Lane grumbled under his breath.
“You couldn’t have caught that,” Trevor told him. “Mo couldn’t have caught that. Ja’Marr fucking Chase couldn’t have caught that.”
“Well, maybe he should be out here instead,” Lane complained.
“Hey, shut up. We’retied. Can’t get in the end zone, but we’re still tied. There’s nothing to complain about.”
But it did feel like there was plenty to complain about. Too many miscues. Too much defensive pressure. Too many penalties. Too many plays that just didn’t freaking pan out.
Every single time the Thunder found themselves on the better side of the fifty-yard line, they’d stall out in one of about a hundred frustrating ways.
Trevor could see Aidan on the far end of the bench, tablet out, talking in his earpiece to Zane, up in the booth.
Trying to figure something out.
Some way to break the weird curse they’d somehow stumbled into.
Because if they didn’t, the Patriots would, and they’d lose this game.
Two field goals ago, Mo had stalked back to the sideline, gesturing wildly. Angry at the slightly off throw Aidan had made? Or at his own inability to reel the ball in.
He was slumped down next to Aidan, now.
“We could try that jet-sweep play again?” Trevor suggested.
Lane shot him a look. “That didn’t work the lasttwotimes we tried it. You wanna give it a third go?”
“I want to dosomething, not just sit here and complain,” Trevor said.
Lane sighed. “I’m—we’re gonna figure something out, okay? We are. Before they do. We’ve always done it.”
Maybe that was part of the problem; they’dalwaysdone it. A dream of a fucking season, about to come to a screeching halt in a nightmare ofnot-quite-good-enoughs.
Trevor looked up at the game clock. They had just under seven minutes, and on the field, the Patriots seemed to have decided that if they could keep the ball and slowly, carefully make their way down the field, and keep the clock running, they could run the time out and kick one final field goal to win.
It was conservative game play. Might end up with them going to the Super Bowl.
Trevor held his breath as they set up for another play, but the Thunder’s defense seemed to get what they were doing and they were suddenly pushing faster, harder.
Nate broke through the line and went for the Patriots’ rookie quarterback, chasing him around the backfield until Jordan finally cornered him before he could throw the ball.
It was the turning point the Thunder desperately needed, and the entire bench erupted when the Patriots’ punter jogged out onto the field with their special teams unit.
They were going to punt without scoring, which gave the Thunder one last chance to score.
Aidan pulled them together in a huddle as the cameras went to a TV timeout.
“We could do what New England was doing,” he said, meeting everyone’s eyes in the huddle, his own intense and focused. “Same thing. Take five yards at a time. Tiny little chunks. Go down the field, being conservative as fuck. Send Daws out for one last field goal.”
“Nah, man,” Mo argued.
Aidan grinned, wildly, suddenly. “Fuck no, we’re not doing that shit. We can play. We can ball out. We haven’t been doing it today, but wecan, and I’m tired of pretending we can’t. Let’s get fucking seven. Bury them in the end.”
There were three and a half minutes left on the clock when Griff snapped the ball to Aidan all the way back on the seven-yard line.
They had ninety-three yards to go in three minutes and thirty-six seconds.
They hadn’t gone ninety-three yards in the prior three and a half quarters, but Trevor could feel the renewed energy in the team as Aidan dropped back.
