Rules, Rattlers, and Network TV Never Stay the Same
Patrick Daly
Wednesday January 1, 2003
The AFL will get its earliest start ever, but the schedule is only part of the change. For those of you who have missed the multicolored bird logo now adorning many AFL Web sites – that would be a peacock for those who don’t get the Discovery Channel – NBC will televise regular season games throughout season and playoffs with the exception of the final weekend in March, when the AFL will be preempted by golf with the Player’s Championship. NBC has a tough job ahead this season, but they certainly seem to be an able and willing partner for the AFL.
Rocky Mountain Way
In Colorado, the AFL welcomes the expansion Crush, led by head coach Bob Beers and co-owned by the trio of Pat Bowlen, Stan Kroenke and future NFL Hall of Famer John Elway. Elway has already begun to place his mark on the league, appearing alongside Kurt Warner in the current AFL commercials for NBC.
With ArenaBowl MVP John Dutton already in the fold, the Crush have added AFL veterans, including fullback/linebackers Marrio Grier and Joey Dozier, and receiver/defensive backs Adrian Lunsford, Damian Harrell, Joe Douglass and Charlie Davidson. The key for success in their first season will be strong play on the line – the key for any team in the league – as well as some consistency from a group of players who’ll have only a short time to come together.
Head West Young Men
Head west for a few hours you’ll find the new home of the Gladiators in Las Vegas, Nevada. The league confirmed recently what had been rumored most of the week prior: the New Jersey Gladiators were heading west.
The move has already been compared by some to the late-night shipment of the Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis. Allegedly, the team was not required to pay rent for the last few seasons, but still had trouble making ends meet due, in part, to their low attendance.
Actually, if you leave now for Las Vegas, you’ll probably beat the moving vans, but not by much. The situation, already tinged by the blood from the broken hearts of those fans who did support the team, doesn’t get much better as the team now has just over a month to encourage fans that the eight games at the Thomas and Mack Arena are worth the price of admission.
Assuming most of the roster does make the move, they should field a good team again this season, but seeing an Eastern Division team west of the Rocky Mountains doesn’t feel quite right. Assuming the move was inevitable, it may just be better that the team will play in a new location rather struggle through a lame-duck season when last year’s 9-5 record and home playoff game wasn’t enough.
Rules Update
Also, for those of you keeping score at home, grab your AFL rulebook – OK, so the rulebook is a tougher find than Jimmy Hoffa’s burial site – and follow along. Many of the changes were made to address the continuity of the game by cutting down on time-wasting activities such as consecutive timeouts.
One significant change will make offsides or encroachment by the defense an automatic first down in addition to the usual five yards. The intent is to discourage jumpy defensive linemen from giving up the occasional five-yard penalty for a jump-start on the rush.
The offense has not been immune, as it gets tagged with a five-yard penalty for stop motion with the intent to draw a defensive player offsides. Teams often use this type of play to slow down a pass rush that times the snap by watching the offensive player in forward motion. This change offsets the defensive change described above, but does take away some of the advantage the offense generally enjoys.
A subtle, but potentially important, change will allow teams to dress a third quarterback who can enter the game if the first two quarterback are injured and cannot return. A better addition may have been allowing a player to return to the game to replace an injured player, even if he’s considered ‘dead’ for the quarter – a ‘dead’ player is one who has been replaced twice within a given quarter and is no longer available to play until the next quarter.
Rattler Notes
In Arizona, the Rattlers have already begun to put the pieces together for 2003. As they’ve often done in the past, the Rattlers have spent a bit of their energy resigning players rather than pursuing a number of free agents from other teams. Resigned players include receiver/defensive back Randy Gatewood, offensive specialist Maurice Bryant, lineman Pete Tramontanas, fullback/linebacker Bo Kelly, lineman Charlie Morris, quarterback Chris Hixson, lineman Stacy Evans, lineman Wendall Gaines and defensive specialist Ricky Parker.
The Rattlers have parted ways with quarterback Chad DeGrenier and defensive specialist Jerrick Bledsoe, but the biggest news was the release of defensive specialist Cecil Doggette. After coming into the 2002 season in good health, Doggette suffered through various injuries that kept him off of the practice field for a good portion of the season. Doggette was forced to work through a similar situation through much of the 2001 campaign as well. Doggette has since signed on in Grand Rapids, but it came time for the Rattlers to make a tough decision. He’ll be missed in Arizona, but there comes a time when a team needs to move in another direction.
In addition to the resigning of Parker, that different direction may be in the form of Clarence Lawson, who spent the 2002 season in Carolina after three seasons in Florida. Lawson has put up respectable numbers, although his size, last listed at 5’8” and 180 pounds, could be an issue against some of the bigger receivers in the league. However, he’s capable of laying a big hit, which could some of the sting out of the loss of Doggette.
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.
