What Is a Quarterback?

#. August 17, 2018

#-1. United States, Oahu, Hawaii

#-2. Honolulu CDP, Waianae

#-3. Waianae High School

#-4. The Football Field

Beep!

Beeep, beeeep!

In order to make the horses find water on their own, the coach and I had hatched a plan. And that plan was this.

"Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere you're touching me... Ah!!"

"This won't do. Let's get a cart out here."

"Yes, please."

I was pretending my left shoulder couldn't move at all, doing my utmost to put on the most agonizing performance of my life. As the trainers helped me onto the cart and laid me down, my teammates crowded around me with worry written all over their faces. I fought desperately to keep from smiling. Seriously, look at these guys' faces.

"You'll be okay."

"It's nothing serious. I'm sure of it."

"I hope it's not an injury."

"Moi..."

The cart rolled away, carrying me toward the parking lot, and from there I climbed onto the bus. And the moment I did—

"Damn. That took too long."

"Haha. You're all right, though?"

"Of course. Absolutely."

I spun my perfectly healthy left arm around in a full circle. The original plan had been to go down early in the third quarter. But see, the thing is, you have to get tackled properly for that to work. Even though I was deliberately holding onto the ball in the pocket longer than usual, that godforsaken Waianae D-line just couldn't manage to lay a hit on me. To be precise, it was the left side—my blind side. Waianae's right tackle was absolutely terrible. I'd nearly watched the whole plan fall apart.

"When Gavin told me about it, I thought you'd lost your mind."

"Haha. Do you still think that?"

"Hm— it's a bit extreme, I'll admit. But I'd say it's necessary."

"Right?"

Today, I had faked an injury and left the field on purpose. Naturally, I had no intention of returning to the game. But I had no intention of losing, either, which was why I'd pushed hard to pile up points in the first half. Fortunately, that had worked out. Anyway.

"Twenty-eight points to Punahou. And today, if the Waianae receivers had caught just two more passes, we'd have given up at least 25. In this state, we can't beat the strong teams—Saint Louis, Mililani, Campbell, schools like that."

"So? How long are you planning to play act?"

"Two weeks."

"Two whole weeks?"

"For starters."

After today, we had no games until September 7th. That gave us roughly three weeks of breathing room. So even if I spent two of them milking an injured arm, it wouldn't affect the season one bit. Workouts and training I could do separately. We did have a few kids staying in the new dorm that had been built nearby, but sneaking in practice wasn't exactly difficult. The late-night weight room was my private monopoly to begin with.

"You can put me in an arm sling, right?"

"Of course."

Slinging my arm up to sell the injury as convincingly as possible, I got off the bus and walked back toward the field. Now, let's see. The score.

Fantastic.

We gave up eight more points while I was gone?

With twelve minutes still left in the fourth quarter, we'd allowed eight additional points. Unbelievable.

My teammates came up beside me and asked.

"Is it bad?"

"Probably."

"Where exactly did you get hurt?"

"Neck and collarbone. And the shoulder too. Won't go up."

"...Damn."

I had to repeat the same explanation over and over after that. Doing this on loop is exhausting. Couldn't somebody take over for me?

And then it happened.

"FUCK!!"

The coach let loose ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a stream of profanity.

"Tiger!! What the hell was that?!! Why are you throwing the ball THERE?! Focus! FOCUS!!"

Tiger, the one subbed in for me, was completely out of sorts. The offense ran on the snap, but he got sacked at the fifteen-yard line, right in front of the end zone. Now, the O-line had honestly done their job by that point—five seconds of protection was a lot to ask for and get. But Tiger couldn't just fail to throw; he failed to hold onto the ball too, coughing up a fumble. Waianae pounced on it first and stole the possession.

In the end, the coach ripped off his headset and hurled it to the ground. Sure, we were still up by thirty points. But a play like that made your blood boil no matter what. If I'd been out there in his place, I'd have unleashed a string of expletives without mercy.

Too harsh on a high schooler, you say? Not at all. There's no such thing on a football field. If you dream of NCAA D1 and the NFL, you throw those soft-hearted thoughts in the trash. Can't stomach this? Then just quit.

"TOUCHDOWN!!"

"Ah, for God's sake. Wonderful. So very, very wonderful that my misery is reaching for the sky."

Ha. There goes the coach, fuming all over again. We'd given up six more points.

#. August 18, 2018

#-1. United States, Oahu, Hawaii

#-2. Honolulu CDP

#-3. Aina Haina

Barely had the news of my injury broken yesterday before hundreds of messages came flooding in. Was I really hurt? How bad? When would I be back? And so on. Right up until this morning, when the coach officially announced, "Moi's injury will take one to two weeks to heal," people doggedly pried at anyone and anything to learn how badly I was hurt.

And today, I met with Georgia.

Kirby Smart.

"It's fake?"

"Yep. Want to see?"

"..."

I flung off the arm sling and moved my left arm around. I even juggled mangosteens with it.

"Why on earth did you put on that act?"

"Hmm— internal team matter."

"I see. So you weren't actually hurt?"

"Nope. As you can see, I do have bruises where I got tackled yesterday and on my thigh, but that's nothing, isn't it?"

The kind of bruising that others would call a serious injury is, to us, exactly the right decoration. A finger pops out of joint. A rib slips. Ligaments and muscles have to tear before it counts as hurt. Hmm— well, maybe not fingers. It's actually quite common for a player to pop a dislocated finger bone back in and take the field, and there are plenty whose fingers have been battered so often they've permanently warped. Some even get them amputated outright. Since a broken finger bone means surgery and a long recovery, there are players who'll just coolly say, "Cut it off, then." Sounds like a lie? It isn't.

Ronnie Lott had the first joint of his left pinkie—crushed by a tackle—sliced off right there in the stadium medical room, and Jason Pierre-Paul (JPP) had his entire index finger and part of his middle finger removed. In JPP's case, the doctors begged him not to, and he told them, "For an edge rusher, the important fingers are the thumb and the pinkie"—the index and middle ones were unnecessary.

Some might ask: why go that far? The answer from these men—and from me—

"We play football. It comes with the territory."

"That it does. Is the treatment going well?"

"Yep. I've learned how to take care of myself."

"Good to hear."

Anyway. When you play football, your body taking a beating everywhere is so ordinary that Kirby Smart seemed greatly relieved the moment I showed him I was fine.

"Glad it wasn't anything serious."

"I have to be ready for the next game."

"When is it? The 7th of next month, wasn't it?"

"Yep."

The injury news—and my little performance—had briefly knocked recruiting clean out of Kirby Smart's head, but now he got down to business in earnest. He acted as if I were the one desperate for him. But.

"What about Justin Fields?"

"He's there, yes. But you're the better quarterback."

"How certain are you of that?"

"One hundred percent."

Kirby Smart answered with a resolute face, then turned to my grandfather and grandmother seated beside me. And then he laid out why Georgia was the best choice. Grandpa and Grandma peppered him with questions along the way. What life in Georgia would be like. What the atmosphere on campus felt like. Whether there were any bad sorts around.

"Wherever you go, troublemakers are a fact of life. But I promise you this—I will do everything in my power to protect your grandson."

It was hard to call it a perfect answer. But it was unquestionably the most exemplary one.

"A pleasure meeting you. The materials are in that file."

"I'll read them closely. You'll keep this confidential, won't you?"

"Of course. I'll be in touch."

"Yes sir."

Kirby Smart departed, and after meeting everyone else I needed to see today, I sank into the couch and opened the team Snapchat. I'd hoped yesterday's fourth quarter had set off some kind of alarm. But everyone still looked as starved of urgency as ever. Goofy memes. Self-shot videos. Complaints about how hard school classes were. Talk about girls. Talk about parties. I scrolled way up through the conversations, and not a single one was about yesterday's game, or football at all.

But.

"This is all about to end, you know?"

The day after tomorrow, Monday, the coach was scheduled to haul the boys off somewhere. He'd even gotten permission to pull them out of two days of classes.

"You're all dead."

To make the horses find water on their own. The coach's and my second plan. And that was—

"LOUDER—!!!"

"@^@!"

"LOUUUDEEERRR-!!!"

"#%$^!!"

"I can't hear you!! Are you seriously yelling at me right now?! LOOOOUUDEEEERRR!!!!"

Passing Kaneohe's eastern edge of Maunawili and heading up along the H-3 freeway, you reach the Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH)—and my teammates were going to spend two days at its boot camp.

"FASTER!!"

"If this were a battlefield, you'd be DEAD already!!!"

"You worthless—!!!"

Aka, the Marine Corps camp. The place where the boys would be run through the ringer.

The MCBH boot camp of the past two days. A genuinely enormous amount had happened.

The kids had boarded the bus thinking it was some kind of field trip—and the moment MCBH came into view, they plunged straight into panic. Still unable to tell dream from reality, they got driven to the breaking point by the Marines in the roughest way possible, and hell unfolded from the instant they stepped off the bus.

Was there no pushback? Of course there was. After roughly two hours of getting utterly run into the ground, the first rebellion came in the mess hall. Julius, who couldn't understand why they had to be there in the first place, got shown by the coach footage of me taking sacks.

Last season, my total sack count was 8. This year, we were already at 7. Blind-side sacks—just one last year—saw nearly half, three, coming from where I couldn't see. And then the coach kept going.

He asked whether they were proud of giving up an average of 29 points per game to Punahou and Waianae. And pointed out that every bit of our offense had been spoon-fed by me. That part was true as well. Our rushing yardage this year had plummeted to 73 yards per game—more than 40 yards worse than last season—and with my own numbers removed, the average was a pitiful 52, the lowest in the OIA Open Division.

Three straight wins and a pile of points might have made us look dazzling at a glance. But there was nothing underneath. That was the current Kahuku.

We were the Red Raiders. So why did all I see were well-fed pigs wallowing in the mud?

The coach spoke again.

"What happened in the fourth quarter without Moi?"

Well. It happens. How badly a team can collapse when the backup quarterback takes the field is something you see in the NFL all the time. So failing to score after I left—fine, understandable. But.

Seventeen points allowed is not.

That was genuinely alarming.

So they'd been shut up, fed lunch, and worked to the bone—yet the ones still unwilling to accept it mounted a second revolt. Seizing the moment after lights-out, they attempted an escape.

And that escape was—

"It was insane, I'm telling you."

"Nobody said it wasn't."

"Weren't you in on it too?"

"...I was not."

"Sure, whatever you say."

How detached from reality were these kids?

They attempted to escape a Marine base. A full-blown Marine base. However far above the average high schooler a football player's athleticism might be, they had taken on a literally impossible task. Naturally, the fugitives (?) were caught by armed security, and one or two of them wet themselves on the spot.

And that was the last resistance. Yesterday, everyone just shut up and ground through it. Honestly, it should have gone that way from the start.

"The coach said something."

"?"

"Said he could take us back there any time he wants."

"Well... yeah, Mrs. Samo works there, doesn't she?"

"Goddamn it. We are so, so screwed."

I quietly patted Mason's slumped shoulder, then gathered my emptied tray.

"I'll drop it off for you."

"Who do you take for an invalid?"

"You ARE an invalid right now, aren't you?"

"Hilarious. I could take you down one-handed."

"Care to try?"

Mason, having simply lost the arm wrestle, cracked wise with a mock "Oh, great king," and I flashed him the middle finger before ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠picking up my tray and heading for the return rack.

Team practice was later today. I'd only be watching from the sidelines. I was intensely curious what the mood would be like. Had something—

Changed?

"THAT'S IT!! That's the minimum you should be giving me!!"

"PUSH HARDER!!"

"THAT'S IT!! More!! MORE!!"

Hmm. Had something shifted, a little? I walked the whole field, watching the kids train with a careful eye, and their focus in practice did seem better than last week. So grinding them down really was the answer?

After practice wrapped up, Marcus told me what had happened earlier. At lunch, the O-line had gathered on their own.

"I think they believe you won't play in the next game."

"Nothing's been decided yet."

"Yeah. But either way, the fact is our O-line's pass protection has been bad."

Damn it. You're figuring that out now? Are you serious? Of course, I didn't say any of that out loud. I just kept quiet and listened.

"Tiger's going to be nervous as hell as it is, and if he takes even one sack, the whole game falls apart."

"So what are you planning to do about it?"

"Isn't it obvious? Same thing Mickey and Enok and I did when we were coming up. There was only ever one way."

"Muscle Men?"

"Yep."

Finally! This was exactly the part I'd been waiting for. Voluntary participation. And leaders rising up organically from each position group. Last year, Kana'i and Mika had dominated the defensive line, and as Zion quietly threw himself into the Muscle Men sessions, the other linebackers, wary of falling behind, started drifting into the gym too. Even if the initial motivation had been forced, the time invested and the sweat spilled never betrayed us.

Every discipline is like this, of course. But football is unusually honest about this one particular truth.

Would this truly become the catalyst for change? I couldn't promise it. But God, I hoped so. Not chasing dreams blindly—

The real meaning of playing football.

I pray, hands clasped in earnest, that everyone comes to understand it.

Ah— I only have the one hand at the moment, don't I? Well then, one hand will have to do.

"What are you doing?"

"Shut up and pray too, damn it."

"??"

The truth is simple.

I just really, really hate losing.

Ohio State—a flagship of the Big Ten and a traditional football powerhouse—was preparing for its season opener the following day. The system that Urban Meyer, one of the NCAA's most celebrated coaches, had built since 2012 had turned Ohio State into the most feared offense in the entire nation. This year, too, they planned to showcase their signature spread-option attack—and they, too, had their eyes fixed on Dwayne Moi Stone.

During a brief breather, Urban ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Meyer chatted with his coaches.

"Kahuku's roster looks weak this year."

"Hawaii's talent pool has always been shallow."

"True enough. But I hear the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠defenders wish they could line up across from Moi. Isn't that an interesting thought?"

"Only time will prove it, Urban."

"Exactly right."

By now, no one denied that Dwayne Moi Stone was the premier prospect of 2020. The doubts raised by playing in the peculiar market of Hawaii had all evaporated through the U.S. Army All-American Bowl and the LSU camp. And yet.

As it always had, football scouting was riddled with blind spots. The level gaps between regions and stages were far steeper than in any other sport. And there were fewer than twenty games in an entire year. Because of that environment, and such small samples, college programs and pro teams made mistakes on a constant basis.

Which meant a weakened Kahuku roster was, in a sense, an opportunity—to see a new side of Moi. A spear losing its edge. A shield riddled with holes. In the pocket, a quarterback comes under constant duress. The offensive options handed to him are thin. When that happens—how does he lead a team? How does he make up for what's missing? On pure individual brilliance? Or by lifting his teammates around him? Or perhaps some flaw no one had anticipated would surface, handing the universities courting him a fresh set of homework?

Urban Meyer, head coach of Ohio State, weighted the latter.

"People say Moi is the next Tim Tebow. But I guarantee you—no one. No one will ever be a better high schooler than Tim Tebow. And that's exactly why I'm watching Moi, but I'm not exactly chasing him."

At present, Ohio State was passive in Moi's recruitment. That was entirely Urban Meyer's will. The university president and the team's offensive coordinator, Ryan Day, were burning up inside over it—but Urban Meyer possessed enough power that he could afford to. Above all, he had played alongside Tim Tebow, one of the greatest high school quarterbacks in history, and no one knew better how to unearth the perfect quarterback for a spread offense.

So. He had no choice but to follow his own read. At Ohio State, Urban Meyer was king.

"Moi is a greenhouse flower."

"..."

"He grew up in an easy environment. Different from Tim Tebow."

Tebow had thought his leg was merely a routine injury—until it turned out his fibula was broken. And on that broken leg, he ran 29 yards for a touchdown. It cost him his entire senior season of high school, and the following year he still led his team to the pinnacle of Florida high school football. The result: selection to the Parade All-American Team. He became the subject of an ESPN Faces in Sports documentary. The title was even The Chosen One.

The Chosen One.

Beyond that, Tim Tebow was featured in a special edition of Sports Illustrated, and after graduation he was named one of the 33 greatest high school players in Florida history. Reeling off this litany of Tebow's accolades, Urban Meyer predicted that Moi would face great hardship ahead. And when that happened—when a few teams' attitudes cooled—he planned to seek out the wounded Moi and win him over with warm, sympathetic words.

"Young kids are easy, you know."

"..."

"..."

A brilliant football coach. A man profoundly lacking in morals. Urban Meyer's forecast, foretelling Moi's tribulations. But.

Dwayne Moi Stone, as if to laugh in the face of Urban Meyer's predictions, turned the football field at Saint Louis's home stadium into a library on September 7th.

Weapons still lacking. Shield still flimsy. And yet, through his play, he showed his teammates that their own effort could change both the process and the outcome.

That was what a true leader looked like.

"LET'S GO-!!!"

"Did you SEE that?! Huh?! DID YOU SEE IT!!"

In a team sport like football—what is a quarterback?

It is both A. And Z.