Flag Football: Linebacker

Despite Troy’s initial lack of interest in flag football, he has actually done really well with it, especially on defense. He has almost all of the traits that I would wish for in a middle linebacker, if I was building one in Madden. He has fantastic awareness of the field, great acceleration and speed, awesome pursuit and instincts, amazing leadership and focus, and dogged determination. He may not always catch the kids on the other team, but he doesn’t give up.

Unfortunately, he comprises the entire defense on his team. All of the rest of the kids usually just stand around and watch the play unfold around them. Or they get in Troy’s way and trip him up. For the last two weeks, he’s comprised of 100% of the flags ripped off the opposing team. (Unless you count the kid on his team that rips the flags off his own teammates.) He’s so good, that he actually won a weekly award for Defensive MVP.

Offense is a completely different story. Usually, the coach puts him at quarterback, because he’s the only one discipline enough to take the ball from center and hand it to the running back. But he finds very little interest in this, because he really wants to run the ball. Of course, ALL of the kids really want to run the ball, and someone has to be quarterback. At least he’s not the center!

The problem with him running the ball is that he’s afraid of losing his flags, so he runs to the sidelines instead of the end zone. So, the coach doesn’t let him run it very often, especially when he has a really fast kid that’s good at avoiding the opposing team’s defense. Oh well, I love that he’s so good at defense, and he’s had a lot of practice at it, chasing me around the upstairs of our house!