Time to Trim Some Talons

I might as well skip to the chase: We're going to lose this week.

There is the hope that such a bold statement will humor both the Football Gods and the Vegas Oracles and cause them to make a fool of me, but I doubt it. We've lost too many games against teams that we should have beaten to really have much hope against the San Antonio Talons.

Led by Aaron Garcia, the fourth greatest Arena QB in history, the Talons are currently sitting on a 5-3 record. The three games they've lost have been against the Shock, Sabercats and the Rattlers - and at least two of them have the right to dream of going to the Arena Bowl (and, the last three Arena Bowls have featured one of those three teams.) Also, we're playing them on the road.

So, yeah - it's an uphill battle, to be sure.

Garcia has been in the league for 18 years and holds almost every record he can hold. Last year, he became the first QB (in any league) to pass 1,000 TDs. The main thing that we have to accept about him is that he cannot be pressured in the pocket and he's not afraid to throw it long. Now, the silver lining here is that I said we can't pressure him. He can be hurried, he can be sacked and he can be picked. These are all symptoms of extremely experienced quarterbacks. They've seen it all (and Garcia has) and they think, "I can hold this for a few more second- OH CRAP!" or "Sure, what the heck - I can make this pass..."

The games that the Talons have lost this year are ones where they were on the wrong side of the turnover battle or where Garcia got beat up. The former of these, we know we can do. The latter we can do better than we have been, so hopefully this is the week we do. When he played for the Sharks last here, he beat us by 25 points, but whatever.

Garcia has four mean targets in former Preds star Robert "I made the right choice" Quiroga, Jomo Wilson, Carl more and his favorite, our own Jason "Whatchu Talkin' Bout/JWill" Willis. They're good. That's all that can be said. Willis is his favorite target, and we know him. That's our advantage. Also - even if it didn't work out last year - Siegfried used to be one of Garcia's coaches. This is something that needs to be exploited.

On our side, Randall will be starting again so, say what you will, it's a bit of consistency. Also, I'm glad "Vampire" Kramer gave me something to write about last week, 'cause he's already gone again. Wagner's on league suspension now, so we'll have another unblooded kicker starting for us. So that's....great. We'll see how it shakes out.

In the meantime, my favorite mutt will continue her voodoo-doll antics with her favorite toy, Garcia.

It was relevant when he played for the Sharks.

Elsewhere in the League

• The NFL Game of the Week really is, as far as I'm concerned. Cleveland travels to Milwaukee in a great division matchup. I'm feeling the Mustangs in this game.
• The battle for number one in west division continues in San Jose for the late game Friday. The Utah Blaze is looking to settle things with the Sabercats, and this one is going to be close. The Cats might not have a lot left in the tank after their brutal battle against the Rattlers last week, and the Blaze might be able to pick up the win and the lead in the division.
• The Voodoo have had a slight fall from grace in the past few weeks, and they'll be looking to get back in the hunt in the late, late game against the Shock. Rowley has had some trouble, but I think he'll prevail this week.
• Another battle for the top slot kicks off Saturday night between the Storm and the Force. Not only because they beat us last week, but because the Storm hasn't been that impressive, I pick the Force.
• Philly will get right back on the horse against Jacksonville and get back to their winning ways
• The Barnstormers have lost three in a row against tough opponents and I know they want to beat someone up bad. Lucky for them, they're hosting the KC Command. If you're the type that likes to play the long odds for an upset (and bets on AFL games), this is the one.
  
• Finally, late Saturday, the Rattlers host my boys from Chicago. The Rush have just been playing way too sloppy (even though they tend to win) to be able to beat a team like the Rattlers on the road, that many timezones away.
  

Buried in the Graveyard

This is one of those games that's beyond frustrating to write about. Not just because we dropped another one. Not even because we dropped such a close one - but because if we had been doing better this season, we would have almost been able to look on this game with a bit of pride, despite the loss.

All things considered, the Power played a great game, and kept at it until the final whistle. I was pretty worried about Cassidy coming into his old house and playing against a defense that knows him - especially when that defense is known for takeaways, and Cassidy having gotten picked so much last week. Fact is, he threw for 226 yards, five TDs and only one INT. That's really not a bad job at all. By way of comparison, Aaron Garcia - voted the 4th best QB in Arena history - only threw for about 60 more yards Sunday night (with the same TDs and INTs) and he lost by 30 more points. Again, not a bad performance for our 4th QB of the season.

Our defense stood strong and put ups some big stops. Plays were broken up, fumbles recovered, passes intercepted. All of our regular standouts were there: LaRico Stevenson, Bryan Williams, newcomer Sanderson, and of course, Chris "Dodgeball" Le-


...er, okay. "Gingabread." Point is, they did well.

The standout of the evening was "Superman" Berry, returning home to NOLA. He was all over the place. He ended with nearly 300 yards, a kickoff return TD, a receiving TD, hell - he even threw for a touchdown on a trick play. Pouring salt on the wounds, he took it to the next level by slapping a Power sticker right on the Voodoo logo in the end zone on that return.

The down point of the evening was Colin "Money" Wagner, who did not live up to his (me-given) nickname. (You can't tweet me, buddy - I don't do Twitter. Go bug Keller.) Now, before people jump on me about my past post concerning my feelings on kickers being blamed for losses. I never said that a kicker can't be responsible for a loss, just that they are often unfairly hung with that. However, when a kicker misses two PATs, three FGs and his team loses by three points...yeah. That's his fault. Now, one of those PATs was a bad spot and two of the FGs were from extreme ranges (one of which being when the offense committed penalties that kept them from the end zone), but the math majors out there will notice that leaves 4 points out there.

End of the night left us on the wrong side of 51-48, and another loss in our record. Next week is our hands-down, no-bullshit, must-win, do-or-die game against the hated Gladiators.

Elsewhere in the league

• Georgia at Orlando. This was a snore-fest. Orlando finally got a win, but it was 27-24 win. Georgia remains at the top of their division in a 3-way 3-3 tie. Take note, Power - Wildcard is always a possibility in this conference.
• Philly continues their march of burning everything down and quest to be the first team to ever hit 100 points. They made Tampa look like a third-rate team on the NFL Network Friday, winning 83-48.
• Utah wins the rematch against the Barnstormers in one of this week's two nail-biters - 63-62.
• I would like everyone to take a minute to thank Jacksonville for coming up BIG in the last seconds of their game this week and putting Cleveland within reach of us in our division, 54-49.
• The Rush put the Mustangs down for us by one point Saturday, 62-61.
• KC held the Sabercats back more than I thought they'd be able to, but still remain the one winless team in the league, 49-35. I wish I knew how, but the Ustream feed was out.
• Finally, the Arena Bowl rematch between Aaron Garcia and Nick Davila played out a bit differently this time. The Talons were completely routed 68-34 by the Rattlers.

Another Loss, But Hope is Building

Even though the Power registered their third loss of the season Friday night, I don't need to dig as deeply for a silver lining. This week, we actually saw some of what I had hoped to see when the season started. The fact is, we lost 55-42, but we played three solid quarters, and that's something to be proud of. Al lot of what we did right was overshadowed by the strong defense that Iowa employed throughout the game.

Andrico Hines looked confident behind center, and had a very good game, most things considered. He threw for just a hair under 300 yards, had five TDs and never got sacked. Unfortunately, he got picked four times. One thing that I really feel that I need to point out, however, is that not all of those were really his fault. The ball might not have been thrown perfectly, but they were intercepted because the receiver went for it when they shouldn't have and tipped it right to a defender. I'm not going to say based on one game that Hines is the guy - but I feel more comfortable with him taking snaps, and look forward to seeing what the next 3 weeks bring with him as QB.

DeWalt was missing in action again this week, but in his place, we've had Randy Hymes, and boy does he look good. He's got comparable height to DeWalt, some good speed and very good hands. He was good for 84 yards and a touchdown this week. Sharing receiving duties with him was, of course, "Joystick" Washington for only 69 yards but two touchdowns.

Rounding out the receiving corps was P.J. Berry, finally showing everyone why he was such a talked about pickup for the team this year. He had 110 yards, two touchdowns in the air and one kickoff return to paydirt. Overall on returns, he had nearly 25 yards an attempt. Furthermore, he was making plays that just should not have worked. One of his receptions, he took a step to run, saw a wall of hate wearing Iowa colors, turned around to run 10-15 yards in the wrong direction, pivoted 180 degrees and blew past a bunch of confused defenders to run all the way down to the end zone. That's the kind of crazy shit that made him earn the rep that he has.

Another offensive note: Last season, I spent so much time bitching about Paul Edinger's kicking that it feels great to be able to gush about our current kicker. Colin "Money" Wagner is just....well - money. Yes, that's my nickname for him, but he's earned it. PATs are pretty much automatic for him.

The final highlight of the game was the defense, which stepped up huge. It was a hard hitting, play-breaking, good coverage affair. The Power defense was able to hold the Barnstormers to 3-8 on 3rd downs and 1-4 on 4ths. Although they didn't manage to pick J.J. Raterink at all, they kept the pressure on him and got in the way all night. Bryan Williams was especially standout all night.

So, with all of this glowing praise, why did we lose? Well, first off, as I said up at the top of this column, we only played 3 solid quarters. I've oft said that the Power runs out of gas late in the game, and that seems to be continuing. Once our opponents get out to a two-score lead, the wind goes out of our sails. Also, we only manage a third of our 3rd down conversions and half of our 4ths. That had a lot to do with Iowa's solid defensive efforts, but it's a soft area. Finally, there were those 4 pesky interceptions. Both Stull and Hines are having a problem with this. I'm not sure if it's in the play calling, accuracy, or receiver ability, but it's there and a problem. Thankfully, because of our defense, there were four picks but we only lost by two touchdowns.

Next up - rematch against a team we might actually beat.

Elsewhere in the league

• Tampa Bay at New Orleans. The game of the week was a hell of game. The Voodoo finally broke the Graveyard Curse and won at home for the first time since 2008. Sure, there was a league hiatus in there, and they were the Shreveport Battlewings for a year - but the fact remains that it had been 12 games since they'd won. Tampa played hard, but NOLA made it decisive with a 66-47 victory. Kurt Rocco is a solid QB, and he has a great set of receivers in Bush, Castile and Payne. They are going to be trouble in a few weeks when we play them.
• Spokane at Arizona was a close one at 57-53. Depressing note, the Shock re-acquired the homeless Kyle Rowley, and he came came into the game after 4 days with the team a hell of a lot better than Bill Stull came into ours in the same amount of time. He got knocked around a bit, but he's going to settle back in there quite well. Rattlers win.
  
• The Sabercats knocked around the visiting Aaron Garcia and the Talons pretty well with a 76-53 victory, showing why I'm seeing them deep in the playoffs, if not appearing in New Orleans this August.
• Saturday night....Geez...There were some ass-whoopings going on out there. Chicago remained perfect with a 69-40 win over the Command. It was lopsided and there's not much to talk about there. Even the last of those 40 pts came on kind of a pity score.
• My buddy Kas lives down in Atlanta, and he's heard me talk way too much about Arena Football over the last few years. He's been debating checking it out sometime. Thankfully, he decided to play video games with me Saturday night rather than go down to Gwinnett Center to see the Soul just burn the Force down, salt the earth, build a new arena just to burn it down again, and then say something about their mothers. 92-42, Soul. Let me put that in perspective: They beat the Force by 50pts, which is more than the Force has scored in three out of four games this season.
• The week ended with a total snoozefest out in Cleveland. I guess Philly and Chicago used up all the points for this week as Cleveland won with just 41 points to Orlando's 24. Cleveland has one of the best defenses in the league, but their offense seemed to be taking it easy after beating Philly last week. I'll leave you with the most exciting thing of the game: