Turnovers Doom Speed In Loss To Swamp Foxes
David Chappell
Tuesday June 17, 2003
On the first possession of the second half, Speed quarterback Joel Gordon fumbled at the Charleston one with the Speed down only 29-23. Events quickly unraveled for Richmond thereafter, and the Swamp Foxes eased to a 52-29 victory Saturday night at the Richmond Coliseum before 4,634.
In all, Richmond (4-6) turned the ball over six times Saturday night while Charleston (5-5) suffered no turnovers. In the Speed’s last three games, they have averaged four turnovers per outing. Not surprisingly, with that many miscues, Richmond has lost all of those games.
Richmond was also hit hard by penalties Saturday night, netting a total of nine. Many came at particularly inopportune times.
Richmond TE Lawrence Lewis commented after the game that mistakes have plagued the Speed all year, and that Saturday night was no exception. “Once again, it’s a pattern of what we’ve been doing all year,” Lewis said. “We’re playing hard, but we’re making too many key mistakes. Mistakes that are costing us big. We need to go back and cut down on those mistakes and I think we should be alright.”
Speed LB Tim Jones agreed with Lewis, but noted that just playing hard is not enough.
“We’re playing hard, but playing hard is the bare minimum,” Jones said. “It’s the small things…attention to detail. Penalties and ball security; that’s attention to detail. You can’t win any games is this league, or any league, without that attention to detail. On paper we’re good, but we just haven’t put it together on the field.”
Richmond coach Richard Davis echoed the same sentiments as his Speed veterans, Lewis and Jones.
“When you play professional football, effort alone is not enough,” Davis stressed. “And wanting to is not enough. None of that feely-good stuff is enough. The only thing that is enough is doing your jobs, one play at a time. And we’re not doing our jobs right now.”
Much like what was the case against the Cape Fear Wildcats the week before, Richmond was well within striking distance into the third quarter against the Swamp Foxes despite never leading in the contest.
After falling behind quickly 10-0, Richmond scored on a ten yard touchdown pass from quarterback Joel Gordon to fullback Al Ford at the 3:07 mark of the first quarter. Gordon was making his first start at QB for Richmond since breaking a finger on his throwing hand in the season opener.
A 16 yard scoring pass from QB Johnny Turman to WR Mike Chandler with 30 seconds remaining in the quarter gave Charleston a 16-6 lead after the opening stanza.
Richmond cut the Charleston lead to 16-13 on their longest sustained drive of the night, a seven play 30 yard march that was culminated by Gordon’s three yard TD run with 11:25 remaining in the first half.
The Swamp Foxes scored the game’s next two touchdowns sandwiched around a dazzling 56 yard kickoff return for a TD by the Speed’s Damon “Redd” Thompson.
With Charleston ahead 29-20, Richmond kicker Peter Martinez drilled a 31 yard field goal as time expired in the first half to cut the Speed’s deficit to 29-23 at the intermission.
Gordon was within one yard of the go ahead score for Richmond on the initial possession of the second half, but the Speed QB was hammered at the goaline and coughed up the football for the third time in the game. After this Charleston recovery, Davis replaced Gordon with former starting QB Roy Johnson.
Still, Richmond was again poised to take the lead late in the third quarter. However, Johnson was intercepted in the Charleston endzone by DB Michael Brown to end the threat. At the end of that play up field, an ugly altercation broke out between the teams that led to player ejections on both sides. The game then remained tense until the end, with Charleston OL/DL Ufuoma Pela approaching the Richmond bench later in the contest with tempers nearly boiling over again.
Charleston broke the game open, scoring a touchdown on the last play of the third quarter on a nine yard pass from Turman to WR Leroy McFadden. On the ensuing kickoff to start the fourth quarter, a well placed kickoff by Rob Bironas was not handled by the Speed and was recovered by Melvin Justice for another Charleston TD for a 42-23 advantage.
After Al Ford caught his second touchdown pass for Richmond with 12:21 left in the game, Charleston countered with a Bironas field goal and another Turman to Chandler TD pass with 2:11 remaining in the game to go up 52-29.
Stopping Richmond on downs, the Swamp Foxes took over with around a minute remaining to play. Despite their insurmountable lead, Charleston coach Rik Richards continued to throw deep in the game’s final seconds with backup QB Tim Hicks.
On what would be the game’s final play, Charleston OS Joe Judge was injured after catching a pass from Hicks. Judge laid on the Coliseum carpet for minutes before being carted off the field. The game officials opted to let the remaining seconds tick off the clock to end the game, even though the majority of the Richmond fans remained until Judge was wheeled off the playing surface. Fortunately, x-rays taken of Judge’s neck and back taken at the Medical College of Virginia were negative.
Davis was upset that Charleston was throwing the ball at all at the time of Judge’s injury. Davis said Richards, just like Cape Fear’s coach Chris Siegfried the week before, was purposely trying to run the score up on Richmond at the end of the game.
“Come on, two weeks in a row with these young coaches,” Davis said. “Just grow up. We’re out of timeouts. Run the ball and we all go home. They’ll say it’s all about points and all that. But you know what, at some point you turn points off and put professionalism on. Have some class. This stuff is disgusting.”
For the Swamp Foxes, Judge caught five passes for 52 yards and a TD, and had eight tackles on defense. McFadden had five grabs for 87 yards and two TDs. Chandler hauled in four passes for 73 yards and two touchdowns. Turman was 20-38 for 325 yards and five touchdowns.
Gordon was 12-18 for 110 yards and one TD for Richmond in just over a half of work. Gordon also rushed four times for 23 yards and another touchdown.
Davis said Gordon still has a lot of pluses despite the shaky outing Saturday night. “Most of Joel’s situation is a confidence thing, because he sure has a lot of talent,” Davis said. “I think he’ll eventually settle in and do very well.”
In relief of Gordon, Johnson was 10-17 for 107 yards with one TD and one interception. Johnson, the Speed’s starting QB the majority of the season thus far, said he is happy with either role as long as it helps the team have a chance to win.
“It’s not about who starts or who finishes up,” Johnson said. “I was there to support Joel. I really wanted Joel to do well. We needed to win. Coach [Davis] told me at the beginning of the week that we were going with Joel because we needed a spark on offense.”
“Tonight, things weren’t working out the way we wanted, and Coach was looking for another spark,” Johnson added. “I tried, and unfortunately things didn’t go the way we wanted. The ball definitely didn’t bounce right for us tonight.”
Jeff Townsley led Richmond with seven catches for 63 yards. Al Ford caught three passes for 36 yards, with two of the catches going for TDs.
Newcomer P.J. Winston from New Mexico State had an outstanding game in his first action for Richmond. Winston caught six passes for 48 yards and had several pass breakups on defense.
About Winston, Davis said, “He’s a stud. We’ll definitely feed him the ball down the stretch.”
Thompson caught six balls for 70 yards, and ran back five kicks for 122 yards and a TD for the Speed.
Thompson says the time for talking about performing on the field is over. Thompson has led arenafootball2 in receiving for much of this season.
“We just have to get back on track,” Thompson commented. “Bottom line, we can’t just talk about it. We have to play. You can’t play on paper. Once the ball is kicked, we have to play. We can’t keep talking…we are always talking about what we need to do. If we know what needs to be done, we need to go out and do it now.”
Lewis said the best way to handle the Speed’s current losing streak is to focus on the next game and on improving individually and as a team.
“There’s a game that has to be played next week,” Lewis said. “There’s no reason to go and hang your head down. I always say, get a little bit better the next time.”
Johnson agreed and said, “There is still a lot of football left to be played. We have to keep our heads up and keep working. We can’t quit. We just have to go out there and try to make it happen.”
David Chappell is a native of Richmond, Virginia. He has closely followed local sports in Richmond and vicinity for over thirty years, and Arena Football 2 since its inception. David currently writes extensively for a website that he co-founded which documents professional wrestling in Virginia and surrounding areas from 1974-1986. A former elected prosecutor, David is currently a practicing attorney in a large downtown Richmond law firm.
