Page 93 of After the Snap

That’s not an answer, Pea.

Yes, Old Man. I’ll be awake.

I set the phone beside me and reach for my other cleat. The film will still be waiting when I get on the plane, and nothing I find on it will change what Calliope watched happen today. When I call her after we land, I’ll still be the quarterback who threw the interception, lost the fumble, and never got the ball back to prove he could fix the second one. For the first time, I won’t make her wait for a better version of me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jubal

By Wednesday, I’ve watched the fumble and interception from multiple angles, and Sullivan open underneath enough times that I can draw the exact distance between him and the nearest linebacker from memory. But none of that gives us another possession to win the game.

I shut my tablet when King drops into the chair across from me and puts both feet on the edge of the table as Sullivan comes in behind him, carrying two coffees, and takes the chair beside King.

“You know,” King says, with an offended look, “some people share.”

“Some people buy their own coffee.”

“I was busy supporting our quarterback through adversity.”

I look at the empty table in front of him. “You’ve been here twelve seconds.”

“Emotionally, I’ve been here all week.”

Sullivan snorts into his cup while King settles deeper into the chair, apparently satisfied with the contribution he’s made to my recovery. The rest of the offense filters in around us, complaining about the early meeting, because obviously, our bye week hasn’t improved anyone’s opinion of mornings. Nobody lowers their voice when I look up or gives me one of those careful nods meant to ask if I’m okay without asking.

It is the same room it was before Houston. We’re 3–1, and I’ve played long enough to know I’d never make it through an entire season without giving someone something ugly to freeze on film. Coach spent the last two days going through Houston with me until I knew exactly what went wrong and what I should’ve done differently, but knowing has always come with another game where I can prove I learned from it. This time, the bye makes me wait, and some part of me has been waiting for that to change something here.

Coach walks in carrying his play sheet and a stack of printouts that makes King quietly remove his feet from the table. He passes the first packet to me before continuing around the room.

“We’ve got four weeks of film now, which means every team we play after the bye has four weeks to figure out how we play, what we avoid, and what we’re doing without realizing it. I want us to find those patterns before somebody else can use them against us.”

I look down at the packet as he moves around the table. The first few pages break down our personnel groupings and formations, followed by what we’ve shown on early downs, third down, and in the red zone. There’s a separate section on protections, including how often I’ve changed them at the line and what defensive looks have triggered those adjustments.

Houston is already part of the data, no different from the first three games, except that this time we lost. It’s four more quarters of film showing another defense, what I might do if they give me the same looks, and our job is to make sure they don’t know what I’m going to do with them.

Coach Quinn reaches the front of the room and opens his own copy. “Duvall, I want you on protections. Go through every adjustment you’ve made over the last four weeks and tell me where we’re getting predictable. Bring me your notes before we sit down with the line Friday.”

“Got it.”

He moves on to Sullivan before I’ve finished writing the assignment at the top of the page. There was a time in Houston when a bad game meant walking into the building on Monday and feeling the questions before anyone asked them. Sometimes they came from the coaches and the media, but I was asking worse ones of myself. Eleven years taught me how quickly a quarterback can turn one bad decision into a referendum on every decision that came before it. I came into this room on Monday expecting Coach to hold me accountable for Sunday’s loss, but I didn’t expect him to hand me the same responsibility I would’ve had if we’d beaten Houston. Some part of me had been bracing for him to question whether trusting me with this team had been the right choice.

I run my thumb along the edge of the packet before turning the page, and when I look across the table, King has drawn something in the margin of his.

“Is that supposed to be Coach? You gave him horns.”

“Self-scouting is private,” King grumbles, covering it with his forearm.

Coach stops talking long enough for King to straighten in his chair with an expression of such immediate innocence that I have to look down before I laugh. “Something you want to share, King?”

“No, sir. Deeply engaged in this moment of personal growth over here.”

Sullivan makes a sound suspiciously close to a cough beside him, and Coach stares at King for another second before continuing. The meeting keeps moving, and I eventually stop waiting for Coach to circle back to me. I settle into the protections instead, looking for the places where I’ve made us predictable and finding enough to keep my attention on the pages in front of me. This is the part after a bad game that I understand. Once I know what went wrong, I can correct it, and eventually, I get another chance to see the same look and get it right. Usually, that chance makes a bad game easier to carry because I only have to live with the mistakes until I can replace them with something better. The bye takes that away. Waiting another week should drive me fucking crazy, but it’s harder to feel like I’ve got something to prove when no one here is asking me to prove it.

Coach eventually closes his packet and tells us we’re done until Friday, along with the usual warning to stay out of trouble during the little freedom the bye gives us. My ribs are aching again when I cross the parking lot, though they’re nothing like they were Sunday night. Treatment tomorrow should help, and after that I can finish the protection notes while everything from this morning is still fresh. There are a couple of third-down looks I want to pull up before Friday.

I’m mentally rearranging one of them as I reach my truck when my phone buzzes in my pocket. A message from Pea is on the screen, and whatever I was just trying to solve disappears.

I did absolutely nothing productive for three hours today. I think I deserve congratulations.