[Blade]

I walked into my office, coming from a short scrum with reporters, and I saw John Mackey sitting in a chair opposite my desk. I nodded, threw some papers on the desk, and grabbed a bottle of water.

“Hey, Bear. Fun conversation?”

I opened the water and took a big drink. “Oh yah, a lot of fun. I hate talking to reporters. I am just not a good public relations guy. Speaking of which, where the Hell is our public relations guy?”

Mack laughed. “I think he is out at some charity golf tournament.”

“Figures. Anyway, this Moss thing is the talk of the town. Maybe the entire NFL. It seems that enough witnesses have come forward, and he is off the hook, and I guess the guy he punched isn’t going to press charges, but it was attention we didn’t need anyway.”

“Well, that is not all bad. Look at the bright side. Regardless of what the official word is, there will be some speculation, and Moss is not known as the most stand-up guy around, so that helps us out when we get rid of him. Secondly, it kept him out of a game and put him further away from that record. Lastly, we lost the game he missed. Sounds like a good situation to me.”

I looked at Mack, trying to keep the suspicion out of my expression. He couldn’t have anything to do with this, could he? Am I being paranoid?

“True. I guess there are some good things to come out of this. But there are still three games left in the season, and we are still one of the leading teams in the division, so there are many things that can still go wrong. Tennessee will hopefully put up a fight, but I am really hoping things go our way in the game against KC two weeks from now. That may determine the division champion, and it is in KC, so it should be a tough one to win.”

Mack nodded. “Yep. That game is definitely critical. We need to make sure they lose…”

I interrupted Mack at that point. “Mack. We need to lay off. We are almost there, and things are still looking up, judging by the public support we have seen when we put out an impromptu poll on getting a new stadium. So long as we do not screw up too much, we should be in the clear.”

Mack was about to argue, then sat silent for a moment. Finally, he spoke again. “Alright, Bear, let’s see how the rest of the season plays out. We can decided after that if anything needs to be done.”

“Good. Alright, well, let’s hope that they can choke in the games that count.”