Nothing Special About Cobras’ Performance Against Dragons
Chuck DiLullo
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Carolina special teams took away any chance the team had of exploiting a stout per- formance from a defense that was forced to play on a short field all day. The Dragons special teams generated 219 return yards, a touchdown and the recovery an errant kickoff in the third quarter that bounced off the crossbar, leading to an immediate score capping a 21-point outburst and the Dragons never looked back.
“New York did a very good job on special teams,” said head coach John Gregory. “I don’t think our special teams played well at all. That changed the momentum throughout the game in their favor.”
“The special teams plays hurt us because it took away momentum, and once you lose that it is tough to regain it,” said quarterback Matt Nagy. “We tried to fight our way back, but we were fighting a losing battle against field position all game.”
“Until we look at the films, I couldn’t even tell you what went wrong,” said defensive coordinator Ron Selesky. “It looked like there were so many breakdowns in so many different places, in so many different ways, that it is hard to comment on.”
The Cobras are a veteran team that has struggled at times this season with mistakes and undisciplined play, which has not allowed the offense, special teams and defense to come together for a complete game.
“I think we have a good football team and sometimes you have to play through adversity,” said Gregory. “And that is exactly what we are going to do.”
The mathematics are getting simpler by the week. It is looking more and more like the eighth seed will have to post at least nine wins to make the playoffs, and that leaves the Cobras with little margin for error. They would have to go 6-1 over the last seven games to get to nine wins and this would be after going 1-6 over the last seven games. The numbers are weighing against the Cobras but the team is not going to give up. I just hope the fans have not.
“This team is talented and we can bounce back,” said Nagy. “Nobody’s giving up. I know I’ll be out there fighting. I said going into this week we needed to go 6-2 in the final eight games to make the playoffs. Now we have lost one and we now have to go 6-1. If anyone gives up, I don’t want them on the team.”
“We need to find a way to pull together as a team more than we have or think we have,” said Selesky. “You do that one day at a time during practice and one play at a time during the game. We have to find a way to keep everything in the simplest form. We are still trying to find the pulse of this team.”
A season that started with so much promise has deteriorated into a quagmire of frustration for a team that was put together not just to make a playoff run, but to challenge for the ArenaBowl. Gregory and his staff will have to work hard to keep this team focused not just to continue to compete for a playoff spot but to simply compete.
The journey doesn’t get any easier as the Cobras travel to Indianapolis this Saturday for a game against the hottest team in the league, the Firebirds, who are led by one of the Arena Football League’s brightest and most exciting young stars in Adrian McPherson. The Cobras can take a lesson from the Firebirds in their quest to reinvent their season—the Firebirds started the season off 0-5 and have since rebounded with four straight wins and are within sight of the final playoff spot. The Cobras need to bottle that energy and urgency fast or their playoff dreams may go up in smoke if they haven’t already.
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.
