Quarterback Sack

This 2,174 word story was an idea given to me by patron cicerosg2003 over on the Discord server. Thank you for letting me write it and I hope that you enjoy the final result!

Kirk Cousins loved football. Indeed, in terms of the great loves of his life, it was behind only his wife, his children and his parents. He was well aware of just how fortunate he was to be the starting quarterback of an NFL team and how all of that could disappear in a single moment if he didn’t work his very hardest at every opportunity and claw his way to another team victory. Unfortunately, said victories had been especially hard for the Minnesota Vikings to come by in the early season, and it wasn’t just the morale in the locker room that was suffering as a result. His relationship with the Vikings fanbase was probably best described as turbulent and with the team in the midst of a losing streak, the fans who had already viewed him as a mediocre quarterback at best were all but baying for his blood like a pack of hungry wolves.

The next games the Vikings were scheduled to play was against a team facing similar misfortunes, the Houston Texans. Kirk wished that he could say he felt confident going into the game, but the weight of several back-to-back losses was beginning to crush him. As the quarterback all eyes - and media attention - was on him, and the expectation was that he would lead his team to success. No other position in the game garnered so much critique and for a mild-mannered man like Kirk, it sometimes became a little too much. There were times when he wondered if he’d have been better off playing at another position, maybe something on special teams where the expectations weren’t quite so astronomical. Then again, that would mean trading away the multi-million contract he had as the Vikings QB and considering he relied on that pay-packet to provide for his family and ensure their ongoing comfort, he knew that he had to stick with the path that he was on. There was no point considering the ‘what ifs’ - he had to make do with what was.

In any other year there would have been playoff hype around the Texans, even so early in the season, but they were struggling and stumbling just as much as the Vikings were. That said, the team still presented its challenges and chief among them was their legendary defensive end, JJ Watt. In terms of mainstream crossover appeal Watt was perhaps behind only Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, and like both of those men, his impressive career stats supported that claim to fame. Any defensive player who amassed one-hundred quarterback sacks throughout their career was bound to make a QB nervous, but considering JJ Watt was built like a monster truck and Kirk was of a more slender frame, he felt especially nervous about any possible collisions should the titan manage to tackle his way through the Vikings O-Line. Kirk knew he’d be lucky not to end up flattened like a pancake!

Thankfully for the whole first quarter of the game, the Vikings O-Line outperformed expectations and had managed to keep the pocket clear for long enough to let Kirk throw to available receivers. Perhaps fifteen minutes of playtime without a sack or any interceptions and only a single field goal on the board wasn’t much to celebrate, but given their team’s run of bad luck they were in relatively high spirits as they moved into the second quarter. They had momentum on their side and now they just needed to keep the ball moving in the right direction!

Unfortunately performing such a feat was much easier said than done, despite what the more vocal fans insisted on social media, and only became tougher when the O-Line began to show cracks in their resolve. Twice Kirk was able to escape the rampaging bull that was JJ Watt, but his luck was to run out the third time that the blond behemoth burst through the O-Line and closed in on his prey. The Vikings quarterback had all of a second to see the oncoming storm before the wall of muscle had all but wrapped around him, with the sheer force of the collision sending the pair of them barrelling towards the ground, and as if things weren’t bad enough, the ball spilled out of Kirk’s hands in the process!

As the pair of men - mismatched as any two men could possibly be - came crashing down to the turf, the wind was knocked entirely out of Kirk’s sails. Even with the protection of the padding underneath his jersey there was a flaring of pain across both his front and back at the moment of impact, caused respectively by the weight of the defender on top of him and the unforgiving solidness of the ground beneath him. The blow to his skull was softened by the presence of his helmet, but stars still swam across his vision even as the extreme momentum sent the two men tumbling further. Their rolling resulted in Kirk ending up on top of the other and in his battered and temporarily blinded state he made no attempt to untangle himself from his attacker.

“Get off him, you big lug!” a voice from above the pair announced. Kirk recognised it as being that of Kyle Rudolph, the Vikings tight end, and felt a swell of pride at how quick his teammates were to jump to his defense. That pride quickly turned to confusion and even irritation though as hands grabbed him by the shoulder pads and pulled him back with a level of force that the quarterback deemed quite uncalled for. He quickly dismissed the heaviness of his body as being a result of the nasty hit, but when he landed ass-first back on the grass and his vision started to return, Kirk was in for something of a nasty shock: his teammates were helping the other man up onto his feet rather than him, only Watt no longer looked like himself. His facial features had remained the same, but the man looked several inches shorter and some eighty pounds lighter!

Even more confusingly though, JJ Watt was now wearing a Vikings jersey emblazoned with the number eight. Kirk’s number.

The other man at the very least had the decency to look terribly confused and concerned by the sudden twist of events, an expression that Kirk was certain was mirrored on his own face. He watched as the Vikings offensive team surrounded the other and queried his wellbeing, questions that were met with distant reassurances. The two men’s gazes continued to be locked, even as Kirk pushed himself up off of the turf and rose to his feet. As he did so though, he quickly became aware that the sensation of heaviness he had experienced before wasn’t simply a symptom of getting thrown down by a ragdoll but rather the result of the much larger frame he now possessed!

Kirk finally tore his eyes away from the other to look down at the navy blue jersey he now inexplicably wore and the number ninety-nine looked right back at him. His heart thundered in his chest as he attempted to rationalise what he was experiencing: was he dreaming? Concussed? Was he dead? The possibilities ranged from concerning to downright terrifying, but before he could get too worked up in his own mind he was surrounded by players from the Texans defensive team and receiving claps on the back, taps to the helmet and even slaps to the ass. “Sack number one-oh-one! You’re damn unstoppable, Captain Kirk!” one of the players cheered at him, and a strange sense of pride flushed through Kirk.

With their teams now dividing the two men, Kirk saw no feasible way to get to the other and try to understand what had happened to them. Indeed, with the sack coming on a third down, the Vikings special team were already on their way out to punt the ball and allow the Texans to go on the offense. Instead Kirk simply followed his supposed new team over to their sideline, receiving more congratulations on what was apparently the one-hundred-and-first sack of his career. It was an achievement that Kirk knew rightfully belonged to JJ Watt but as he looked up to the giant screens around the arena, it was unmistakably his face being shown alongside the impressive statistic.

Even on the sideline there was little time for him to try and rationalize the most bizarre turn of events he had ever experienced. Several of the Texans coaches had made their way over to not only congratulate him on his latest quarterback sack but also go over several of the defensive plays they had devised based on how the Vikings offense had performed so far. “Watt crumbles under pressure,” one of them declared confidently, “Just get through the line and you’ll probably end up with another five sacks by the time this thing is over!” Considering the other man had apparently taken his place completely, Kirk supposed he should be offended by the notion that he ‘crumbled under pressure’, but he swallowed it down and instead found himself making a suggestion on how best they could stop the Vikings in their tracks. He did have the insider knowledge, after all.

After the Texans had scored a touchdown and added an extra point to give themselves a four point lead, it was finally time for the defense to step back onto the field. Every fibre of Kirk’s being seemed to crackle with electricity; it was as if he was making his NFL debut all over again! His initial hyper-awareness of the added weight had worn off, now he carried himself with something of a swagger as he got himself into position. He cast his eyes across the opposing team’s offensive line, relishing in their grim expressions and the occasional fearful glance sent in his direction. There was a real thrill in being the cause of concern for the opposing team. He had never experienced that while playing quarterback!

Casting his eyes over the offensive line, Kirk finally locked eyes once again with the man who he seemed to have switched realities with. There was evident hesitation in JJ’s eyes before he called for the snap, and that hesitation soon turned to fear as Kirk let his muscle memory take over. He slipped past the blockers with ease and in an instant had caught his prey, wrapping his big arms around the other’s slender waist and pulling him straight down onto the turf! For the second time in just that quarter the ball was sent spinning out of the quarterback’s hands and Kirk saw one of the Texans linebackers dive on top of it to claim possession after the fumble.

Pumped up with adrenaline as a result of his one-hundred-and-second career sack, Kirk jumped up to his feet and brought up his arms to hit an almighty double bicep flex. The action was accompanied by a mighty roar and a saying that he had become well known for throughout his career: “YOU LIKE THAT?!” While the impact of their second collision hadn’t done anything as radical was shifting reality back to the way it had been previously, it came with its own change: namely, it normalised the lives the two men now lead to each of them. Kirk Cousins was a veteran of the Houston Texans locker room and a guaranteed future NFL Hall of Famer, while JJ Watt was a quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings who was constantly besieged by claims of mediocrity and underperformance. Those criticisms had given the quarterback a chip on his shoulder, especially as he was sometimes unfavourably compared to his younger brothers who had found more success than him with the Pittsburgh Steelers and carried much more muscle than he could ever even dream of putting on. Why he was so physically different from his brothers nobody could quite work out. There were even some websites jokingly suggesting that JJ Watt and Kirk Cousins were actually swapped at birth… oh, if only they knew!

By the time the game was over both men were coated in sweat and ready to be reunited with their wives. It didn’t even matter which team had won, all that mattered was that they had tried their best. Despite being sacked twice in the second quarter Watt had put up an impressive number of yards and had three touchdown passes to his name. Cousins had continued to wear down the offensive line and came close to adding a few more numbers to his already impressive sack statistic. As such, when they met in the middle of the field once the game was over and shook hands, it seemed only right that they should exchange jerseys. The pair felt a strange sense of connection to the other, although they saw no reason to vocalise as such. For both of them, the only thing that mattered now was their team’s next game and securing a spot in the playoffs in the hopes of achieving their Super Bowl dreams!