Free Guts vs Glory by Jason B. Osoff

week of practices
during the playoffs felt like a whole new season.  Due to my slump, I had not
been looking forward to playing our Friday night games during the regular
season.  Who would, after working so hard all week long to end up with no
tackles?  But once I saw how effective our new defensive plan was, I had life
again.  Our new defensive end was relieving the pressure I was facing, which
allowed me to feel like I could make a difference.  During the practices, I
knew I was capable of a great game at the end of the week so I pushed even
harder to see it through.
    It didn’t take long to see of the
effectiveness of the defensive change.  For the second week in a row, I was
able to play like myself again.  Just like last year, we knew we would be
facing a soft opponent in the upcoming playoff because the state athletic
association typically paired the best records against the worst for the first
game.  Since we didn’t lose a game all season, we were playing against a team
who barely made it to the playoffs.  We still played like it was do or die for
us, though.  I ended up with a personal best 7 tackles for loss in that blowout;
4 of those came from tackling the quarterback.  Mike didn’t have quite the game
I had, though.  The coach wanted to try different plays, and wanted to see how
different players handled the pressure of the playoffs, so he used that first
game to observe both.  Mike managed to break 100 yards, but his only touchdown
came from a kickoff return.
    During practice in the second round
of playoffs, the coach wanted to try something new.  We were going to continue
working on new plays that we hadn’t used during the regular season.  For some
of those to work, Mike had to go from running back to receiver.  Needless to
say, his catching ability was nowhere near his running ability.  To make up for
that, rather than running all week in practice, the coach had him practice
catching.  Mike didn’t just play catch with one of the quarterbacks; he had to
practice catching the ball while running plays, while running backwards, and
even while running with his back to the quarterback.  It was ugly to watch at
first, but it gradually got better.
    Although Mike practiced all week,
he wasn’t used to catch the ball at all during the game.  I’m pretty sure this
had something to do with his lack of talent at catching.  His talent at
running, however, continued to improve as he scored 3 touchdowns.  I didn’t
have as many tackles as I did the previous week, but my tackle streak did
continue.  Trevor was able to add a couple of tackles as our defense kept their
entire offense under 100 total yards.  That was probably one of the best victories
for our defense.  Not only did we stop them from scoring, but we also stopped
them from gaining much yardage.  Whatever we were doing was working and needed
to continue.
    We weren’t as lucky during the
third round of playoffs, as the team we were matched against was able to score
4 touchdowns.  We tried our hardest to prepare for that team because we knew
they had one of the best quarterbacks in the state, but clearly we weren’t as
prepared as we should’ve been.  Luckily, their defense wasn’t as good as their
offense.  That game turned into a shootout, giving a victory to the team that
scored last.  Because of a great coach with great time management, we were the
team that had the ball last.
    That win put us into the
semi-finals for the second year in a row.  The nerves went away, but the
excitement did not.  We knew what to expect from that game, but we also knew
that that game was the only thing between us and the finals.  We kept our cool
though, and kept our heads in the game.  Even when we struggled in the first
half, we stuck to our game plan of letting Mike run all over the other team,
and using our talented receivers to relieve some of the pressure.  We also
stuck with our strong defensive line that moved like a college