzipped the bag and saw his cell phone and a portable speaker. The smile on Tim’s face was not going to be pulled from his face anytime soon.
“When I give you the okay, you can play it, but lemme do my thing first, if you please.” The head coach’s smile wasn’t coming off anytime soon, either.
After the position coaches went over the game plan for the second half with their players, Coach O’Shaughnessy worked his way to the front of the locker room, in front of the white dry-erase board. He began the most crucial halftime speech of his career.
“Alright, bring it in. Take a knee. Everybody lock in.” Coach O’Shaughnessy paced in front of the team for a few moments. All eyes in the room were fixed on their head coach, including the coaches who gravitated toward the back.
“Look around this locker room,” the interim head coach paused to let everyone look around the locker room. “Do you see these faces? These are your brothers. You’ve sweat together, bled together, y’all have earned the right to be here — right here, under that big-ass AT&T Stadium scoreboard, playing for the state title.”
“I’ve watched you boys grow from the dog days of August where that sun nearly broke us. We ran you until your legs threatened to give out. We hit each other until our shoulders went numb. We sacrificed for this moment. For this game. For this team.” The coach’s authenticity was palpable.
“And now some folks in the stands — some folks across this state — think we’re finished? Do we really think we don’t have the fire to continue? They don’t know who they’re dealing with.” Coach O’Shaughnessy paused for the team to quiet down after their impromptu cheers, and he nodded toward Tim, who was in the back of the room, standing with the two freshman football coaches.
Tim had paired his phone to the small, portable speaker. He was silently hoping the small speaker could be heard throughout the cavernous locker room. A few seconds later, when the opening bars of the music began, his worrying stopped. The volume was fine, and the team turned to look, initially shocked when someone started playing music during the coach’s speech.
“So here’s what I want from you: the next 24 minutes, you leave everything out there. I don’t care if you’re bruised, tired, bleeding — you give it all. Because this game, this second half? It’s ours for the taking, but they ain’t gonna hand it to us. They want it, too. We’ve got to go out there and take it.
“You hit harder. You run faster. You dig deeper. Every play — every down — you remind the Panthers, they ain’t playing just any team. They’re playing a team that refuses to break, that refuses to quit, that will not leave this field without a fight.
“You are TEXAS football.” The veins were bulging out of Coach O’Shaughnessy’s neck and forehead and seemed to be growing as his voice strained for a higher volume. “You are Friday Night Lights! You are built on pride, grit, and heart the size of this whole damned state!”
The revving up of motorcycle engines could be heard blaring from the tiny speakers, which seemed to be giving their all for this song, just like Coach O’Shaughnessy. Coach O’Shaughnessy looked as if he were about to blow every vein in his body; he was getting so worked up.
It was contagious. Around them, emotions were rising out of control.
“We! Are! Rough Riders!”
Apparently, the coach knew the song as well, and he timed his speech with the opening bars of the popular 1990s rap song. The players knew the song and were now all jumping up and down, becoming much more excited.
“STOP! DROP! SHUT’ EM DOWN, OPEN UP SHOP!
OH, NO! THAT’S HOW ROUGH RIDERS ROLL!!!”
The team went wild. Players were jumping up and down, grabbing and throwing each other at their teammates, with several coaches getting caught up in the mix. It was fortunate that all the players were wearing football pads. The coaches roared right along with the players, equipment managers, and athletic trainers. A mosh pit from a heavy metal concert had broken out in the locker room at halftime of the state championship. Gatorade was sprayed everywhere. Oranges, their peels, water bottles, towels – no matter if clean or dirty, even an errant, emptied ice cooler became a projectile missile thrown throughout the locker room. The volume was insane, but the little speaker system could still barely be heard, even with everyone singing along. Fans standing in the refreshment lines outside the locker room could hear the thunderous uproar from inside.
The mass of Roosevelt players and staff started charging out of the locker room with Tim Murphy and the old head coach, as well as the interim head coach, falling in behind the group. “Coach, that was amazing, but I’m kinda sad you did that.”
“What are you talking about, Timothy?” Coach Fontana asked, confused, still attempting to catch his breath, as he was just as hyped as everyone else in the room.
“Well, sure, that was such a great speech, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything!” Tim dodged the two towels hurled at him from the two coaches before trying to catch up with his team.
The players were back underneath their inflatable tunnel, and a couple of the coaches were standing at the opening, barely holding the team back from running out onto the field. Frank Robinson was now leading the team in a series of howling wolf imitations when the Rough Riders heard DMX’s seminal “Ruff Ryder Anthem” being played once again, this time from the public address system, the coaches dove out of the way rather than attempting to hold back that particular tsunami with only the equivalent of a fly swatter. The team looked like a bunch of crazed dogs leaping over a herd of tipped-over cows.
The Duncanville Panthers took to the field first in the second half and were feeling better about their chances. However, when the music started playing, it caught everyone’s attention. The Roosevelt side of the stadium was filled with family and friends of the team, all of whom began jumping up and down, much like the team had done in the locker room. It turned into half of the stadium having a karaoke party. The Riders fired out from underneath their inflatable tunnel. The players all jumped and acted like dogs as they barked and continued their howling, still led by the defensive captain. The Panthers were immediately pulled out of their concentration and conviction.
“What the fuck is this?” Antwaun asked of no one in particular.
They took up their spot on the sideline to get ready for the kickoff of the second half. The Duncanville superstar offensive tackle had to admit to himself that he had never seen another football team so hyped up as this one.
“Yo! Fuck them! We’ve got half of football to collect our fourth straight state championship. These fools are in the way. We ‘bout to steamroll right over them!”
The senior captain got a strained reply back from his team as they tried in vain to match the hype from their opponents. It was a little unsettling. Several Panthers were openly asking each other if these guys weren’t as tired as they were after the first half. Other team leaders worked overtime to try to dispel doubt, but they weren’t very successful.
The Duncanville kicker booted the ball well out of the end zone, to give the Riders the ball first for the second half.
“Mayhem!”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“Go play some offense, but listen to the play,” Coach O’Shaughnessy warned.
“Yes, sir,” Mayhem fired off the sidelines, joining the offense on the field like he was Rudy Ruettiger seeing his first playing time for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Tim reminded himself to calm down, and the coach’s warning rang in his ears once again. In the huddle, if he didn’t really listen hard to the offensive captain, Troy Williams, he might have missed the wrinkle in the play.
Typically, the action would have called for him to run deep and wait for the throw, just like in the previous game. Yet, this time, he would not run down the field. Instead, he would run a mere fifteen yards downfield, then fake continuing the route down the sideline.
The play called for him to find the middle of the field and get in front of the defenders, who, if the rest of the play worked as it should, would be thinking Tim was running a straight fly pattern. Hopefully, he would outrun the defense. If the play was executed correctly, the defense would be wide open underneath, Tim would be able to use his athleticism to evade any other tacklers, and could make his way to a touchdown. Either that or, after making the catch, the offense would settle for the large amount of yards the fake would create and give the offense much-needed momentum to continue.
“Hey, they finally let you play some ‘O’, huh?” the several inches under six-foot-tall defender taunted across the line. “Well, we’ll see about that!”
The Panther cornerback immediately began backing up, and on the snap of the ball, he turned his hips and started running down the field as soon as possible. He was betting on Tim running full out down the field, just like they had seen him do in the last game. The defense knew he was significantly faster than they had anticipated, so they were attempting to gain an upper hand and be ready when the ball would drop so far down the field.
The Panther safety was the only defender looking out for the middle of the field, but he had also tried to hedge his bet against a deep pass by running down the field much sooner than he should have.
Tim fired out of his stance and started tearing up turf, but when he reached around the 15-yard mark from the line of scrimmage, he cut off his route and aimed for the large open area of the middle of the field. There was no defender within ten yards when Tim made the catch perfectly in stride.
The Panther defense realized their attempts to overplay what they were seeing on the field versus what they had seen previously on film had just bitten them all in the ass. Both the overeager cornerback and safety stopped their running and immediately turned toward the middle of the field, hoping to catch up to Tim. Mayhem’s long strides allowed him to pull away from both of those defenders. Tim only had the cornerback from the other side of the field to contend with, and when he was within reach of Tim, the Panther defensive back targeted his legs, knowing his more diminutive stature would probably not be enough to tackle the freshman phenom alone.
Tim saw the cornerback gain a good angle on him, and he knew he was likely to be tackled, but he also noticed he was aiming for the lower part of his body. Tim was smiling on the inside. He thought of something he had seen a few times in both college and professional football, but he never considered he might be able to do that himself. When the Panther defender launched himself at Tim’s legs, hoping to bring him down before he could reach the end zone, Tim slowed momentarily. When he saw the dive at his feet, he easily hurdled the defensive back and continued for a touchdown.
Tim turned in the end zone and found the closest referee, tossing him the ball after hearing the whistle indicate the end of the play. Tim then turned around and began walking back to the sideline with the rest of the offense bearing down on him for celebration. He stopped and tugged on the imaginary cuff links, then straightened his imaginary tie. Then, he took in the admiration of his teammates for a job well done.
“Great catch, my guy! That was one in a million,” Troy Williams, the offense captain and quarterback, congratulated Tim.
“Great throw, Troy,” Tim cheered. “That hit me right on the hands!”
The two team captains jogged to the sideline, where the rest of the team was ready to offer more commendations. The attitude of the team had come down momentarily from the highs in the halftime locker room, but they were instantly revived after the long 80-yard touchdown reception. After that, the game was 14-0 in favor of the underdogs.
The Duncanville sideline was feeling lost. They were losing, and they were losing badly. Not only were they behind 14-0, but the momentum was squarely behind the other team. The Duncanville Panthers were not accustomed to something like this, and many had not experienced that feeling since middle school.
The Panther coaches knew they had to get their guys ready to go when they got the ball next. The offense spent a few moments gathering itself on the sidelines, with their coaches having to earn their paycheck during a game for the first time in a long time. “Okay, fellas, we’ve got ourselves a bit of a game here, but I know you all can feel it just like we can here on the sideline. They’ve got themselves a little momentum, but we’re going to take it back!
“Based on what y’all told us at the half, they were having a harder time keeping up with you, and they were also starting to have trouble stopping you, am I right?”
Several of the offensive players acknowledged their coach’s question.
“Yeah, we were getting to them!”
“They were getting a step slower and had much less strength in their attacks.”
The superstar offensive tackle, Antwaun Gibbs, remained silent as he continued drinking from a water bottle and stared at the coach. He sat quietly as they relayed their plans to the rest of the offensive squad. Eventually, the offensive coordinator focused on Antwaun and gestured for him to stand and meet a few feet away from the rest of the team.
“Are you okay, Antwaun?”
Antwaun, though breathing heavily, had played much better after the offense moved to give him some help in blocking Mayhem by using a tight end. “Yeah, Coach, I’m good, but he ain’t slowing down none. Felt like I was making progress with him the more I worked on him, but he’s fast. He’s strong. He’s quick. He’s relentless. He’s fast.”
“You already said fast, Antwaun.”
“Well, it deserves to be repeated.”
The large senior took a moment to take in another long swig of the water bottle and dared his coach with his eyes to say something else.
“Alright, then. Keep up the good work. If you need assistance with anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We can always send in an extra lineman to act like a blocking back or tight end whenever you need the help. Just say when.”
Antwaun finished the last few swallows. He stared his coach in the eyes while buckling on his helmet and muttered under his breath, “When.”
He broke the stare and quickly followed the rest of the offense onto the field for the beginning of the second quarter, leaving his coach flabbergasted. The coach soon decided to keep that last bit of the conversation to himself and rejoined the rest of the team, cheering from the sidelines.
With the long touchdown and the extra point, the Rough Riders were now up 14-0 over the three-time state champion Panthers. The Panthers were not used to being in this position. Over the last four seasons, the Panthers were rarely behind in any of their games, and never more than by a single touchdown, before their inevitable grinding offense simply wore down their opponents.
It seemed the intense and desperate feeling of need to take control of the game was overwhelming among the Panthers. Antwaun admitted to himself that seeing Mayhem hurdle his defensive teammate was impressive. He could also feel the momentum swing solidly toward the Rough Riders. A quick thought had him worried about what he was going to do. The initial idea of losing their last game and final chance for four full seasons of undefeated football and state championships was coming to fruition.
‘No! I can’t have that! We ain’t beat, yet!’ Antwaun thought to himself.
“NO! Fuck that! I ain’t losing, and we ain’t getting beat by these assholes from outta nowhere,” Antwaun was now yelling out loud and scaring a few of his nearby teammates.
Antwaun noticed he was yelling out loud and no longer internalizing his thoughts. He looked at his teammates and decided to follow his instincts.
“We ain’t lifted all those weights. We ain’t sweat through all those two-a-day summer practices just to fall short at the end!”
Antwaun noticed he had everyone’s attention, and his coach signaled to continue. Antwaun was not a “rah, rah” kind of team leader. He was more of a lead-by-example leader, and if you couldn’t keep up, he would keep going. At this particular moment, though, his teammates were feeling beaten, and there was still the majority of the second half of the game to play. So he pulled out something inside himself to encourage his team. He couldn’t do this by himself.
“We got this. I know we got this. We’ve been living on the praise of all those people talking about how good we are, and no one can beat us. Well, look at this,” he waved his arms in the air, indicating the field and the scoreboard above their heads. “We got ourselves a game against a bunch of nobodies from nowhere. They are playing a near-perfect game against us. Notice I said near perfect. We are grinding them down. They are slowing down. They are starting to run out of gas, and we still got half a tank. That’s more than enough to take these mothers out. We are the ‘Ville, and we don’t lose. We are gonna show ‘em. Right now,” Antwaun paused before putting on his helmet and snapping the chin strap on tight. “Let’s go show ‘em what’s up.”
The Panthers all began cheering with a new hope for the game. Antwaun’s speech seemed to have the same kind of effect on his team as Coach O’Shaughnessy’s fired-up pep talk to bring in the second half.
After the kickoff, which went out the back of the end zone, the Panthers’ play took on a new sense of determination for their first series of the second half. On the snap of the ball, Antwaun fired out of his stance and got a little bit underneath Tim’s outstretched arms. With good leverage, Antwaun was able to move Mayhem out of his position, where the play was designed to go. It was a first for Tim to be overpowered on the line of scrimmage. The running back took the hand-off from the quarterback, scurried through the small opening in the defense, and was caught from behind by Frank Robinson after a 12-yard run.
No one questioned anyone on the defense; they simply stilled themselves for the next play. On the next snap, Tim held his position. He didn’t give up anything from either Antwaun’s physical block or the tight end right behind him, but the two were both able to hold Mayhem from moving out of his spot on the field.
Unfortunately, the other side of the defense was unable to hold up against the stronger offensive line. Another crack formed in the defense, allowing the running back to gain another 12 yards on the offense’s right-hand side. Two back-to-back successful runs, both extending the offense’s time of possession. The nagging feeling in the back of their heads was telling the Roosevelt coaches they were losing their momentum. They needed something to happen.
“Okay, fuckers, they’re starting to run a little bit. That’s alright. However, we must start stopping them soon, or they will run right over us. Y’all hear me?” A perplexed defensive captain asked his teammates while in the huddle.
Everyone in the huddle kept quiet and turned to look at Tim. He didn’t feel anything was different other than the first run on him. “Antwaun got lucky on that first, first down. He got under me a bit and got the leverage.”
“So what about the second one?” the senior defensive captain and the middle linebacker asked.
“An excellent and strong double block on me, a broken clock is right twice a day, motherfuckers.” A few of the other guys in the huddle snickered at the joke. Tim continued, “Why didn’t y’all hold up on the other side? I don’t remember them running on my side on that second one. Come on, guys.” Tim almost screwed up and let what he was thinking come out of his mouth: “Shit, I can’t do everything.”
“He’s right. We got this. They ain’t given up just yet. They are gonna try driving us into the ground now, so we gotta be ready for the run,” Frank implored his teammates. “But d-backs,” he cautioned, “watch out for a prayer downfield. That is just the kind of thing they’d do to get momentum firmly back behind them.”
Tim took another opportunity to flex his new position as a newly created team captain. “Yo, we ain’t givin’ up! I’ll drag you motherfuckers through this championship!” Luckily, his teammates took his playful banter as intended and promptly lined up to face off against the Panthers’ vaunted offense once again.
“Should we go ahead and start recording, Johnny?”
JohnnyBengali, an online streamer specializing in wacky and often embarrassing pranks played on unsuspecting people, was watching in disbelief as Tim Murphy hurdled over a would-be tackler on his way to an 80-yard touchdown grab.
“Johnny, did you hear me? Should we go ahead and set up for the introduction of your idea?” Johnny’s long-time producer asked the internet provocateur.
“Did you see that, shit? That’s just unfair. Nobody that big should be able to move like that.”