Power Defangs the Sabercats

First off, let me state that this post won't be edited as well as it usually is, as Keller is in Sacramento, in what I can only assume is a poorly planned victory tour celebrating our win over the San Jose Sabercats.

Wow. What a game. I gotta be honest: I put on a brave face in my preview, but never actually thought that we'd win. I certainly didn't expect to see how the rankings turned out after this weekend's games. However, to pat my own back, most of my predictions on what needed to happen in order for the Power to win actually did.

First off, I had stated that the first team to jump out to a good lead was going to win this one – however, this didn't play out exactly how I expected. Early on, the Power jumped out to a 14 point lead, which is good, but not exactly decisive, lead-wise. Before we knew it, the Cats were able to catch up, then pull ahead, making it 21-14. Not to be deterred, the Power got back in the end-zone and the PAT was...no good. Ugh. Edingered.

This one-point deficit would haunt the team the rest of the first half. Not only that, but San Jose was nice enough to miss one themselves, giving the Power a chance to even it up on the next score – before Edinger missed another one. Honestly, missed PATs aren't uncommon in the AFL and going into the half only down by one to the Cats was better than I'd expected, but our kicker's consistency (or lack of it) is disturbing and frustrating. Also, in the forefront of my mind, I knew that missed extra points nearly always come back to the team that have them.

The half ended with another key to victory that I mentioned that we needed: Goal line stops. San Jose had the ball last and were going to come out of the half with it first, so they had a very good chance to get more than one point ahead of us. It was not to be, however, as the Cats went 4 and out on the goal line when our defense refused to budge, mainly because of Dewalt and Royce Adams.

Coming out of the half, Adams returns to the field to force a fumble, which Pittsburgh recovered. Unbelievably, the Power had denied the all-offense Sabercats two scoring drives in a row. This was very important as San Jose went on to score 14 points to our 7 in the 3^rd. This kept the deficit to something manageable going into the final fifteen minutes of the game.

The only way to describe the 4^th quarter is “brutal.” Our first drive ended in Morris's second interception of the game. San Jose's first drive ends with a 4^th down stop, giving us a mid-field turnover on downs. Next, they returned the favor. Then – we did it again. Three 4th-down stops in a row. The crowd was screaming for blood.

This crowd fervor was rewarded when the Power scored on their next drive. Trying to make up for Edinger's earlier mistakes, Morris went for two instead of kicking an extra point. Unfortunately, it did not pan out, and the Power was down by two with 46 seconds left on the clock. Obviously, an on-side kick was in order, and Edinger drilled it right into the head of a Sabercat player, bouncing it right to our special teams players – who were not able to recover it.

Remarkably, the Power was able to make yet another 4^th down stop when the Cats started on the four-yard line. Getting the ball back with 41 seconds on the clock, they were able to drive it down the field, score and come up with the two-point conversion. All that stood between them and an upset victory was 27 seconds. Edinger booted it deep, and four plays later, it was over.

Power 54, Sabercats 48.

The Good, Bad and Ugly

I'll start with the Bad, just to get it out of the way. The Power actually had a lot of trouble holding onto the ball, which made me very nervous during the game. The final tally was two interceptions and three fumbles. By comparison, San Jose only threw one INT and only dropped the ball once. Normally, stats like this would tell you who lost the game, but the rest of the Power game up big in a lot of plays.

Very surprisingly to me, Chad Cook was the star for San Jose, and they ran it a lot during this game. All told, they rushed twice as much as we did, and scored 3 rushing TD's, where we had none. I didn't see that coming. Obviously, the Power had anticipated an aerial attack and didn't really have an answer for Chad Cook.

Semi-bad was that the return of Josh Lay meant that Xavier Lee has been put on “Recallable Reassignment.” Don't get me wrong: Lay is a hell of a player and had some seriously clutch plays in this outing – but I wish he didn't cost us the Swiss-Army knife that is Lee.

The Good is a lot more fun to talk about. “Joystick” Washington continued to be Morris's favorite target in this meeting and had a huge game this week, totaling 120 yards and 4 touchdowns. (Seriously – I didn't have a yardstick with me, but I'm fairly sure Joystick is shorter than the waterboy, yet Morris loves to throw to him.) He was followed closely by Jason Willis with an additional 3 touchdowns.

The defense did exactly what I said that they needed to do. As I pointed out in my preview, the Sabercats rely on scoring on nearly every drive, and we needed to hand them a few big stops to keep them off the board – and the Power accomplished this handily. The Cats only converted 3 of 7 3^rd downs, and none of their forth-down attempts. “Powertool” DeWalt continued to be a huge force on defense, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this be his permanent home.

The Ugly. Oh, man...I'm still laughing about this. People always say that Arena Football is a fan participation sport, and Keller proved it. We sit in the forth row near the end-zone, and he likes to mess with the opposing offense by yelling, “Huthuthuthike!!!” to see if he can draw them off-sides. The most it has ever done was really torque off Kyle Rowley last week (he glared at us the whole game.) This week, it actually worked...on the Power defense. Carlo Campbell flinched and the yellow flag went out.

I bet Keller's not gonna do that again. (Regardless, I'll never let him forget it.)

Final thoughts

This was a great way to end the first half of the season, with two solid wins in a row at home. Also, we are now only a game behind Cleveland in our division, and actually have a tied record with Sabercats. Now, we're in a weak division, and the people out front in the league look at us and say, “Aww...aren't they cute...” but – we're still second in our division, and that's all that matters.

Over at the NFL Network, Big Ant released his mid-season awards, and he has Coach Siegfried as the runner-up for coach of the year. This is pretty big, and I can't say I fault his logic. He's been making ballsy decisions the last few weeks, and has managed a hell of a record as an expansion-team coach with 3 starting QB's at the half-way point of the season.

My only concern at this point, is that we've built up some great momentum in these last few games, and now we've got a bye-week. On one hand, a dead-center bye is a good way to recharge the batteries. On the other, we might lose that momentum that we've built up. I will have more on these issues in my mid-season Bye-Week Spotlight later this week.

Elsewhere in the League

• Both Philly and Milwaukee won their games this week, improving to 3-6 on the season. Good for them, but they're still not a concern.
  
  
• Cleveland was destroyed by Orlando, losing by 30 points. Ouch.
  
  
• The Rush beat the Rattlers in a last-second field-goal that was nothing short of a miracle, as their kicker has a worse record than ours. This bumps Chicago back up to top of their division, a gnat's wing ahead of Dallas.
  
  
• The Sharks hold their 8-game winning streak, with only one loss on their record for the season. Garcia is having a fairytale season that could very well end up at the Arena Bowl. If the Power isn't there, I'll be rooting for them.