The locker room was intense, and Sam made no effort to calm his players. Football is a game of emotion, most of it grounded on fear, and every coach wants his team clamoring for violence. He issued the standard warnings against penalties and turnovers and stupid mistakes, then turned them loose. When the teams lined up for the opening kickoff, the stadium was full and noisy. Parma received, and Giancarlo zipped along the far sideline with the return until he was pushed into the Bergamo bench at the 31. Rick trotted out with his offense, outwardly cool but with a hard knot deep in his stomach. The first three plays were scripted, and none was designed to score. Rick called a quarterback sneak, and no translation was needed. Nino was shaking with rage and nicotine deprivation. His glutes were in full arrest, but the snap was quick and he lunged like a rocket at Maschi, who fought him off and stopped the play after a one-yard gain. "Nice run, Goat," Maschi yelled in a thick accent. The nickname would be thrown at Rick many times in the first half. The second play was another quarterback sneak. It went nowhere, which was the plan. Maschi blitzed hard on every third and long without exception, and some of his sacks were acts of brutality. His tendency, though, perhaps through lack of experience and perhaps because he loved to be seen, was to "blitz tall," to come in high. In the huddle, Rick called their special play: "Kill Maschi." The offense had been running the play for a week now. In the shotgun, with no tailback and three wideouts, Franco lined up close behind Karl the Dane at left tackle. He squatted low to hide himself. On the snap, the offensive line double-teamed the tackles, leaving a gaping hole for Signor "L.T." Maschi to come crashing through, a straight shot at Rick. He took the bait, and his quickness almost killed him. Rick dropped deep to pass, hoping the play would work before the linebacker assaulted him. As Maschi exploded through the middle, tall and confident and thrilled for a chance at Rick so soon, Judge Franco suddenly shot up from nowhere and caused a mighty collision between two players who each weighed 220 pounds. Franco's helmet landed perfectly, just under Maschi's face mask, ripping off the chin strap and causing the gold Bergamo helmet to shoot high into the air. Maschi flipped, his feet soon chasing his helmet, and when he landed on his head, Sam thought they might have killed him. It was a classic beheading, a super highlight, the type of play that would be repeated a million times on the sports channels in the United States. Perfectly legal, perfectly brutal.
Rick missed it because he had the ball with his back to the play. He heard it, though, the crack and crunch of the extremely nasty hit, every bit as violent as something from the real NFL. As the play developed, things became complicated, and when it was over, the referees needed five minutes to sort it all out. At least four flags were on the field, along with what appeared to be three dead bodies. Maschi wasn't moving, and not far away Franco wasn't either. But there was no penalty on that part of the play. The first flag went down in the secondary. The safety was a little thug named McGregor, a Yank from Gettysburg College who fancied himself to be from the assassin school of roving safeties. In an attempt to establish turf, intimidate, bully, and simply start the game with the right tone, he delivered a vicious clothesline to Fabrizio as he ran benignly across the field, far away from the action. Fortunately, a referee saw it. Unfortunately, Nino did, too, and by the time Nino sprinted to McGregor and knocked him down, there were more flags. Coaches ran onto the field and barely prevented a brawl.
The final flags floated down in the area where Rick had been tackled, after a five-yard gain. The cornerback, nicknamed The Professor, had played sparingly at Wake Forest as a youth, and now, in his mid- thirties, he was pursuing yet another degree in Italian literature. When he wasn't studying or teaching, he was playing and coaching for the Bergamo Lions. Far from a soft academic, The Professor went for the head and was fond of the cheap shot. If his hamstring was bothering him, it wasn't apparent. After a hard hit on Rick, he yelled, like a crazy man, "Great run, Goat! Now throw me a pass!" Rick gave him a shove, The Professor shoved back, and there were flags. While the officials huddled frantically and seemed completely clueless about what to do, the trainers tended to the wounded. Franco was the first up. He jogged to the sideline, where he was mobbed by his teammates. Kill Maschi had worked to perfection. On the ground, Maschi's legs were moving, so there was some relief around the stadium. Then his knees bent, the trainers stood, and Maschi bounded to his feet. He walked to the sideline, found a seat on the bench, and began taking oxygen. He would be back, and soon, though his enthusiasm for the blitz would not return that day. Sam was screaming at the referees to eject McGregor, and it was deserved. But they would have to eject Nino as well for throwing a punch. The compromise was a fifteen-yard penalty against the Lions- -first down Panthers. When Fabrizio saw the penalty being marked off, he slowly got to his feet and went to the bench. No permanent injuries. Everybody would be back. Both sidelines were furious, and all the coaches were yelling at the officials in a heated mixture of languages.
Rick was fuming from the encounter with The Professor, so he called his number again. He swept to the right, cut around the end, and went straight for him. The collision was impressive, especially for Rick, the non-hitter, and when he rammed The Professor in front of the Panther bench, his teammates yelled with delight. Gain of seven. The testosterone was pumping now. His entire body throbbed from two straight collisions. But his head was clear, and there was no residue from the old concussions. Same play, quarterback sweep right. Claudio got a block on The Professor, and when he spun around, Rick was charging at full speed, head low, helmet aimed at his chest. Another impressive collision. Rick Dockery, a headhunter.
"What the hell are you doing?" Sam barked when Rick jogged by. "Moving the ball." If unpaid, Fabrizio would have gone to the locker room and called it a day. But the salary had brought a responsibility that the kid had maturely accepted. And, he still wanted to play college ball in the United States. Quitting wouldn't help that dream. He jogged back on the field, along with Franco, and the offense was intact. And Rick was tired of running. With Maschi on the bench, Rick worked the middle with Franco, who had vowed on his mother's grave not to fumble, and pitched to Giancarlo around the ends. He bootlegged twice, running for nice gains. On a second and two from the 19, he faked to Franco, faked to Giancarlo, sprinted right on another bootleg, then pulled up at the line and hit Fabrizio in the end zone. McGregor was close, but not close enough.
"Whatta you think?" Sam asked Rick as they watched the teams line up for the kickoff.
"Watch McGregor. He'll try to break Fabrizio's leg, I guarantee it."
"You hearing all that 'Goat' shit?"
"No, Sam, I'm deaf." The Bergamo tailback, the one the scouting report said didn't like to hit, grabbed the ball on the third play and managed to hit (hard) every member of the Panther defense on his way to a beautiful seventy-four-yard gallop that electrified the fans and sent Sam into hysterics. After the kickoff, Mr. Maschi strutted onto the field, but with a bit less spring in his gait. He hadn't been killed after all. "I'll get him," Franco said. Why not? thought Rick. He called a dive play, handed it to Franco, and watched in horror as the ball was dropped. It somehow got kicked by a churning knee that propelled it high over the line of scrimmage. In the melee that followed, half the players on the field touched the loose ball as it rolled and hopped from pile to pile and finally careened, unpossessed, out of bounds. Still Panthers' ball. Gain of sixteen. "This might be our day," Sam mumbled to no one. Rick reshifted the offense, spread Fabrizio to the left, and hit him for eight yards on a down and out. McGregor shoved him out of bounds, but there was no foul. Back to the right, same play, for eight more. The short pass game worked for two reasons: Fabrizio was too fast to play tight, so McGregor had to yield space underneath; and Rick's arm was too strong to be stopped in the short game. He and Fabrizio had spent hours on the timing patterns--the quick-outs, slants, hooks, curls. The key would be how long Fabrizio was willing to take shots from McGregor after he caught Rick's passes. The Panthers scored late in the first quarter when Giancarlo leaped over a wave of tacklers, landed on his feet, then sprinted ten yards to the end zone. It was an amazing, fearless, acrobatic maneuver, and the Parma faithful went berserk. Sam and Rick shook their heads. Only in Italy.