Robofootball: Doublespin

The season turned neatly on a dime for the Robocats in games 7 and 8. Reynolds, while he was still riding high with the Verlucci’s flew Jess down to Little Rock, squeezed him in for a few plays as he armored up like Antwan to match their cloned doubles. Jess showed little rust at all since, as Antwan said, he knew every play by heart as if it was grafted onto his brain, which it was. They had to tell him his own name, Jess Robinson, but absolutely nothing about football. Like Antwan, Jess had that intangible human factor, the ability to compensate, manipulate, ruminate, and improvise far more effectively than any non-sentient mechanical player thrown out there on the field even though a human controller pulled their strings.

Like the first time they had played the Aluminites, the Arkansas team was just bad, with little more than Gen 1’s, who, despite being barely two years of age, were already obsolete. Like the game against Seattle, Reynolds was able to throw a lot of his backups in to preserve the starters, but unlike the Slayers, the Aluminites were even overmatched by the Robocat benchwarmers. Only near the end did they score a touchdown when the Robocat Gen 1 3rd string QB malfunctioned and threw another backward pass to a phantom receiver that an Aluminite defender recovered in the end zone. This time the score ended up 63-7, the most points ever scored in a game by the Robocats. Jess had played in 2 series in the first half and managed a TD throw to Antwan in the 2nd quarter, after which, both were taken out when the Robocats built a 35-0 lead. Ichiro would have a 300-yard day on the ground while Antwan got his 100 yards receiving too during his limited play.

What really set the day off on a high note was what happened north of Arkansas in Wichita, Kansas. The Warriors sacked the Chopper Gen 3 quarterback late in the first quarter of the game, leaving the QB’s shoulder in a dangling mess. It wasn’t completely detached, but a rumor was developing around the RFL about the weak shoulder module in the throwing arm of the Gen 3 QB, usually the right side, was vulnerable to damage after a hit. Several of the Gen 3 QB’s had already broken down more than once, and since the parts were made in Japan, it took a little more time to obtain the expensive materials like titanium and magnesium from their suppliers given Japan’s limited home resources. If that wasn’t enough, the parts still had to be fabricated and shipped back overseas too. Wichita recovered 3 fumbles in the game and intercepted the backup Chopper QB twice to take a 5 to 1 advantage in turnovers; as a result, Wichita pulled off a 35-34 upset when Chicago botched a late extra point attempt as time ran out. The holder experienced a fluctuation in its magnetic hand padding, and the ball stick to its hand when its controller tried to maneuver the ball to the ground. The kicker drilled the hand which went through the upright, but the ball dropped short since the severed hand lost its magnetism.

Two things happened the following week in game 8 that propelled the Robocats to a huge victory over the Choppers. One was that the Chicago Gen 3 quarterback was not fixed in time for the game. The other was that Jess came into his own. Fully recovered from Hobson’s multiple implant removal, the 80 pounds of body armor that he wore were offset by the sheer strength from the constant doses of adrenaline and steroids to his system. Another intangible was that the defensive controllers were more experienced now and less prone to the mistakes that they had suffered against the Choppers during the very first game of the season. As a result, they only gave up 31 points in the rematch instead of 49, and the offense scored 35 with some of Jess’s best passing numbers of the year, a 300 yard game, and 3 TD’s, 2 to Antwan as the two honed their working relationship to new heights, with the peak still in the distance waiting to be surmounted like Sir Edmund Hillary conquering Mt. Everest. It helped too that Ichiro wiggled his player in and around defenses whenever the majority of the linebackers dropped back into pass coverage.

Without Hobson, there was the matter of the control board for the top quarterback. Reynolds had thought long and hard and decided that he had to take his two trusted coordinators, the Gorilla and the Dinosaur into his confidence regarding Jess. Antwan he still kept as a secret from them. The two coordinators were after all Sicilians, but more importantly, Verlucci appointees for all practical purposes, and they had faithfully followed the point spread orders with Seattle . They would understand the concept of omerta on this one, the Italian code of silence in keeping secrets, particularly when Reynolds over-emphasized its importance. During the break, 3 days before the Arkansas game, he called a special meeting before the team boarded the train, and did his best to explain about Jess.

“Any questions?” Reynolds added at the end of their little powwow to the stunned faces before him.

“I can’t believe that Hobson,” Rudy the Gorilla noted, “he was pulling the kid’s strings like a puppet?”

“Yeah,” said Reynolds, “I don’t understand it myself but he pulled it off.”

“Well what are we going to do about a controller, use Mark?”

“No, the kid doesn’t need one, he can move on his own like I said, we’re going to put him in auto play mode, actually you are Rudy.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, he knows all the plays, we’re gonna voice command him like,” and Reynolds stopped himself before he said like he did for Antwan, “He’ll have a mike in his head gear, like I said before, he knows all the plays. You’ll have a communication board for him Rudy and your own mike and ear piece, I’ll see to it.”

“Okay then,” Rudy said shaking his head, still trying to take it all in.

“Okay with you Dino?”

“Yeah, sure boss, I’m on D, not my business.”

“Good,” said Reynolds, “Let’s just keep it quiet,” he reminded them for the 4th time. To partly appease his own growing paranoia, Reynolds ordered a shitload of spare parts to be made at the MIR during the break, including enough to rebuild most anything Jess and Antwan 3 times over. At the break, the team as a whole had only 7 incapacitated players which was slightly more than half of the average of 12 experienced by most teams. Of course, the mean was skewed somewhat by the low-life’s from Arkansas, Daytona, and Seattle; each who had at least 3 times as many players on the IR as the Robocats.

With the upset by Wichita the previous week and the defeat in the Silverdome, the Choppers found themselves in an unknown and somewhat uncomfortable position, 2nd place by way of tiebreaker:

Both the Choppers and the Robocats sported identical 5-3 records after week 8. The first tiebreaker was moot since the two teams were 1-1 against each other head-to-head, each winning on its home turf. The Robocats were now 4-1 in the Central Division while Chicago dropped to 2-2 with back-to-back losses, so for the moment, the Robocats held the tie-breaker advantage.

Dano Verlucci smiled with the results as he glistened over them in his newspaper. He could check online but when it came to news, he liked a fresh copy of the Detroit News along with USA Today to savor over the articles that did not hurt his eyes like reading on a computer screen did after prolonged exposure. He decided to forgo any new chats with Reynolds at least until after the next game, maybe for a couple of weeks since the next one was with Daytona, Arkansas’s only competition for worst overall record. After that however, was the game against the outright best team in the league, the Texas Tin Cans.

2020 Michigan Robocat Schedule

09/20/2020 Michigan at Chicago, Lost 28-49

09/27/2020 Arkansas at Michigan, Won 56-7

10/04/2020 Michigan at Boston, Lost 14-17

10/11/2020 Wichita at Michigan, Won 34-17

10/18/2020 New York at Michigan, Lost 31-42

10/25/2020 Michigan at Seattle, Win 35-24

11/01/2020 BYE WEEK

11/08/2020 Michigan at Arkansas. Win 63-7

11/15/2020 Chicago at Michigan, Win 35-31

11/22/2020 Daytona at Michigan

11/29/2020 Michigan at Texas

12/06/2020 Baltimore at Michigan

12/13/2020 Michigan at Wichita

“If you’re mad at your kid, you can either raise him to be a nose tackle or send him out to play on the freeway, it’s about the same thing.”

Bob Golic