Frustrated Firebirds Continue to Lose
Matthew Pickut
Saturday March 22, 2003
I was the toast of town and she drunk it,
I had a run of good luck and she ran it right into the ground,
and now she’s puttin’ on a show and I get to play the clown.”
-Delbert McClinton
You know what happens when you play a blues song backwards? Yes,you get your job back, your woman back, and your house back. Well, if you play the Firebirds’ season backwards, you get your QB back, your WR/LB back, and at least 4 wins.
Last week against the LA Avengers, one play seemed to sum up the feeling most observers have about the Firebirds’ recent losing streak: When DS Evan Hvlaceck was called for pass interference and lost his cool.
“Well, you know obviously everyone hates to lose. We’re in a business where you want to win. It’s a competitive nature,” said Head Coach Mike Dailey. “Evan’s great young man -- quality kid, Christian kid -- you know he reacts to it. [He] doesn’t shove the official or anything like that, but he does touch the official, and that’s the letter of the law. That’s unfortunate, but he has to pay the consequences for it.”
The loss of Hvlacek, who was also playing on offense due to injuries, seemed to take the wind out of the Firebirds’ sails.
“[He was] ejected from the game and fined by the league and everything that goes with it, so it hurts us; obviously, you lose one guy from 21 -- that’s dramatic,” said Dailey. “But I think it’s a human reaction on his part. I just wish he hadn’t contacted the official, and I don’t think his intent was to do that. It just happened, you know. It’s the nature of it.”
That sense of frustration carried over after the game where OS Eddie Brown seemed almost Keyshawn-like in his request for the ball in an interview with the Indianapolis Star.
“Well, I haven’t met any receiver at this level that didn’t want the ball every time,” said Daily of his offensive specialist. “It’s not like he can make a play or he wanted to do it. That’s the nature of being a great competitor. Eddie’s a great competitor, he’s been a great player, and obviously he feels like if we could go to him more it would help the team and help the offense. The coaches are never going to do anything detrimental to the team. They want to win as much as anybody, but it’s still execution. You’ve got to have a pitcher to make the catch. You know the guy has to execute the throw and make the right read and get it there. The linemen have to protect. It’s a team sport, and no one individual can make or break a team.
"Eddie just wants to do the right things. He’s a great competitor, he wants to win, like we all do. It’s always hard to when you ask anyone right after a tough loss. You ask anyone a tough question after a tough loss and you get a reaction sometimes, it’s a human-type reaction. Eddie’s always wanted the ball, he wants to be the guy that gets a chance to make the play, and I understand that. I’d rather have guys like that who aren’t afraid to make the play.”
Many fans have taken their frustration out on DS Dell Lee, who is in his first year with the team.
“I think Dell Lee’s in a very difficult position because I think we are playing more man coverage when he’s in there because he has the athletic ability to do so,” said Dailey. “What happens is when you play man coverage you’re on an island in this league. [If the] pass rush doesn’t get there, [and] you don’t get pressure, [and the] quarterback has a chance to step up and hold the ball an extra second, [then] it puts those defensive backs on an island. Funny thing is I know Dell’s taken a lot of heat for not making his plays. He’s made a lot of plays. You know he’s got four interceptions. He made a great play the other night. He’s been beat sometimes, but everybody in this league is. When you play zone it’s not as obvious because you cover a guy up. He gives us some flexibility, and he’s new to the system. I think he’s a good player. He’s a good guy. He’s working at it and hopefully he’ll continue to get better.”
Editorial Comment Ahead
When you’re in the public eye, you have to be ready to take public criticism. As a pastor I know it and as a pro ball player it’s understood, so I don’t feel all that bad when a guy gets toasted on a message board, just as long it doesn’t get personal. That said, the Firebirds’ defense has played well (within three points of the league lead in scoring and third in total yardage) and I’ve watched Lee specifically because he’s a newcomer. There are times when he looks like he has been beat, but I’ve also seen him make some great plays that don’t show up on the stat sheet or get noticed because he did his job. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Lee was covering the motion receiver on what looked like a skinny chair route – a tough double move. Nobody noticed how well he did because his coverage forced the QB to go to the receiver underneath. Yes, sometimes he gets beat long, but he’s covering the motion receiver, who in the AFL can be in forward motion at the snap, which is a HUGE advantage. The result is sometimes a WR gets loose and the DB looks worse than his NFL counterpart. So what’s my point? My point is that you have to view AFL players by AFL standards and a player on defense on how he works into the overall defensive scheme. The way the rules are written in the AFL, you have to look at defense as a unit, and for the Firebirds, the defensive unit is simply not the problem – offensive stability is.
“Obviously those decisions are mine, and mine alone,” said Dailey of the lack of stability. “The responsibility for those changes, good or bad, fall with me. The difficult part is it’s a game of experience, and Raymond Philyaw’s been with us four years. I really felt like the start of this year he was just starting to get it. So with our quarterback woes with the other guys, I think there’ll be times they go up and down and play well and don’t play as well because they just don’t have a lot of experience. We’ll just have to work with them. I think if the rest of the team plays well then whoever’s the quarterback doesn’t have to win the game all by himself, but if we play average as a team or if we play poor as a team then it puts that much more pressure on the guy who doesn’t have experience. And it’s not only quarterbacks. For the last three weeks we’ve dressed a different guy at wide receiver, either wide receiver / DB or wide receiver / linebacker every week. We’re facing that again this week, probably.”
We now return you to your normally scheduled Arenafan.com article…
This week against a Tampa Bay Storm team that ended the Predators’ six game winning streak, the Firebirds will again need to deal with injuries.
“Bech is done for the year,” said Daliey. “We found out on Friday that our doctors did another MRI, a follow-up, and he has a torn roto-cuff in his shoulder. He’s going to have surgery probably sometime next week. Blackwell is possible for this game. We didn’t put him on IR so he’s still eligible to play, but we’ll have to see as the week goes forward how he’s doing. He wouldn’t be a hundred percent if we had to play today, that’s for sure. It’s going to be an unknown if he’ll play at all and then I think Raymond Philyaw’s still three weeks to a month away, so it’s been difficult on that end.
The games go on
Due to the war, some events and leagues have considered changing their schedules. I asked Coach Dailey if he had heard anything about the AFL schedule. It annoys me when actors and sports players shoot their mouth off about things they don’t understand (this is an Iraqi Free Zone), but I think what Coach Dailey said is illustrative of a guy who ‘gets it’ when it comes to the relationship between football and the war.
“I have not heard anything, Matthew. Obviously if there is going to be a league decision it’ll get down to us. The only thing that I can say, and it’s a personal thing on my end, is I have faith in God, and I will be praying, and I hope that it is a short conflict, and that our people get out of there safe, and that there’s few Iraqis that have to suffer. It is a real hard thing. It is unfair for us or anyone else to make a comparison to what we do or what’s going on to what’s going on in the world today.”
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.
