Size Doesn`t Matter; Heart Does
Kevin Sheller
Tuesday July 23, 2002
“We sucked,” joked OL/DL James Baron after the game.
While earning the number three seed by default when Arizona beat New Jersey, Chicago did not play customary Rush football. The first few possessions, it looked to be a Rush blowout. The Firebirds couldn’t mount a drive. The Rush scored… well, not with ease, but they scored.
While the game was close, Chicago struggled, and it wasn’t long before Indiana started to look like the better team. Why would something like this happen after a four-game winning streak and winning six of the last seven, including a thrilling overtime victory over the Dallas Desperados a week ago?
This year, many players have cited motivation as a reason for winning ugly, getting off to a bad start, or just plain losing. We know the team is an emotional one. Over the last few weeks, things just started going their way. This time, things didn’t.
“We didn’t tackle well in a few key situations where we needed to tackle. I don’t think a couple of calls went our way that probably could’ve went our way,” said head coach Mike Hohensee. “We didn’t catch the ball. We’re usually very sure-handed. We just didn’t play very well.
“We didn’t play inspired. We played hard, but not inspired.”
Players echoed the same sentiment.
“They had more hunger in them than we did,” said OL/DL John Moyer. “They were fighting for a playoff spot.”
It could be that the Rush needed a loss like this. Nobody wants to lose, but had the team won this game, they would have been undefeated at home and undefeated in the division. Carrying a few winning streaks into the playoffs, they might have believed that they could punch their way out of any brown paper bag. But perhaps the Rush learned that the breaks aren’t always going to go their way. The team has to earn those breaks.
“This is the game we need going into the playoffs,” said DS Cedric Walker. “Because when you start winning everybody thinks they are better than what they really are. So what we need to do now is look at this game, go to the drawing board, take this week off, come back with a whole new look on the season.”
Time will tell what effect this now meaningless game will have on the Rush psyche. In two weeks, the furthest things from the players’ minds will be this loss. Based on standings and tie-breakers, the Rush are the third best team in the Arena Football League.
“We start with a clean slate,” said Hohensee about the playoffs. ”We start with the three seed. It’s a new season. The first one we accomplished the goals that we wanted: winning our division. Now it’s a new set of goals that we have to go after.”
After the first round, the Rush will play host to the second-best remaining team; a team like Grand Rapids. It shouldn’t take much to find the motivation to win when the playoffs come to Chicago.
Kicked Out
K Ignacio Brache is the latest participant in a merry-go-round kicking fiasco for the Rush this season. In a competition earlier this week, dubbed by Hohensee as a “kick off,” the coach brought in Scott Szeredy and Brache to kick against Adam Hicks. The past two weeks, Hicks has only hit the net on kickoffs a few times and he’s struggled with an injury in the Dallas game, but through it all, he’s been perfect with his extra points.
Brache looked like an all-star in the competition. He made all of his extra points; he nailed the net on kickoffs; and had a studly onside kick.
In this game, Brache hit the net on the first kickoff, and made his first extra point. From there, he went downhill, as he powered knuckleballs to the goal line on kickoffs and missed every subsequent extra point.
Hohensee was not reserved with his assessment after the game.
“That was probably the worst kicking performance I’ve ever seen in the history of football. Hopefully David Cool will be better by the time we play.
“I don’t know if the kicking was so horrendous that we didn’t think we could overcome it. But I think we are good enough we could have overcome that kicking performance.
“This kid will be home tomorrow.”
Brache was cut immediately following the game.
Kevin Sheller ia founder of Arenafan Online and was the principal owner until 2004. Kevin graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in technical writing, and has been a member of the Arena Football Internet community since 1993. He has worked as a professional web programmer and is also the executive producer for a computer/video game company. The most recent Xbox title to his credit is called Hunter: The Reckoning.
