The Storm was Over-Powering

The good news is that we’re still #1 in the division. The bad news is, we lost this weekend. The worse news is that we’re only #1 because we beat Cleveland in the head-to-head last week. Another loss, and we’re back to second fiddle.

The Power played hard in this game, and only came up 7 points short. As I had said in my preview, Tampa Bay is backed into a corner and fighting for their season – we should be ready for anything. It was just our bad luck that Zbydniewski had the game of his life on Saturday. Had that not been the case, we probably would have walked away with the win.

Things started out really well when Carlos Campbell made an interception on the Storm’s first drive. This set Pittsburgh up to get on the board first, and get the ball rolling. Unfortunately, from there the scores just kept getting traded back and forth.

As is my general rule, the back-and-forth is all well and good until a team doesn’t score on a drive. It might not be instantaneous, but I’ve found that this is the team that’s usually going to lose. This was true in this case, as Pittsburgh went four and out early in the second, changing it from “Pitt scores, Tampa catches up” to, “Tampa scores, Pitt catches up.”

When Tampa’s kicker missed a PAT late in the second, it looked like we might have a gift handed to us, but my boy Edinger evened that up himself later in the game. The scoring exchanges continued throughout the second half, with both teams going all out, but in the end, Tampa squeaked through with that extra 7 pts to put this one to bed.

Yes, it was a loss, and yes, it will make things a lot more interesting for our season – in the macro sense, this was a hard loss to swallow, and one that will probably come back to haunt us.

In the micro sense, there was a lot that the Power can come away from this game happy with. Campbell’s huge interception started the game off right, Joystick had over a hundred yards and three touchdowns, and Morris threw for 335 yards. Also, Mathis had a huge night this week, further proving that it’s great to have him back. He had 195 yards and three touchdowns on the night, as well as returning his first kickoff for a score this year.

It might be easy to point to the defense and say that they didn’t get the job done this week. After all, had they stepped it up, Tampa wouldn’t have scored as much, right? Not necessarily. As I said earlier, Zbydniewski had the game of his life this week. He was 24-34 with only one interception, and threw for career highs in both yardage and touchdowns (372/8.) I’m really not sure that there was much more that we could have done against someone that fired up and ready to go.

On the other side of the ball, their defense played us just as hard. We were only able to convert 4 of 7 3^rd downs and 1 of 3 4^th downs. Also, as I feared, they got to Morris with a critical sack. They kept us contained, and that was that. This is a team that’s used to winning and saw their season slipping away – they beat us, fair and square.

Next up, the Utah Blaze.

Elsewhere in the league

• Jacksonville extends their streak to 11, by squeaking a close one by Orlando – 68-67
  
  
• Cleveland won, which sucks. Our records are now tied, with only our matchup last week keeping us in the lead. We can hope they lose next week to the Command but, well, the Mustangs beat them by 20 pts this week…
  
  
• The Friday-night spotlight was a real shocker this week. I wasn’t expecting much out of Philly and Spokane, but it was actually a really exciting game. The Shock scored on their first drive, onside kicked it and recovered, which they took to the house again. After that trickery on the second drive of the game, they did it again! This time, they missed the PAT, but the fact is: they had 20pts on the board before Philly even had a chance to touch the ball! What followed was an explosive slugfest that was exciting to watch.

If the playoffs were today

• The National Conference would be mostly the same as last week, trading Spokane for Utah. I still pick Arizona in the first round, along with Chicago. Chicago is still a question-mark with their ability to choke in the post-season
  
  
• The American Conference would now see Cleveland matched with Orlando, in which I’d pick Orlando by a hair. We’d be matched with Jacksonville, to which I don’t think it even needs to be said how hard we’d be beat.