When the season's last game kicked off, Jamarcus Iverson's lead in the rushing race was three yards. Devon Larue had finished half an hour earlier at 1,789 — because the Nightshift, losing 13-17 at home to the Mustaches, let Hakeem Fontaine Jr. throw forty-three times into three interceptions and handed Larue the ball seven times. He gained 43 on the seven, 6.1 a carry, and fifteen of the handoffs that could have been his went to Elias Shepherd.
Iverson ran twenty-one times for 137 in a game the Quarrymen lost 17-28 and finished at 1,929, champion by 140.
In week 13 I wrote that the rate belonged to Larue and the rate was the thing I trust. It held to the end — 5.9 a carry against Iverson's 5.4 — and the claim was still wrong, because a rate cannot ask for the ball, and in the week it mattered his club stopped offering it.
The Nightshift spent the tenth pick of the s48 draft on the man who finished second. Nobody spent one on the champion, who is paid $1.1 million. Asked whether 1,929 retires the list of clubs that passed on him, he said, “No, sir. Still all of them.”
His contract expires in the spring, when every one of them will need a number for him.