Ben Rothlisberger's muscles were rippling and heaving as his team pulled within four points of the Green Bay Packers. "These muscles are bounding from bone to bone around my body!" he shouted to Coach Mike Tomlin.
"Good energy, Ben," said the Coach. It was midway through the third quarter, and after a series of depleting errors, "Big" Ben was back up and pacing the sideline. His fingers ran through the beard on his face, looking for bugs.
"Do you think bugs can get in your beard!" he shouted to the referee, "Is that a violation, throw a fucking flag once in a lifetime!" Tomlin was crackling with defensive schemes, his permanent glaring set to find the unseen patterns in the Packer offense, but the strange grunting of his quarterback was beginning to seep through. Two interceptions, two pointless time-outs, now the screaming. "Worrying, should I be worried?" Tomlin muttered to Fichtner, the quarterback coach.
"It's the Super Bowl, motherfucker!" laughed Fichtner, "Don't be so uptight!"
A punt sent Ben back on the field. His gleeful screaming blasted through the saturation of noise, a shrill barking, a flat squeal. In the huddle, Ben got quiet and breathed out his nose. "Feel it men" he said with ambiguous punctuation, "Men you are my men I am General Ben" in a sing-song, "Men they are in our den Men".
"What's the fucking play!" yelled Hines Ward. "You feel it man I like it you can scream too," hummed Ben. "See to it, you push them on the ground, this play is me, I make it. You get ready for me, what happens, I make it." said Ben.
Ward turned to the sideline, to Coach Tomlin, straining against a play clock and a quarterback beyond his control. Two wasted timeouts earlier in the quarter, there was nothing to stop this. Byron Leftwich had his helmet, and pads on. "One play," Ward said, "and don't fucking throw it." The offense lined up accidentally and the ball came to Mad Ben's hands. He screamed two times, the sound of a lion gone rotten on the inside.
Ben motioned for the defense to come near, his shoulders rotating, his arms out at their sides, he pushed the ball into his helmet, waited. Packers' linebacker Desmond Bishop cut the busied and ungrounded offensive line and charged at Rothlisberger's immense human frame. "No" Ben said and stood his ground until Bishop needlessly leapt into the air for a highlight tackle. The quarterback's body crumbled to a shell, his fingers under the linebacker's mask. He tossed the body over his shoulder, the sound of Bishop's fat neck snapping. Rothlisberger ripped off the helmet to open the severely injured linebacker's mouth. He began to pound the football against his teeth.
An enamel dandruff was already peppering his Steelers jersey. "FACE, do you feel the ball!" Ben's quaking monstrous wail bled through the suddenly silent stadium, "FACE! Do you hear me anymore?" The players and coaches grabbed at Ben's hands and the ball, and dragged him away from the ruined face and skull of the Packer linebacker. He trashed against them, grinning, smacking his lips against his teeth, screaming, and humming.
He was bound, by ropes first, then cords until the police could enter the throng. His face was bloody and swelling from punches, "We're trying to make him stop screaming," they said, "He won't." A heavy sedative was administered, and the quarterback was dragged, finally, from the field.
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