“Life is like a football game. If you get called for holding, may you be holding on to what you believe in or holding the ones you love. Should you get called for illegal use of hands, may they be held together in prayer.” – Rayfield Wright, Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman and 2006 inductee into NFL Hall of Fame.
I don’t know who originally said that games are won and lost in the trenches. A Google search of that phrase produced 729,000 results. I did not look at all of them.
Yesterday afternoon, I caught the end of a game between the Green Bay Packers and San Diego Chargers. Chargers QB Philip Rivers had a career day, setting franchise records for passing attempts (65), completions (43) and yards (503). Two of his completions went for touchdowns and none of his attempts resulted in interceptions.
And the Chargers lost 27-20.
It is really easy to find those statistics. I also looked up the stats for Packers QB Aaron Rodgers. It took me about 5 seconds to find those. It seems that someone is keeping statistics for everything. Except what happens “in the trenches.”
Oh, I know you can find the number of sacks, the number of tackles, the number of penalties called on linemen on either side of the ball. But, here’s what we don’t know: (1) We don’t know what seemingly routine tackle prevented a touchdown from happening. (2) We don’t know what missed block caused an incompletion. (3) We don’t know what crucial execution by a 300-plus pound lineman, who was just doing what he had practiced all week long, made the difference for his team’s winning of the battle in the trenches.
Here are a some things we know about linemen: (1) They are only household names if they routinely do something spectacular. (2) The only time they get to actually touch the ball is when something goes wrong. (3) None of the big name “skill position” players could succeed without them.
Who are the “linemen” in your church, organization, or business? Who are the ones who are not routinely spectacular, but are spectacularly routine? Who are the ones working behind the scenes (in the trenches), contributing to the success of the “up front” people AND the team?
“Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body … But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body … Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:15,18-20,27)
Our lives matter so much to God that He gives us teammates in the trenches.
What “linemen” do you need to thank today?
