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THEY WERE BOTH SO YOUNG.
One would be entering his old age now, with most of a long life behind him. The other would just be entering his senior year in high school, working to fulfill a life of great promise.
A vast gulf of time separates them.
But nobody knows them now except by memory, so time is also what ties them together.
And it is time that tells their story.
They were both so young, are both so young still.
In the early days of football, President Theodore Roosevelt saw the field as a proving ground for manliness. Benedict Evans for ESPN
ONE IS JAY KUTNER. He is a quarterback. He plays for Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in Hicksville, New York. He is a senior, 17 years old. He wears No. 5. One afternoon, his team, the Titans, is playing a preseason scrimmage against Amityville Memorial, a public school. It is the second week of September, and the day is hot and dry and dusty, and Jay is walking off the field for a drink of water. He is done, like most of the starters. His backup is already stepping behind center. But he hears the whistle blow. The coach is dissatisfied -- execution or effort, it hardly matters now. He tells Jay to go back in for one last play. It has been a rough scrimmage, but Jay is wearing a red outer jersey for his protection. He is not supposed to be hit. He barks the signals, the ball is snapped. The play later will be described as "nondescript" or "routine." But mistakes are never routine. There is a problem with the snap. The ball comes loose. The ball is on the ground, and Jay dives for it. So does everyone else. The play is not particularly violent, just crowded. There is a pile, and at the bottom of it, a small voice -- "my neck." The whistle blows, and the players peel themselves off of or are pulled from the scrum. They stand up, then they look down. The player at the bottom remains on the ground. The player at the bottom is Jay Kutner, and he does not get up.
The other is Caden Tellier. He is a quarterback. He plays for Morgan Academy, in Selma, Alabama. He is a junior, 16 years old. It is a hot Friday night in August, and he is playing under the lights, first game of the season. Morgan versus Southern. He wears No. 17, in emulation of his hero, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. Most of the people who watched him grow up -- the people who know and love him most -- have come to the small stadium in the back of the school to watch him play football. His father is here. His mother is here. His sister is here, his girlfriend, his pastor, his coaches, his teachers, his friends. Caden is at home on his home field, with his old Ford truck in the parking lot. He sat out a few games as a sophomore after a shoulder injury. He is healthy now, a rangy kid who is as proud of his legs as he is of his arm. He likes to run. On Morgan's first drive of the second half, he rolls right, toward his own sideline -- toward his team, toward his family, toward the home crowd. He sees an opening along the white stripe and is turning upfield when a diving tackler grabs him low and trips him up. It's a clean tackle everybody will say. But Caden stretches and sprawls forward, still gathering momentum as he falls. He lands hard, his helmet hitting the turf with a snap. He gets right up, he heads right back to the huddle. But then he takes himself out. He goes to the sideline and takes a knee. He says, "I don't feel good," and slumps over.
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