Million-Dollar Throw (10 page)

On the way to the game Abby had said, “I used to tell people I was your publicist. But it’s sort of starting to look as if you don’t need one, Brady.”

They were in the backseat of the used Taurus Nate’s dad had been driving lately, this car a lot smaller than the Cherokee they used to have.

Nate said, “And this would be your way of trying to relax me?”

Abby said, “I think the only people
not
here today are
Entertainment Tonight
and
Access Hollywood.
”

She looked as happy sitting next to him as if they were going to a party or to the mall.

“Can I be serious for a second?” Nate said.

“No,” she said. “Are you serious about being serious? This is
way
too much fun.”

“The thing that sketches me out about the whole thing,” Nate said, “is that usually you have to actually
do
something to get this kind of attention. I’m just a guy who got his name picked out of a hat, basically. It’s not like I did anything to deserve this.”

“Okay, now I’m gonna be serious, but only for a second,” Abby said. “
You
don’t get to decide stuff like that. Nobody gets to decide who deserves anything.”

She turned and looked out the window when she said the last part. She certainly had a point. The last person who deserved what was happening was Abby.

He decided to change the subject.

“One promise today, Abs? No sudden moves into the open field. Or the open bleachers.”

“Good one, Brady. Now
you
make
me
a promise, or I may have to beat on you until we get to the field.”

Nate went into a crouch, even with his seat belt fastened, like a fighter trying not to get punched. “No,” he said. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“You know how you’re always going on and on about how good I am with color?” she said. “How about you make sure you’re throwing to the right color uniforms today?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

Abby turned now in the backseat, facing Nate, and patted her heart twice. “No kidding around?” she said. “You’re going to be great today.”

Nate always trusted Abby on everything, on big things and small things and just about everything in between.

He wanted to trust her today more than he ever had.

It was another home game for Valley, so they were in their white uniforms. Manorville wore the same cool deep blue that the St. Louis Rams did, even had ram horns on the sides of their helmets. Last year Valley had beaten them in the last game of the regular season to knock them out of a shot at the league championship, number one versus number two, same as this year. Nate had thrown three touchdown passes that day and run for another and even scored two of their conversions himself. He had as much of what he called a “No. 12 day”—a Brady day—as he’d ever had in his life.

The difference between that day and today, he was thinking halfway through the second quarter, was that the last time he’d faced the Manorville Rams, he hadn’t felt as if the whole world were watching every move he made, whether he was on the field or on the sidelines or just getting a drink of Gatorade.

It made him think of one of Malcolm’s favorite expressions, from when they’d be hating on a video or a homework assignment or sometimes a player on the other team who was annoying them: He felt like he ought to be sipping on some “Hater-ade,” because he was righteously hating all the attention, the idea that he was being followed and that there was nowhere for him to hide. And knowing at the same time that his mood wasn’t lousy just because of the TV crew and the reporter from
SI,
but because he was just one-for-eight so far in the game and that one was a four-yard completion to his tight end, Bradley Jacob, that he could have thrown lefty.

All week long he had tried to make a joke out of the Blair game, at least when he was with his teammates, and they had done the same with him as a way of putting it behind all of them. Pete even called the game
The Blair Glitch Project,
after the old movie, telling Nate that his version was scarier than the original.

Now the first quarter and a half of the Manorville game was beginning to feel like a sequel.

Valley was winning, but only because of their defense. Malcolm and Sam seemed to be all over the field on just about every play, disrupting everything Manorville tried to do on offense. It was Sam who caused the fumble that set up a twenty-yard touchdown run by LaDell. And Malcolm who batted away a fourth-down pass from the Valley 2-yard line, keeping the game at 7-0 for Valley.

So Manorville, who had as many weapons on offense as Valley did, including the best running back their age in the state—a kid as big as a nose tackle, named Johnny Farr—was having as much trouble putting the ball into the end zone as Nate was.

But none of that was making Nate feel any better.

Because the more throws he missed, the more he felt as if he had a giant spotlight on him. No matter how hard he tried, he kept looking over to the sidelines to where the cameraman from
Today
was, seeing him at one end of the bench or the other, watching him run down behind the goalposts one time.

With six minutes left in the half, the Patriots began a drive on their 35-yard line. On first down Nate threw the ball downfield on a fade route, missing badly, the ball not anywhere near Pete, landing ten yards out of bounds. On second down he went with a short pass, a little five-yard curl, and bounced the ball in front of Bradley this time. Looking over to the sideline and seeing the camera right on him, again, Nate wondered if the camera could see right inside him the way Abby could.

With the defense expecting another pass on third-and-ten, Coach Hanratty crossed them up and called for a running play, LaDell finding a big enough opening, right up the middle, for fifteen yards and a first down. Nate saw the rest of the guys on offense breaking into smiles as they huddled up. Nate wasn’t smiling, though. He wanted to disappear.

And he pretty much
did
disappear after LaDell’s run, because Coach Hanratty stayed on the ground now, calling running play after running play. Nate might have had no confidence at that moment, but Malcolm and the boys up front had, and they were suddenly opening up holes big enough to drive school buses right through.

Ben ran for twenty more yards.

Then LaDell took a pitch—Nate could still throw underhanded, like he was with Abby in the park—and ran for twelve more.

The Patriots finally ended up at the Manorville 15-yard line, third-and-eight, ninety seconds left in the first half, a chance to go up two touchdowns on a day when Nate had been sailing the ball around the field like it was a Frisbee.

The hot read on the board was the second one:

“FadE.”

Capital
E
on the end, for Eric Gaffney. He would split out by himself on the right side, drive hard to the middle of the field on the cornerback covering him, really selling the fake, even trying to get an inside shoulder on the guy. Once he did, once he had a step on him, he was supposed to fade back in the other direction, toward the right corner of the end zone.

That was the play Nate relayed to his teammates in the huddle, telling Malcolm to snap him the ball on the first sound he made and for everybody to be paying attention. Everybody nodded, knowing it was a perfect play to run in this situation.

Everybody ran it to perfection.

Everybody except Nate, that is.

He took two steps back, carrying the ball high toward his right shoulder, dropping back into the pocket. Yet those two steps were as far as he was going in that direction, because Nate Brodie had no intention of passing the ball.

He waited just long enough to sell the fake, even to his own teammates. Then he took off running. He could have sworn he heard Malcolm yell, “What the . . .” as Nate ran right past his block.

Nate saw only open field in front of him. The only Manorville Ram with a decent shot at him was the middle linebacker, who’d backed up into coverage, trying to spot LaDell as he’d circled out of the backfield. When the linebacker realized it wasn’t a pass, saw Nate running open throttle at him down the middle of the field as if he planned to right run through the goalposts, he got his feet tangled up and nearly went down.

Nate didn’t even need to juke the guy to glide right past him, almost like he was riding a wave.

So Nate went into the end zone untouched, tossed the ball to the nearest ref, and ran right for Eric Gaffney, standing in the corner of the end zone, no blue jersey even close to him.

“Sorry, dude,” Nate said.

“
Sorry?”
Eric Gaffney said. “That audible was dirtier than a
sewer
.”

“It’s not an audible when only one guy knows the play,” Nate said.

“Long as the one guy is our QB.” Eric grinned. “And long as it works, of course.”

Then Malcolm had Nate in a bear hug, carrying him to the sidelines, Nate finally telling his center to put him down or they were going to get an excessive celebration penalty.

“Brilliance,” Malcolm said. “Sketchin’, kickin’ brilliance.”

Nate just shrugged, like it was no big deal. There was still a whole half to play. No point in telling Malcolm or Eric or any of his teammates that brilliance had nothing to do with it.

Wasn’t even a factor.

Fear factor was more like it.

Their quarterback had just been afraid to put the ball up.

V
alley didn’t score in the third quarter. But they didn’t have to, because the defense continued to be everything on this day that Nate was not: confident, aggressive. Almost arrogant. Coach Burnley always told them that there had to be a level of arrogance in sports, not acting like you were better than the other guy or showing him up, just
believing
that you were, on every single snap of the ball. That’s the way Malcolm and Sam and all the up-front guys were playing today, and when they weren’t, the guys in the defensive backfield kept coming up and making big stops themselves.

On offense, Nate was content to put the ball in LaDell’s belly, hand it off to him or Ben or even Eric when Coach Hanratty would have three backs lined up behind Nate. He wasn’t taking any chances with his play calls, protecting a fourteen-point lead that seemed twice that much the longer the game went on.

Nate hadn’t forgotten why the television crew was at the game. He saw the
Sports Illustrated
writer hanging around their sideline. Nate felt them watching every move he made even as he tried to ignore them, reminding himself it was only going to be like this for this one Saturday, that he just had to deal with it until the end of the game.

He told himself that Tom Brady’s whole life was having cameras and reporters all around him, all eyes on him, even when he went to visit his girlfriend in New York City, even when he was bringing her flowers.

But there were times when he was standing with the coaches, when the Valley defense was on the field giving Manorville another three-and-out series, that Nate had the urge to turn around, look right into the camera and say, “You’re following the wrong guy.”

But he didn’t.

He just kept cheering on his defense, then running back on the field with the offense, killing a little more clock, getting deeper into the game, never letting on to anybody how much it was killing him inside to play football this way, as if the forward pass hadn’t been invented yet.

Valley finally faced a third-and-one. Only a couple of weeks ago, Nate would have loved a moment like this, knowing the defense would be afraid to stack the line on him, knowing that if they did, the best thirteen-year-old quarterback around could go to a play fake and put the ball in the air and end the game right there.

But not today.

Everybody knew Valley was going to run the ball again. So the Rams did stack the line, and stuffed LaDell for no gain, and Valley was forced to punt.

And then Manorville’s punt returner, the smallest kid in the game, broke off a return that seemed to go for about 150 yards because of the way he kept crisscrossing the field. Even Nate felt a cheer rise up inside him when he crossed the goal line and promptly sat down in the grass, as if he was too exhausted to do anything else.

If that wasn’t enough of a shock, Nate watched as Manorville lined up to
kick
the conversion, and watched their kicker drill the ball through the uprights for two points, and just like that it wasn’t 14-0 for Valley anymore, it was 14-8.

A one-touchdown game, with three minutes left, and with Manorville believing in themselves again. All of a sudden Nate knew the Patriots couldn’t be content to just run the ball three times and kill a couple of minutes of clock before punting. The Rams still had all of their time-outs. If the Patriots didn’t want to give them the ball back, give them a chance to win the game, the Patriots had to make first downs.