Quarterback Tanner Reid of the Lakeview Stallions was known for staying late to watch film with offensive coordinator Ben Harper, an old-school coach who’d once served as a radio tech in the Army. One stormy night, while Ben was locking up, Tanner fiddled with a headset and accidentally tuned into a dead channel — or so he thought.
Through the static came a man’s voice calling plays in a slow, steady cadence: “Red-80… Slot Cross… Go.” Tanner froze. It was the same phrasing his late grandfather, Colonel Henry Reid, used when coaching military football at Fort Mason.
Ben listened too — and turned pale. He said he’d played under that same Colonel in 1978. The next morning, Tanner ran those exact plays in practice — and the Stallions scored on every drive.
Later that day, Ben tried tuning the frequency again. There was only silence… except, faintly, the sound of a whistle — one sharp blast, then gone.

*******************

The Lakeview Stallions’ film room smells of burnt coffee and dry-erase markers. At 11:47 p.m. on a Wednesday in late November, the only light comes from the glow of four 85-inch monitors looping red-zone footage. Quarterback Tanner Reid—25, cannon arm, boy-scout manners—sits in the front row, hoodie up, scribbling notes on a laminated play sheet. Beside him, offensive coordinator Ben Harper, 64, buzz-cut gone silver, nurses a mug that says Embrace the Suck.

They’ve been here since seven. The rest of the staff bailed hours ago; even the janitor flipped the lights twice. Outside, a lake-effect storm claws at the windows, wind howling like a blitzing linebacker.

Ben stands, joints popping. “Lock the door on your way out, kid. I’m not paying the electric bill for your insomnia.”

Tanner waves without looking up. “One more series. Promise.”

Ben grunts, grabs his coat, and heads for the exit. The door clicks shut. Tanner exhales, alone with the hum of the projectors. He reaches for the headset dangling from the soundboard—an old military surplus rig Ben keeps for nostalgia, patched into the stadium’s PA system. Tanner’s grandfather, Colonel Henry Reid, had worn the same model in Vietnam, then again on the sidelines of Fort Mason’s post league in the ’70s. Tanner fiddles with the dial out of habit, hunting for the coach’s clicker frequency.

Static.

He twists past the team channels, past the grounds-crew walkies, into the dead band reserved for emergency services. Nothing but white noise. Then—

“Red-80… Slot Cross… Go.”

The voice is calm, deliberate, like a metronome. Male. Older. Familiar in a way that punches the breath from Tanner’s lungs.

He rips the headset off, heart jackhammering. The room is empty. The projectors still loop. He jams the cans back on.

“Blue-42… Trap Left… On two.”

Same voice. Same cadence. Same phrasing Colonel Henry used when he coached Tanner in peewee, barking from a folding chair with a clipboard and a whistle that could peel paint. Henry died in 2019—heart attack on the golf course, ninth hole, mid-putt. Tanner still hears that whistle in his dreams.

The door bangs open. Ben, soaked from the rain, eyes wide. “You hear that?”

Tanner can only nod.

Ben snatches the headset, listens. The voice continues, calling a full drive:

“Gun Trip… Dagger Seam… Break.”

Ben’s face drains of color. He yanks the plug. Silence.

“I played for that man,” Ben whispers. “Fort Mason, ’78. He called every game like a fire mission. Same damn cadence.”

Tanner’s mouth is dry. “My grandpa.”

Ben stares at the headset like it’s a live grenade. “He’s been dead six years.”

They don’t sleep. At 5:30 a.m., they’re back in the film room with head coach Dana Voss and the offensive staff. Tanner transcribes every play he heard—twelve in all, none in the current playbook. Ben confirms the terminology: Red-80 was Henry’s old shotgun call; Slot Cross a route combo he invented in the ’70s.

Voss, a pragmatist who once cut a Pro Bowler for missing curfew, shrugs. “If it works, it works. Run it in walkthrough.”

Practice is a blizzard. The field is half-frozen slush. Tanner calls the ghost plays from memory.

“Red-80… Slot Cross… Go!”

Receiver Jalen Carter burns the corner for 32 yards.

“Blue-42… Trap Left… On two!”

Running back Devon Miles explodes through a hole the size of a garage door.

Every rep—perfect. The defense, a top-five unit, looks shell-shocked. By the end of practice, the Stallions have scored on seven straight possessions. Voss calls off dogs. “Save some for Sunday.”

That night, Ben returns to the film room alone. He plugs the headset in, dials to the same frequency.

Nothing.

He waits. Lightning forks outside. At 11:11 p.m.—exactly twenty-four hours after the first transmission—the static parts like a curtain.

One sharp blast of a whistle.

Then silence.

Ben unplugs, hands shaking. He doesn’t tell Tanner.

Sunday, December 1. Home against the Chicago Marauders. Divisional title on the line. The Stallions trail 17-13, 4:42 left, ball on their own 18. Tanner takes the snap, scans, and for the first time all season, calls a play not in the wristband.

“Red-80… Slot Cross… Go!”

Carter streaks down the seam, ball spirals 58 yards, touchdown. Tie game.

Next drive. “Blue-42… Trap Left… On two!”

Miles rumbles 44 yards. Field goal unit trots on. 48-yarder. Good. Stallions win 23-20.

Postgame, the headset is gone. Ben’s drawer—locked, combination only he knows—is empty. Security footage shows no one entering the room after 2:00 a.m. The frequency, when tested, is dead. FCC logs confirm it was decommissioned in 1983.

The plays stay in the playbook. Tanner adds a new pre-snap ritual: he taps the headset jack on his helmet twice, left ear, right ear. Ben starts wearing a whistle around his neck—silver, vintage, the same model Henry used. He blows it once at the end of every practice. One sharp blast. The team falls in line without being told.

The Stallions go 5-0 the rest of the way, clinching the North. In the wildcard round, they hang 45 on the Portland Timberwolves. Every scoring drive begins with a ghost play. Reporters ask Tanner where the new scheme came from. He smiles, taps the headset jack. “Family recipe.”

On Christmas Eve, Ben receives an anonymous package at the facility. Inside: the missing headset, wrapped in brown paper, no return address. A single sheet of onionskin, typed on an actual typewriter:

Keep the chain of command tight, Captain. —H. Reid, Col. (Ret.)

The paper smells faintly of cigar smoke and Old Spice. Ben locks it in his safe. He doesn’t tell Tanner.

The Stallions are two wins from the TFL Championship. Every Friday night, Tanner and Ben stay late in the film room. They leave the headset plugged in, volume low. They never hear the voice again. But sometimes, just as the storm rolls in off the lake, the projectors flicker once. The screen freezes on a single frame: a grainy photo of Fort Mason’s 1978 team, Colonel Henry Reid in the center, arms crossed, whistle glinting.

The caption, in block letters, appears for exactly 0.8 seconds:

STILL CALLING THE SHOTS.

Then it’s gone.

The headset stays silent. The whistle stays ready. And every Sunday, when Tanner drops back and the pocket holds just long enough, he swears he hears it—one sharp blast, carried on the wind from a sideline forty years away.