Nick Saban leaned in toward his defensive coordinator before the Alabama special teams unit had even finished clearing the field, moving with that specific swiftness he possessed whenever something hadn't gone according to his plan—a moment captured by the ESPN cameras even if the audio didn't carry.
"What happened on the opening pass?" Saban asked in the low, direct voice he reserved for precise answers rather than lengthy analysis.
"The safety was late on Leggett's cut," the coordinator answered. "We misread the route. We thought he was going to continue on the post, but he cut before the point we had anticipated."
"And the cornerback?"
"He stayed on Treadwell deep as instructed, but Sterling didn't go to Treadwell—he went to Leggett. By the time the cornerback processed it, Leggett already had the ball in his hands."
Saban stared at him for a second without saying a word, which in his vocabulary was considerably more expressive than anything he could have uttered out loud.
"And how many hours of film on Sterling did we watch this week?"
The coordinator didn't answer.
"Next possession, I want two deep safeties," Saban said. "And I want someone on top of Leggett on every single snap, regardless of what the line does, because Sterling is going to look for that tight end again before this game is over. Whatever he found on that first play, he's going to try again."
"And if he abandons the deep pass?"
"Then we have the game we wanted to play," Saban replied. "But Sterling isn't going to abandon the deep pass, because he isn't that kind of quarterback."
The coordinator nodded, and Saban straightened up, turning his attention back to the field where the Alabama offense was taking position.
Field Level...
Derrick Henry's run came on the third play of Alabama's opening drive.
Coker completed two short passes first—a quick out to Calvin Ridley for five yards, followed by a throw over the middle to O.J. Howard for eight more, giving Alabama a first down at the Tigers' thirty-five-yard line before the offensive coordinator called the play he had been waiting to use since the opening snap of the game.
Henry took the handoff down the right side as Alabama's offensive line opened a lane that shouldn't have existed against an elite defense—yet it existed for the two seconds Henry needed to find it. He accelerated through the gap with that rare combination of size and speed that made Henry fundamentally different from any running back the Clemson defense had faced all season.
The Clemson linebacker met him in the hole, and Henry simply plowed over him without breaking stride, as if the linebacker were a training dummy rather than a 198-pound defender who had spent the entire week studying that exact situation.
The safety arrived from the left angle with better timing and made contact, but he couldn't bring him down. At the moment of impact, Henry simply kept his legs churning, leaving the safety behind to process what had just happened to him. Henry pushed forward until the cornerback and a second safety arrived together from different directions, finally bringing him down twenty yards later at the Clemson fifteen-yard line—with the same inevitability with which everything eventually comes to an end.
The Alabama stands erupted the moment they witnessed the play, while on the sideline, Dabo Swinney was already talking to Brent Venables with an urgency proportional to what had just unfolded.
"We can't give him that lane," Dabo said.
"I know," Venables replied, tablet already in hand. "Alabama showed pass looks on the previous two plays, and when they shifted to the run, our defense took half a second too long to adjust. That half-second was all Henry needed."
"What's the adjustment?"
"We bring an extra linebacker into the box on every play Henry is on the field," Venables said. "And we tell Kearse to read the backfield first instead of the line, because Henry is going to find the gaps before the defense can close them if we aren't diagnosing his path before the snap."
Dabo nodded. "Do what you have to do."
"AND THERE IT IS!" Chris Fowler shouted from the booth, a volume he barely needed given that the stadium was already making the statement for him. "DERRICK HENRY WITH A TWENTY-YARD RUN ON ALABAMA'S OPENING DRIVE, AND THE CRIMSON TIDE ARE SET UP AT THE CLEMSON FIFTEEN-YARD LINE!"
"And that, Kirk," Herbstreit said, "is exactly what Alabama needed after Sterling's touchdown. That run by Henry reminds everyone that this game isn't decided on a single possession, and that the Heisman debate we had in December is going to get its real answer right here on this field tonight."
"And we have to talk about that context because we simply can't ignore it," Fowler said. "Sterling won the Heisman, Henry finished second, and both of them are on the same field tonight with the national championship as the backdrop—making every single play by either player carry an added weight that goes far beyond the scoreboard."
"And if you broaden the scope," Herbstreit added, "what's happening here tonight has implications that reach way past this game. Sterling and Henry are two of the biggest names in the 2016 draft class, and several NFL organizations are watching this game with very specific interest."
"Without a doubt," Fowler said. "There are those who say Sterling could be the number one overall pick in April, and there are others who argue Henry is a generational running back that comes along once every decade, giving whichever team lands him an immediate tactical advantage."
"And in that draft conversation, we also have to mention Carson Wentz out of North Dakota State," Herbstreit noted, "and Joey Bosa from Ohio State, both of whom have had extraordinary seasons. Depending on what happens in this game and during individual Combine workouts, the top of the first round could shift completely."
Meanwhile, in the stadium restroom while the game played on, Blaire had held on from the stands until the moment she felt she couldn't take it anymore. She told Elena she needed to use the restroom with a brevity that left no room for questions.
Elena let her go without a word, though something in the way Blaire stood up prompted Elena to glance toward her purse—a gesture Blaire didn't see because she was already hurrying down the concourse stairs with the singular focus of someone with a precise destination and very little time to reach it.
The restroom was two levels down from the stands. Blaire made it quickly enough to slip into the first available stall and lock the latch before her body made the decision she had been postponing for an hour and a half with arguments that had sounded reasonably convincing on the flight from Houston to Phoenix, less convincing in the stands, and now, not convincing at all.
It took several minutes.
When it was over, she remained sitting in the stall, her back rested against the side wall, eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the muffled roar of the stadium filtering in from outside like something belonging to a completely different reality than the one she was inhabiting inside that stall at that exact moment.
It wasn't the first time in recent weeks.
That was the first thought that struck her once the stadium noise became recognizable again and her brain resumed processing information—because it wasn't the first time in recent weeks her body had reacted like this, even if previous instances had been less urgent and accompanied by explanations her mind had accepted with relative ease.
End-of-semester stress.
The flight.
The time change between Boston and Arizona.
The food at the Houston airport.
The list had been reasonably long, and every entry on it plausible enough to avoid having to reach the very bottom of the list.
But sitting in that stall with the restroom around her, the national championship two levels above, and Wyatt on that field, the list of reasonable explanations shrank until only one remained.
The thought arrived before she could do anything to stop it.
Pregnancy.
She stayed completely still for several seconds, the stadium noise a constant hum in the background as other women entered and exited adjacent stalls with that mundane, everyday normalcy that surrounds moments that are not normal at all.
She didn't know for certain.
She couldn't know in a stadium restroom stall without a test or any confirmation. The list of alternative reasons that could explain what had been happening over the last few weeks technically remained a list with more than one entry—even if that list had narrowed drastically over the last three minutes.
Yet her expression in that moment was not that of someone calmly weighing possibilities, because if she was honest enough with herself to admit it—even with no one in that stall to see her—she already knew.
Meanwhile, high above the seats where fans watched the action, inside one of the luxury suites, Rams General Manager Les Snead and Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman were watching the same game from separate rooms, surrounded by their respective scouting departments, arriving at similar conclusions through different paths.
Les Snead kept his eyes fixed on the screen, a notebook open on the table where he had been taking notes since the opening snap with the same methodology he applied to every quarterback he evaluated: logging not just what the player did well, but the processing behind every decision.
"Sterling made the read in less than two seconds on the first play," one of his scouting assistants said.
"I saw," Snead replied without looking away from the monitor. "How many plays so far where he reads the coverage before the snap?"
"Four out of six on the opening drive."
"What concerns me," Snead said after a moment, "isn't the level he's displaying tonight, because the talent is undeniable. What concerns me is the gap between what Sterling sees tonight and what he's going to face in the NFL. Alabama's man coverage is good, but it's not what defensive coordinators are going to throw at him in Week One of the regular season."
"Does that disqualify him?"
"It doesn't disqualify him," Snead said. "It contextualizes him. And contextualizing is exactly what we're here to do."
"And Henry?"
"Henry is the answer to a different question," Snead said. "If you need a back who can carry twenty times a game and gain yards after contact, Henry is probably the best we've evaluated in five years. But we need to resolve the quarterback situation first, and our cap space this year gives us the flexibility to do it if we make the right choice in the first round."
"Is Sterling the right choice?"
Snead set his pen on the notebook and looked at the screen, where Henry had just gained another eight yards on the ground. "That is precisely what we are here to determine."
In the Eagles' suite, Howie Roseman had the same broadcast feeding into his monitors, but was engaged in a very different conversation with his analysts.
"Our salary cap gives us room for a first-round quarterback without compromising the defensive line or the cornerback position, which remains our most urgent need," one of his analysts noted. "But only if we trade up to number two. We can't reach number one with the draft capital we currently hold."
"What did moving from eight to two cost in the mock scenarios?" Roseman asked.
"Three first-round picks, plus a second and a fourth," the analyst replied.
"That's what it cost in the simulation," Roseman said. "The real price depends on who we're negotiating with, and right now all signs point to Cleveland holding the two spot—and Cleveland needs a lot of pieces we can offer."
"What if Sterling drops?"
Roseman looked at the screen. "Sterling isn't dropping," he said with the same calm certainty Snead had used to say the exact same thing across the hall. "What we're seeing tonight against the best defense in the country eliminates that possibility. A player doing what Sterling is doing tonight doesn't drop in the draft unless there's an issue nobody has uncovered yet—and our scouting department didn't find a thing."
On the screen, Wyatt received the snap for Clemson's second drive, with Henry on the Alabama bench catching his breath after his twenty-yard run. The scoreboard read seven to zero, with the first quarter still in progress and the entire game ahead—including everything that would unfold when Blaire finally stepped out of that restroom and returned to the stands, where Wyatt's parents continued to watch the game completely unaware, leaving her to figure out when, how, and to whom she would tell something she didn't yet know for sure, but could no longer completely ignore.
Author thought
For those of you wondering, I'm planning to have Blaire get pregnant by Wyatt, which is why she's starting to show symptoms. I know there's an author on Webnovel who's also using this literary device, but the idea had already been floating around in my head. Let me know what you think in the comments, and give it a like.
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