The Force is strong

Another week is upon us, and the Arena League waits for no man. Next up is the formidable Georgia Force, and one thing is certain: They're no New Orleans Voodoo.

The Power took the win last week, and were the only team in our division to do so. Another week like that, and they'd actually take the top slot...but that ain't gonna happen. It's tough to say, but there it is. Cleveland would have to drop a third one in a row – which is not likely to begin with – and they're playing Tulsa. Sure, Tulsa beat us and Cleveland was beaten by the Voodoo – but both of those are kind of flukes.

The other thing that would need to happen is that we would need to beat the Force, and that will take some doing. On one hand, the Force is tied for second place in a rather tough division with one of the only two teams to beat them. Their other loss was to the top team in this same division, the Sharks.

On the other hand, of their four wins, only one came against a team with a winning record, the Dallas Vigilantes. Their others came against the Voodoo, the Mustangs and the Talons, which have a total of 4 wins among them in 8 weeks of football. Now, this is not to say that these Force wins are meaningless – they're not. After all, one of those teams beat us. However, they go to show that they might not be all that.

So how do we go about this? Well, we've got to keep on keepin' on. We have good momentum going into this game with a win over New Orleans last week (a victory I will hoist a glass to in the Quarter this week when I make my way down there for vacation) as well as a nice long rest between games. Assuming that they didn't spend a week resting on their laurels and forgetting everything they progressed on, this should put the Power in good fighting form.

On defense, there's no easy strategy to employ against the Force’s passing game. Brett Elliot has a lot of yards on the season and 4 receivers that he regularly goes to in Purify, Shipp and the Johnsons, CJ and Mike. (I really wonder how often someone comes up to them and cracks Die Hard jokes. “Johnson. No...the other one.” End of Digression.) So, there's no real openings there. Best idea is to put pressure on Elliot and see that he doesn't have time to get the ball off.

On the ground, they have no running game to speak of. None. When you account for lost yardage, they actually have less than 10 yards on the season. Therefore, I don't think it's something that the Power are going to be stressing much about.

However, on our side of the ball, most teams that have played them this season has been able to put up yards against them. Dallas and Tulsa both only lost by a touchdown, and were each able to put up nearly a hundred yards on them. Tulsa's quarterback, Bobby Reid, put up 96 by himself. Even when Jacksonville put less than twenty rushing yards up, Georgia has negative yardage.

The point here is that – even for the Arena League – the Force has a blind spot for the ground game. If ever there was a week to try out that whole Josh Rue thing again, this is it.

Another factor to watch is that the Force seems to have a have a habit of slacking off late in the game. Fully half of their games saw the opposing team make a major rally in the second-half and close the gap. Now, the Power haven't been that fantastic at the long game this season, but if they can keep the faith and not panic when and if they're down, they have a chance to catch the Force by surprise late in the game.

One has to realize, however, that state, predictions, offensive habits and the like only matter if the Power holds up its side of the bargain. This, again, means not back-sliding into old habits and learning from past mistakes. They need to keep their head in the game and make the good plays that they made last week. I hope to see Morelli behind center again this week – see my review comments about horses and streams – but Morris has been activated from IR, so I don't know who they are going to go with.

Furthermore, these penalties need to stop. I hope that they took this long break to drill every major play they have and that whoever is at QB is getting flashcard quizzes throughout the day. Most of our penalties have involved confusion before the snap and jumping the gun, so that is our major concern. Penalty yards kill games as much as bad defense.

The bottom line is that this is going to be our toughest game so far this season short of the Sharks. It is winnable, but it won't be easy. If we can find some way to neutralize them in the air, this will be our game to lose. Their ground attack and defense is weak, they get soft in the second half, and a lot of their wins have come against cream-puffs. However, the Power are often guilty of making stupid mistakes and losing to cream-puffs.

Game starts at 7:30 Saturday night, streaming online.

Elsewhere in the league:

• In divisional action, the Barnstormers host Philly in what is a pretty “meh” game. At least the Barnstormers have a good Internet feed and make for entertaining football.
• In an almost identical situation, the Tampa Bay Storm will be hosting the Mustangs.
• The Game of the Week is the Orlando Predators at the Jacksonville Sharks in a game that (along with ours) has the potential to completely shake up the American Division South. This will air on the NFL network Sunday at three, on delay do to the draft.
  
• All the powerhouses in the National Conference either have a bye or are playing teams that might as well be a bye.