Firebirds bring 2-0 Record Home for Opener vs. Chicago
Matthew Pickut
Friday February 14, 2003
After a 2-0 start, the Indiana Firebirds begin divisional play against Chicago this Sunday at Conseco Fieldhouse. While the Rush have started 0-2, head coach Mike Dailey knows that Rush head coach Mike Hohensee will have his team ready and that this Sunday’s match up is important.
“They were important games [the two road wins],” said Dailey, “because they were on the road, and road games are really hard to win. We’re feeling good about it but there are still 14 games to go and the most important game of the year is this one -- because it’s the next one.”
Last week the Firebirds rushed for over 50 yards against New York -- a feat that Dailey knows will be hard to repeat against the Rush.
“We had a good night rushing the ball, coming off the line, but I think that it will be hard to do that against Chicago,” said Dailey, “ Chicago is a much tougher defense with some of their run support guys so we’ll see how that goes. I think week to week you look at the game plan and do what you can do to help your team win.”
The Firebirds bring a balanced attack into the game, ranked 1st in scoring and recording six sacks in last week’s contest. Despite the sack performance, the team ranks near the bottom of the league giving up over 55 points per game. Coach Dailey remains upbeat despite giving up so many points.
“The key is that it’s a team sport and winning is winning, if one phase of the game plays well on a given night and the other side doesn’t play as well or vice versa it kind of goes in cycles,” opined Dailey, “It kind of goes in cycles, the key is to find a way to win.”
While Dailey remains philosophical about the defense, he credits clutch play with keeping them in games. “I think we played very well defensively last week,” said Dailey. “Up front we had six sacks and that’s got to be a record for us, but we had some breakdown in the secondary – but Aaron Garcia is a great quarterback and he’s going to make some plays. The key was that we made some stops [and] got the ball back for our offense “
On offense the addition of WR/LB Terence Blackwell and the retention of WR/LB Brett Bech give the Firebirds the speed threats on the outside that they lacked as a compliment to OS Eddie Brown. The ‘killer’ B’s have combined with Raymond Philyaw to form a potent combination. Dailey reports that Philyaw is still less than 100%, but he credits the quarterback with working hard to come back from his shoulder injury.
In off-the-field news, the Firebirds released WR/DB DeJuan Alfonzo and signed OL/DL Bill Duff. While Alfonzo has played well in his limited time this season, Duff represented the opportunity to pick up a player who the team had coveted for a long time. “We think Bill Duff is a great player,” said Dailey. “He’s a guy that we’ve been pursuing through the offseason. [He’s] a good pass rush guy who actually ended up with Orlando in the preseason, but because of a money issue with them, we had an opportunity to bring him here. We brought him in on a tryout and were really high on him.”
DeJuan’s release shocked many fans, who expected DeJuan to emerge as a more active player after a productive pre-season. According to Dailey, Alfonzo merely got caught up in the numbers game of professional sports.
“Of course when you make a roster move, someone has to go. DeJuan’s a good player but he’s not playing right now so we had to make a move and that’s the nature of the business.” Dailey confided, “If you ask any coach about the roster size they’d tell you to make it bigger. I hate to lose a guy like DeJuan and I wish our roster size was bigger.”
The Chicago Rush wasted no time, immediately signing Alfonzo on Friday.
Matthew Pickut is a pastor in northern Indiana and a long time AFL fan. He also writes for his own website: The Brown Paper Blog. He graduated from Taylor University in Upland Indiana (class of `96) with degrees in Biblical Literature and Sociology as well as a healthy respect for the medicinal properties of coffee.
