Zag
this story might be continued…
Zag scanned the field in front of him, the cornerback shading his outside and the safety cheating over. Perfect, he thought, expecting double coverage, though his instincts told him that they were figuring on an outside route. He had watched enough film on the cornerback to know he was gonna jump inside and try to shadow him. No problem. He also knew that the safety would bite on his outside move. The hash would be wide open; all he needed was a second or two and a decent throw and another six points would be up on the board.
He couldn’t have told you why, only that it was one of those things, that he saw stuff other folks evidently did not. Moving things. It was like this crazy computer game was sitting there in his brain, a software program that he had created and that he could see in motion before anyone else. They would ask him how he did it, how he could somehow make those moves and be where no one expected him to be? Except his quarterback, of course. He would shrug and tell him he was lucky, he guessed. Hard work, extra film, yada, yada, yada. But the truth is that he could see it before it happened.
“Blue thirty-seven, blue thirty-seven. Omaha, Omaha, Dixie!” barked the QB. He clapped his hands and the ball was snapped.
Zag head-faked inside and sure enough the corner was inside without a touch. Zag was gliding upfield a couple of yards inside the right hash and he looked into the eyes of the safety, who was backpedaling like a mother, directly in front of him by maybe seven yards. Zag liked to look into their eyes, found that it intimidated them. Everybody else looked at their hips, or somewhere on the torso, but Zag had learned to stare ‘em down, get in their heads. This was going to be an easy six.
He hit eighteen yards and gave that itsy-bitsy body twitch, the one that they would not bite on, the move to set up the real move, and he planted his inside foot and then gave it all - head, body, and the eyes, yes, those elusive eyes - everything showing that he was cutting hard outside. The corner and safety both bought it and for a split second the three of them all seemed to be going in the same general direction, outside on a flag route. But, that was only for a micro-second, really, as Zag planted his outside foot, noticed the safety’s eyes convey a look of oh shit and sliced back toward the hashmark. The coast was clear, baby, all that was needed was a decent pass straight up the hashmarks. He swiveled his head back towards the line of scrimmage to get a bead on the ball.
Peripherally he saw the other safety trying to gain ground from the opposite side of the field. Good luck! he thought. Thank God the ball had already been released, making its way downfield. But something wasn’t right. He could sense that. The ball should have been streaking straight up the hash, but instead seemed to be drifting inside. He instantly reckoned that it could be a close call, that he might need to adjust his angle right now so that he could snatch the ball without running into the other safety. He made the slight adjustment.
Things happen really fast in football, but within the confines of a player’s mind, they can slow down and last a lifetime. This happened to Zag Jefferson, the All-American junior wide receiver, expected to be the first pick in next years draft, on this particular play, on this particularly brilliant Saturday afternoon in late October. His gift for seeing moving things allowed him to feel what was about to happen. He knew where the television cameras were, the angles they had. He could sense the fans leaning forward on their seats, popcorn getting knocked over. He could even feel his position coach’s belly tightening up in anticipation of a close call. He thought about Grandma Bess sitting in her rocking chair shelling peas on her porch in rural Alabama, enjoying the Autumn breeze, leaning a little closer toward the TV that cousin Lenny would wheel out for her. At the last second, the instant he realized that there was going to be a collision if he wanted to catch the ball, and a probable brutal one at that, he even considered letting it hit the ground to protect himself. But, Zag never did that. He assumed it crossed every wide receiver’s mind, at least every now and then. And though it did pop into his mind, he let the thought go as soon as it came.
Zag followed the ball with his eyes and knew that it would hit his hands at precisely the same instant that the safety’s helmet would hit his helmet, he could tell that. He could see moving things, he could see the ball, the helmet, the ball, the helmet. Most would have no idea how, that in the mind of Zag Jefferson, the ball and the helmet had slowed down, merged almost into one, an intricate pattern, a dance.
The ball hit his hands…
———————
For a second or two the stadium had lurched and rocked and swayed as over 90,000 people had jumped to their feet, a crescendoing, pulsating, collective scream as the home crowd anticipated the big play. Then, in that split second when Zag’s neck snapped back and his body plopped onto the stadium turf as if hit by a sniper, the air was sucked out of the stadium, a massive pull into the lungs of all the fans. It sounded like a drowning man inhaling one last gulp of air upon surfacing from certain death, magnified 90,000+ times.
Davin Juston, the color commentator for the primetime broadcast, for the first time in anyone’s memory, had nothing to say. You could have heard a tick sucking blood. The only voice heard was that of a child, a young boy about seven rows up on the home team’s side, who had turned to his dad and said, “Daddy, he ain’t moving.”
A sea of trainers rolled out on the field from both sides. The safety wasn’t moving much either, kind of rolling back and forth. But Zag hadn’t even flinched since crumpling onto the turf. Within seconds he was no longer visible, an amoeba-like movement of bluish-gold hovering over him.
———————
Zag wondered what all the fuss was about. He wondered what all those guys dressed in powder blue and gold were doing huddled together on the football field near the twenty-yard line. They damn sure looked concerned, one of them - hey, that’s Don Jacks, the head trainer - yelling frantically, it seemed, toward the sideline. Zag raised his head from where he stood to see what Jacks was yelling at.
That’s when Zag realized where he was.