Two peas in a pod.

12 catches, 300 yards, 1 touchdown. The stat line of my best friend in 2017 vs. the Green Bay Packers. 10 catches, 180 yards, 3 touchdowns vs. BallsDeep. My statline from the 2013 flag football championship (intramural b league). Bonzer and Julio Jones, one of the greatest new duos in Verdansk.

How did we get here? Well, one of my bffl, Kurt Benkert (NFL QB) introduced me to his friend/coworker Julio on November 27th around 10pm at night. Kurt said, "Hey Bonzie, mind if I invite a friend in here?" To which I replied, "hurry up it's late and I'm tired". In arrives J_Jones251. We were in the presence of greatness. Right before he joined Kurt said, just be cool Bonz. As soon as he entered I squealed. Kurt introduced us, Julio this is Bonz, Bonz this is Julio. I quickly replied, Julio? never heard of you. No one laughed, and I was 0-1 on jokes. We jumped into a trio game and I knew I had to redeem myself. The first game, didn't go so well. In my defense, my hands were shaking like a reluctant bride at the altar. Game 2 went much better and Julio started to acknowledge my greatness. We're both professionals, and this was my gridiron. We played for a few hours and before I knew it, it was 1am. I ran up stairs after our games to tell my wife that I made a new friend online and his name was Julio! She did not give a fuck. It didn't matter though, I was playing with two future hall of famers, Julio Jones and Kurt Benkert.

The next morning I quickly ran down to my battlestation to check if he accepted my friend request. Spoiler alert, he didn't. Was he playing hard to get? Was I not good enough? Was Kurt jealous that I was going to take his friend from him? All valid questions that were going through my head. I DM'd Kurt and played it cool. "GG last night, us 3 gotta run again soon and get some dubs." Kurt never replied. It was clear that he was a bit jealous that I had hit it off with his coworker Julio.

A few days past and I hadn't heard a word from Kurt or Julio. I quickly searched the internet to be sure they hadn't come down with Covid. A quick "Atlanta Falcons Covid list" google search ensured me that they were both in fact healthy, just perhaps ignoring me. The next day I noticed Kurt was online and as I was lurking in his Twitch stream on a burner account, I noticed Julio was in his game.. and they had an open slot. I quickly joined their game without an invite as Kurt had his party open (rookie move). There was complete silence when I joined, it was awkward. To break the silence I said, " damn I meant to join another friend but accidently joined your game Kurt". This was a lie, but being NFL players they were not smart enough to figure it out. We ran a few games and Julio started to open up a bit. He even started to talk to me! He said things like, "drop your money", give me some ammo, or revive me". Things were going right as planned! A short time later we ended up getting a win and the celebrations began. It felt so good to fly home in the chopper out of Verdansk alongside Julio and Kurt. This was the perfect moment, I had to get him to accept my friend request.

The next morning - same routine. I sprint downstairs in my Uggs to check my friend list. Julio added me! Our friendship officially began. Julio signed on a few hours later at around noon time and I played it super cool. I waited at least 15 seconds before inviting him. He joined, and asked if I had anyone online to invite as duos were boring. I had TONS of people I could've invited, but this was too risky. I couldn't afford to have a buddy join and outshine me. Up until this point I was the best player that Julio had played with. So I replied with, "nah I got no one on". We played for hours, we laughed together, looted bunkers together, and we even shared some our old football stories. I could tell that my pop warner football and intramural flag football stats really impressed him.

We weren't so different after all!