Making That Happen Is My Job
People around the NFL have another name for the quarterback.
Irreplaceable.
If a team's starting quarterback goes down with an injury and misses the season, then no matter how stacked the rest of the roster is, there is no escaping a dismal record.
Even more than that.
The quarterback has actually changed the rules of football.
"2008!"
"Ah— here we go again."
. 2016, August 17
#-1. Columbus, Ohio, USA
#-2. Ohio State University
Martin Gene Smith, athletic director of Ohio State University, stood before the gathered staff and told a story.
"One single tackle changed the rules of football!"
"Is there anyone here who doesn't know that?"
"Shh— quiet."
"Haah— I'm only complaining because this is boring. Boring."
It was the opening game of the New England Patriots' 2008 NFL season.
Tom Brady took a catastrophic hit.
The culprit was Bernard Pollard, a safety for the Kansas City Chiefs, who came after Tom Brady from behind.
Pollard's tackle aimed below the New England quarterback's knee, and with both his ACL and MCL torn at once, Tom Brady missed the entire season.
That infamous tackle was so consequential that it not only reshaped the NFL landscape that year, it gave birth to an entirely new rule: a defender may not target a quarterback below the knee.
"Which means—!"
"The quarterback is king."
"The quarterback is the absolute pinnacle of every athletic sport there is!"
He spoke with plenty of passion, but the Ohio State football staff had heard this speech so many times it had practically calloused over their ears.
And then, before long.
Their savior appeared.
Head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Urban Meyer.
"Let's get right to it."
At his nod, one of the staff hurried to the projector, worked the laptop, and brought the video up.
It was footage from a high school football game played just last Friday.
The moment the screen lit up—
A boy appeared.
The room reacted instantly.
"Whoa. He's big."
"They say he's big, fast, and strong."
"That kid is really fifteen?"
"Oh, my goodness."
The fifteen-year-old first caught everyone's eye with his enormous frame, and then stunned them all over again with movement no one would ever believe belonged to a first-ever game.
"He moves incredibly well."
"That's just one of his many strengths."
"His head stays perfectly still."
"Wow. That release was lightning quick."
"Did he actually see that blitz coming from the side?"
The boy in the edited highlight reel—Dwayne Moi Stone—had captured the hearts of the men of Ohio State, men who dreamed of stealing glory away from Alabama and Clemson.
Before anyone realized it.
Nothing but gasps of admiration filled the room.
Soon the video ended, and one single thought coiled itself in the mind of every man on the Ohio State football staff.
We have to recruit Dwayne Moi Stone.
No matter what it takes.
This would change the fate of the program.
The men of Ohio State sprang into motion.
"We need to start setting aside budget right now."
"We bring in only the very best."
"Shouldn't we renovate the dorms?"
"And private tutors, too...."
Recruiting—the crown jewel of American college sports—can never be accomplished with a year or two of effort.
Every year, these programs identify and track talented middle schoolers and high schoolers, then send scouts and liaisons at the right moments so they can weave themselves into the fabric of those kids' lives.
And when the moment of choice draws near, they offer the very best package they can.
Scholarships.
Meal plans.
Luxurious dormitories.
Personal coaching.
Academic tutors.
And so on, and so on.
Sometimes it simply isn't possible on that year's budget, so they have to spend wisely and save for the future.
This holds true for every popular collegiate sport.
But among them all, football.
And the quarterback above all—
"Go meet with the university president."
"We're counting on you."
—it would be no exaggeration to say that a single quarterback decides the financial rise or fall of an entire university, so the whole school mobilizes.
Enrollment was still four years away.
Despite that being an eternity of uncertainty for any athlete's future, Ohio State was already scrambling to get ahead of the recruiting race.
Dwayne Moi Stone.
With a single game, the boy had become a big name.
. 2016, August 18
#-1. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
#-2. University of Alabama
Alabama's recruiting machine moved even faster than Ohio State's.
They had already assembled a dedicated task force.
"You're saying pro style?"
"That's right. That's what I see."
"But Moi is...."
"Big. And fast on top of it."
"...."
After the meeting with the special task force assembled to bring in Dwayne Moi Stone, Nick Saban was talking with his coaches.
The topic was Moi's playing style.
"But I'm telling you, that kid is pro style."
"Holy moly...."
In modern football, quarterbacks come in three archetypes.
The Pocket Passer, who delivers throws from behind the line.
The Scrambler, blessed with improvisational escape ability.
And the Dual-Threat, the most common type at the college level.
Because of his sheer size, the media and everyone else in the scene had pegged Dwayne Moi Stone as a dual-threat.
Nick Saban saw it differently.
Moi was a pocket passer.
And more specifically, Pro Style.
Tom Brady.
Peyton Manning.
Drew Brees.
Every one of the greatest quarterbacks in the NFL today belongs to this pro-style archetype.
Of course—
"We'll need to watch a few more games to be sure."
"Still, this wasn't his first game, Coach?"
"Hmm— no, I suppose it wasn't."
Nick Saban had recruited countless promising quarterbacks over the years, and every one of them had achieved tremendous success on the college stage.
But that was precisely where it ended.
None of the quarterbacks who had recently led Alabama to glory had managed to become successful NFL quarterbacks.
The dual-threat style, which demands excellence in both passing and running, may work at the amateur level, but in the NFL—where nothing but monsters among monsters gather—such quarterbacks are reduced to easy prey.
Blake Barnett, currently penciled in as the opening-game starter, was a player whose ceiling was plainly limited.
If anything, the freshman Jalen Hurts was the more promising prospect. That was why Nick Saban stood ready to swap out his starting quarterback at any moment.
The reason he hadn't simply gone with Jalen Hurts from the start was that cohesion with the team mattered just as much as the quarterback position itself.
"Which is exactly why that kid astonishes me."
"Kahuku definitely had... a senior class, didn't it?"
"One of them, yes."
Nick Saban nodded and continued.
"I have no idea what he did during preparation, but a freshman kid playing football for the very first time won over the head coach and the entire offense. That's not something you manage just by being big and quick."
"That's true."
"He must have shown unmistakable brilliance and leadership both. Without that, there's no explaining the opening-game start."
What if that first game had gone poorly?
None of this evaluation would exist, of course.
But Moi had delivered a debut so jaw-dropping that Nick Saban had watched, with his own eyes, the trust radiating from Moi's fellow offensive players on the field.
And above all—
There was one moment that had truly left an impression.
"That kid never once looked at his wristband."
"Really?!"
A quarterback must master dozens—sometimes over a hundred—plays.
And then some.
Each teammate's individual traits, their condition on any given day.
Down to the very length of their strides.
Literally everything must be crammed into the head, blended together, and aligned with the play the coach calls.
That isn't merely difficult—it borders on impossible.
Which is why quarterbacks are permitted a cheat sheet.
That is the wristband.
"I've replayed the footage again and again. Fox's broadcast and our own film, cross-checked over and over."
"Holy...."
"The more I learn about him, the more fascinating the boy becomes. He carries himself like someone who's been playing football his whole life. As if he's been at it for a very, very long time at that. Which, of course, is impossible."
The lavish praise kept pouring out of Nick Saban.
What it meant was obvious.
The best team in NCAA Division 1.
The best coach in NCAA Division 1.
Even in this era of Alabama's dominion, Dwayne Moi Stone was a quarterback boasting overwhelming talent.
The moment he joined, he would lift the entire program another level.
Perhaps even a perfect undefeated season—three straight—was not beyond dreaming.
"It gets busy from September, but I'm heading back to Hawaii again tomorrow."
"Yes, sir. You absolutely should."
"Right."
The more he analyzed.
The larger Nick Saban's desire to recruit grew.
And that desire was about to lead the nation's finest college football coach back to Hawaii one more time.
Tomorrow.
On the football field of Kahuku High School.
Dwayne Moi Stone would make his home debut.
. 2016, August 19
#-1. Oahu, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Kahuku CDP, Honolulu
#-3. Kahuku High School
#-4. The Football Field
The season's home opener.
The school had declared today NCD.
No Class Day.
Simply put: a day with no classes.
In exchange, the principal summoned every student and their families to the football field—and among them were my own family.
"Um, guys."
"Whoa."
Sol-Jay gawked at the enormous family gathered to one side.
Kaonohi, right behind him, was no different.
Hawaii has its fair share of big families, and the Huamatu clan was indeed out there in full force.
But there was no question which side caught the eye.
Everyone over there was absolutely massive.
"Your dad is seriously intimidating, man."
"Right?"
"Yeah. I nearly peed myself a little, I swear."
"Kukukuku. Idiot."
Earlier, while we were out on the field preparing, shouts of "Fake Samoan!" had kept erupting from the section where the Huamatus had gathered.
The school tried to intervene, but a few worked-up men wouldn't listen, and just as the atmosphere threatened to turn ugly, my father and my uncles walked straight toward the Huamatu side.
And here was the most fascinating part.
Silence fell in an instant.
Over there, adults and children were exactly the same.
Grandfather grumbled that only sorry excuses for men had shown up without a single real one among them, but as for me, I was simply relieved to be a Stone and not a Huamatu.
Anyway.
Today, I had one more reason to play my best.
I wasn't about to hand the Huamatus anything to latch onto.
I willed myself into total focus.
"Let's go. It's starting."
"Yeah."
Today, as always, we opened with the Haka.
One difference from the away game:
"EKE-!!!! AKE-!!!!"
"HI-!!!!"
"EKE-!!!! AKE-!!!!"
"HI-!!!!"
Everyone in the stands wore red.
And the roar was maybe four times louder.
Not a word of a lie.
It felt like a plane screaming past overhead.
"KEI TE PAPA PAKANGA!!!!!"
"HE IWI KOTAHI!!!"
.
.
"MAKAMAKA!!!!"
"HA-!!!!"
For the Haka's finish, we thrust our tongues out as far as they would go, bulged our eyes, and pulled the most terrifying faces we could muster.
Honestly, this works far better against mainland teams.
Hawaii folks are used to it, after all.
But mainland boys scare easily.
Truly.
I watched it happen countless times in my past life.
As the Haka ended and thunderous applause came pouring down—
We huddled to one side and prepared for the game.
Fox Sports was broadcasting today, too.
Their booth stood set up over there.
(Gus Johnson) — Fox Sports Play-by-Play:
"I love this. I might be getting addicted soon. There's a special charm you only find at a Hawaii football game. And look—he's on camera right now. Dwayne Moi Stone! In a single game, quite literally, he turned the entire nation upside down."
(Joe Davis) — Fox Sports Analyst:
"If this trajectory continues, he'll be more popular than the starting quarterbacks of most major college programs. Which, again, is something with no precedent whatsoever. He reminds me of LeBron James—but Moi is a full three years younger than LeBron was back then."
When was it again.
Recently, anyway.
It wasn't intentional.
Somehow or other, I ended up looking at Sioele's Twitter.
He had retweeted a particular post—one written by his own mother—and it read as follows:
That's absurdly hilarious. 😂
Looking at that, here's what I thought.
You really don't know anything yet, do you.
Back in my past life, just as in this one, roughly 80% of any college football broadcast was quarterback talk.
In extreme cases it broke past 90%.
And it makes perfect sense—the starting quarterback of an elite college program commands more name recognition than even a starter on a professional team in another sport.
Just look at the men anointed the "Big Three Quarterbacks" of this year's NFL Draft—they appeared in the media far, far more often than a pitcher racking up ten wins in Major League Baseball.
So for Fox, broadcasting nothing more than a high school football game, zeroing in on me—the very reason the broadcast got greenlit in the first place—was the only natural move.
Today would no doubt be more of the same.
Just before kickoff.
The coach raised his voice.
"Alright—! Returners!!"
"OORAH-!!"
"Nothing to it! Don't drop the ball! Run as far as your legs will carry you!! And linemen!!"
"OORAH!"
"You crumble easy, and there's a reckoning after the game!!"
"OORAH!!"
The exchange just now was about the kickoff.
In the away game, we had kicked off first.
But this time, we were in the kick-return position.
In other words, the Returner role.
Our job would be to field the opponent's kickoff and advance as far as possible—and since a quarterback isn't needed for that, I would wait on the bench for now.
Instead: five offensive linemen.
Four fullbacks stationed at the 25-to-30-yard mark.
And two returners lining up deepest of all.
The returner role usually goes to the running backs.
They're the best runners on the team.
Rarely—though it has happened—someone else takes it.
The offensive line up front blocks the opponent's defensive line, while the fullbacks hold the second level and clean up anyone who breaks through the first.
Apart from the linemen, this entire configuration shifts constantly.
Five fullbacks with a single returner, for instance.
Or the fullback positions themselves can be adjusted.
There are some fairly intricate rules governing all of it, too.
But for now, the basics are about that much.
Tweeeeet—!
With the referee's signal, the opposing team boomed the ball down into our territory.
The man who fielded it was a senior—Elvis.
Elvis Vakapuna.
Harmon is the team's first-string running back in standard offensive situations, but when it comes to returning kicks, Elvis is simply better.
Even now, Elvis charged forward like a man possessed.
We'd built our wedge and set it beautifully.
Before anyone knew it, we were past midfield—
Only at the opponent's 40-yard line did the tackle come, and the spot of attack was set.
A thoroughly satisfying result.
I threw both hands into the air and roared.
"That's it, Elvis!! That's exactly it!!"
To say it once more.
A quarterback must get along with every member of the offense.
He has to be their friend—and their leader, too.
Catching every little thing and offering encouragement without fail, until the entire offense follows him of its own accord—that, too, is a virtue of the quarterback.
Fail at it, and—
Your job as the starter is taken away before you know it.
Right after I sent up that cheer—
The coach came over.
"Let's go, Moi. Show them exactly who you are."
"Oorah!"
As the two teams swapped their players on and off the field, I put on my helmet and stepped onto the field—and a colossal cheer erupted from the stands.
And even amid all of it—
I could pick out my family's voices.
They hit my ears, plain as day.
"Go, Get 'em Moi!!!"
"LET'S GO!!!"
"Fightingoooooh-!!!!"
Haha.
That last one was Uncle Iwai.
Although—my father's voice, still nowhere to be heard.
There he is.
Playing it cool, as usual.
He even took paid leave to come out here, and that's all he's got?
Couldn't he enjoy himself a little more?
Well.
Getting him to—is my job, isn't it.
Steeled by one more round of fighting spirit, I sprinted off toward where my teammates were waiting.
(Gus Johnson):
"SB Nation has awarded Dwayne Moi Stone a 120 rating—for the first time since they began publishing their national high school football recruiting rankings. Just how far this boy will go, nobody can even begin to guess. And once again, this is something entirely without precedent."
(Joe Davis):
"Since last week's game ended, I have become a genuine fan of this young man. Even right now, I can't wait to see what he does next."
(Gus Johnson):
"Who wouldn't be? Just look at this. He's raising his voice with total command inside the huddle. The coach's mouth isn't moving. Who could have imagined we'd witness this in a high school football league? You can bet the college programs are watching this exact thing, too."
(Joe Davis):
"This is my first time ever seeing a high schooler direct his offense through the huddle and audibles. It's remarkable."
Huddle: The play-calling meeting held during the window between the end of one offensive possession and the next play (25 seconds / 40 seconds).
Audible: After relaying the coach's called play in the huddle, the quarterback reads the movements of the opposing defense before receiving the snap and communicates what he sees to his teammates—sometimes changing the offensive line assignments or receiver routes, and on occasion even calling a timeout.