Cobras Look to Regroup at Home against League’s Hottest Team
Chuck DiLullo
Thursday March 11, 2004
Oh, how the tides have changed since that opening weekend. The Desperados were still reeling from the loss of starting quarterback Jim Kubiak and the resignation of head coach Joe Avezzano, while the Cobras opened the season with their most impressive performance on both sides of the ball, which included quarterback Matt Nagy being named the AFL Offensive Player of the Week for passing for over 280 yards and accounting for seven touchdowns in the Cobras rout.
Since then, the Desperados have won four straight games by a combined score of 224-176, including a season high 66 points against Grand Rapids last week. On the flip side, the Cobras have lost three out of four, and are currently mired in a three game skid where they have been outscored by a combined score of 160-136, including a gut-wrenching loss on the last play of the game last week in Austin.
“Dallas is playing with an overall team confidence,” said defensive coordinator Ron Selesky. “They have won four in a row and they have cut out the kind of mistakes they made against us in the first week. Physically they are the same team, but what they have improved on is the mental aspect.”
Three key factors have contributed to the Cobras’ misfortunes during the current losing streak: an inordinate amount of penalties (they have been penalized 49 times so far this season and were flagged 15 times in last week’s game); the inability to stop their opponents from converting third downs (they are currently the worst in the league, allowing opponents to convert an amazing 64% of the time); failing to hold second-half leads (the team has led at halftime of each of the games during this losing streak only to see be outscored by a collective 41 points in the second-half).
“It’s a work in progress on improving on all three,” said Selesky. “The focal point of our meeting today was on just those issues. It’s a funny thing because it is difficult to put your finger on the problem. You can come up with all kinds of excuses to justify these problems, but right now we are not looking for justification; we are looking for wins. We need to find a way to be more disciplined in all phases of the game.”
Quarterback Matt Nagy echoed those sentiments.
“We’ve lost the last three games to the Cobras because we helped to beat ourselves,” said Nagy. “The coaches have been on us this week to focus more and improve our discipline.”
“Cut the penalties and you avoid losing leads and football games,” said a frustrated Senior Advisor Billy McGehee. “When you suffer three penalties in the last drive of a game (as the team did against the Wranglers) you are going to have a lot of difficulty winning that football game, and we didn’t win.”
The Desperados are looking for redemption in this game for their opening weekend loss to the Cobras, and look to extend their winning streak to five games and keep pace with New Orleans, Colorado and Chicago for the best record in the league. The Cobras look to break their current three game losing streak and keep pace in the playoff race to gain one of the top eight spots in the league. Kickoff will be at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night at the Charlotte Coliseum where the Cobras look to snap a 15-game home losing streak and capture their first victory in front of the home crowd since moving to Charlotte last season.
Chuck DiLullo works for a manufacturer of process control instrumentation as a sales engineer. He has been a fan of professional, college and high school football since he could walk. Chuck is originally from Philadelphia and he became a huge Arena Football League fan while living in Buffalo. Chuck has lived in Charlotte since 2000 with his wife & three children.
