Rattlers Believe in Victory
Patrick Daly
Tuesday August 6, 2002
“We didn’t play very well,” Rattlers offensive specialist Chris Horn. “It’s like I told someone earlier, I think, as a receiving corps, we might have dropped more balls tonight in this game than we’ve dropped all year in practice. We weren’t trying to drop balls. We were trying to win the game. We weren’t doing anything different, it just wasn’t happening for us. I don’t know why, but thank goodness we hung in there and fought.
“At halftime, if you could’ve been in the locker room, you would’ve known we were going to fight back. I know it came down to a pretty good play at the end, but, in the locker room, everyone looked at each other and said, ‘we’re not losing this game. We’re fixing this. Don’t come out if you don’t believe.’ ”
Riding high off of last week’s first round win over Grand Rapids, Carolina found themselves holding a commanding 39-20 halftime lead. While the Rattlers struggled with dropped balls, quarterback Sherdrick Bonner would have preferred to see two particular passes, both Carolina interceptions returned for touchdowns, land on the carpet.
“Everybody was having their moments,” Bonner said. “You can’t get frustrated. There’s not one guy that I can say doesn’t want to win games. That stuff happens sometimes. Guys miss balls. I throw dumb passes, interceptions. That’s just a part of sports. It happens. We’re all human. You’ve just got to keep pushing through with your guys that have gotten you here and those guys have done a great job for me all year.”
“I’ve never seen so many dropped passes by clutch receivers,” Rattlers head coach Danny White said. “It was everybody. It was Gatewood. It was Chris Horn. Everybody was dropping balls. It’s amazing that we dropped that many balls, had the two interceptions at the end of the half, and still found a way to win this game. That’s got to be a testament to the heart of these players. They just hung in there. All they were saying at the end was just, ‘you gotta believe, you gotta believe.’ Even down to the last play. Hunkie was saying, ‘just believe in us.’ ”
With all respects to the ’69 Miracle Mets, the Rattlers did believe. As they had done three weeks earlier against San Jose, the Rattlers came out in the second half and dominated the third quarter. The Rattlers scored touchdowns on each of their six-second half possessions and outscored Carolina 41-20 in the second half.
While Horn recorded four second-half touchdowns and receiver Randy Gatewood added two scores of his own, one of the unsung heroes of the game was fullback/linebacker John Peaua. His interception near midfield and fourth-quarter fumble recovery helped stop the Cobras on what turned out to be the two stops the Rattlers desperately needed.
“We felt like we could get back into it offensively if we just started catching the ball,” White said. “We knew we had to get some stops. Well, we got the interception, which was huge. We got the fumble, that was huge. So that’s what got us back into the game. But we never did stop them. They stopped themselves with those two turnovers. Other than that, their offense was clicking just like it was last week.”
For a team that now advances to their seventh straight appearance in the semifinals, many of the Arizona players know that they were fortunate to escape with a win against a hungry opponent.
“I’m happy, but I’m not satisfied,” Rattlers receiver/linebacker Hunkie Cooper said. “The better team didn’t win that football game tonight. They came out and executed, and executed well. We came out flat. We made plays, but I’ve never seen so many dropped balls in a game by our players. But that’s the sign of a champion, when you play through it and you use all of the rules. Use the net. Use everything that’s given to you in the arena. One thing we never did do is not believe we could come back.
“We didn’t play the type of football we needed to play to be successful in the playoffs. That’s not playoff football. That’s not second-season football.”
Despite stopping Carolina early, the Cobras outscored Arizona by a 26-7 margin in the second quarter. Because this is a game where the points can come quickly, momentum plays an important role, even if it’s not always clear how it can shift so suddenly.
“One of the mysteries of any team sport is how you lose that momentum like that, so fast,” White said. “It just went away. A guy drops a pass. You miss an extra point. We get a bad spot on fourth down. All of a sudden, these things start to compound and now all of a sudden people start pressing. I think that’s what happened.”
The play that ultimately won the game might have never taken place had Bonner not called for the play off the net himself. While White wanted Bonner to spike the ball and kill the clock, Bonner sent his receivers deep.
“It was sort of planned, but I didn’t call it. Sherdrick called that all the way. What I was trying to get him to do was kill the clock. Just take the ball, snap it, and throw it down on the ground so we could get somebody in back motion. You never throw a Hail Mary in this game without somebody in back motion so they can get down the field faster. We ran it from a dead set. That’s what is so unbelievable about it.
“As soon as he threw the ball the thought that came into my head was, ‘that’s got a chance.’ Because it’s going to hit high on the net and there’s no telling where it’ll go. I would love to take credit for it and tell you we practice it every week, but, to be honest with you, that was just a bunch of great athletes just reacting to a situation and believing in themselves.”
There’s some question about whether or not the Rattlers actually practice the net play. While most of the practice is generally run on a field without nets, Horn has seen the play before. Couple that with his experience with fielding kicks off of the net, and he had a little bit of an advantage.
“I don’t want to say practice makes perfect, but we do practice that sometimes. It actually worked the exact same way in practice. We don’t want that ever again.”
Even with a last second play, the Rattlers realize they beat a good team on Sunday afternoon.
“This was a Carolina team that had nothing to lose,” White said. “They were loose. They were just coming at us. They were just not afraid of anything.”
One of the reasons Carolina has been an improved team over the past few weeks is that quarterback John Fitzgerald has settled into the starting role. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s been able to sync up with weapons like Aaron Bailey and Cory Fleming.
“Fitzgerald has turned into one of the top quarterbacks in this league, in my opinion, in two weeks,” White said. “That’s an incredible transition. And he’s got a bunch of guys that believe in him.
“Cory Fleming is class. He’s 100% class. He’s big. He’s strong. He’s got the speed and he makes plays when they have to have them. He’s a clutch player. He’s the kind of guy we’re all proud of in this league.”
“They’ve got our respect,” Horn said of Carolina. “They had our respect anyway. For whatever reason, they play us tough. Matchups are funny, but they match very, very well against us.
“They don’t have anything to be ashamed of, and every single one of them has got our respect.”
A fortunate team is one that gets their breaks early, and this just may the break the Rattlers need to roll through the remainder of the playoffs. This near loss should serve as a wake-up call for a Rattler team that is every bit as talented as any other team in a league where it’s the little things that will make a winner.
“I hope it’s a wake-up call,” White said. “It could be a whole lot of things for us. Right now, we need to calm down pretty quick and get ready for next week. But it could be the boost. It could be the confidence builder that every team needs. To win a championship, you’ve got to get breaks and we got them tonight.”
“I think it’s a sign of the character of this football team,” Horn said. “What we do from here is completely up to us. It’s just like what we said at halftime. We were a different football team in the second half. That’s just plain old simple determination that we’re tired of getting our butts kicked. We need to start football games that way. Fortunately, the last play went our way.”
Going into another week of practice, Bonner and the rest of Rattlers will get back to work.
“We’ve just got to keep working hard,” Bonner said. “The fortunate thing is we’ve got some guys that can make plays. We work hard and we try to challenge each other, and I think that’s what’s helping us get through the little rough spots.”
The Rattlers get to face off in a rematch with the Chicago Rush, who come off of a 60-47 win over the Dallas Desperados. The Rush have improved since the week-six meeting that saw the host Rattlers earn a 52-41 win. As a veteran team, the Rattlers will put this win behind them and focus on the upcoming opponent.
“Don’t count us out because we won’t play like that next week,” Cooper said. “You’ve got my word on that.”
What do you believe?
Patrick Daly has been an Arena Football League enthusiast since he first stumbled across the late-night ESPN broadcasts and has followed the Arizona Rattlers since their inaugural season in 1992. He graduated from Arizona State University with an engineering degree and is currently a member of a web development team for Direct Alliance in Tempe. Patrick currently resides in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona with his beautiful wife, son and a very large football helmet collection.
