SaberCats face VooDoo, Battle for Best Record
Tim Ball
Saturday May 1, 2004
The San Jose SaberCats, once again at 9-2, have set the bar of excellence in the Arena Football League and all eyes are on Darren Arbet’s players for the fifth consecutive season as the team to beat.
The SaberCats have the ever-present burden of every team wanting to beat them to prove that they are the best in the league.
In the 21st Century no AFL team has had the consistency of San Jose, which has been the number one seed three of the last four seasons. And once again, a game having teams with the two best records late in the season includes the SaberCats.
Since the dawn of the new millennium San Jose has gone 58-13 in regular season games. In 2002, when earning their spot in ArenaBowl XVI in a near perfect season that witnessed them go 13-1, San Jose avenged that sole loss at the hands of the Arizona Rattlers by annihilating them, 52-14, in the largest margin of victory in AFL championship history.
In a game for the ages, in last year’s semifinal the Rattlers came after the SaberCats with an effort that even San Jose fans had to acknowledge. In restoring the pride of a great team in that horrific loss to the SaberCats in the ArenaBowl, beating San Jose and denying them another trip seemed worth the cost of the emotional and physical drain exacted in the effort.
San Jose’s sustained excellence has brought with it a pressure no other team in the league seems to bear. Not even the league’s greatest franchises; Tampa Bay, Orlando or Arizona, seem to pump up opponents like the SaberCats and this has been their undoing in the playoffs.
The challenge set before the SaberCats is more than just making the playoffs and a trip to the championship. San Jose always faces teams motivated to beat them for respect, pride and the prize of taking down mighty San Jose.
In the SaberCats’ first loss of the season, a week five game against the New York Dragons televised nationally on NBC, it wasn’t long before a Dragons player mentioned they had just beaten “the best team in the league” in post game interviews on the field.
Great verses good
Now all eyes are on the surprising New Orleans VooDoo, who at 9-2 have set the record for wins by a new franchise, but league pundits have mentioned that we’ll all know how good they are after the SaberCats game. Once again it is San Jose that sets the standard by which another top team will be measured.
“We know that teams play us a little more intense,” said defensive coordinator Michael Church. “When you establish yourself as a good team year after year it’s going to happen.”
New Orleans leads in a division that includes both Tampa Bay and Orlando and has rebounded from both of their losses with multiple victories in the games that followed a defeat.
“The VooDoo are winning because of the talent on the team,” said Church in reference to the VooDoo’s record. “A 9-2 record indicates that they are getting it done on both sides of the ball. They have good DB’s and Monty Montgomery looks to be one of the best in the league. You couple their defense with OS Aaron Bailey and QB John Fitzgerald and a good line, and you have the reason for their success.”
In the last game against Austin, the VooDoo stopped the Wranglers on their first possession and their last. Fitzgerald found five different receivers on seven touchdown passes and Montgomery’s interception of Wrangler QB John Kaleo with 15 seconds left in the game sealed the victory, giving the VooDoo their share of the best record in the league.
The SaberCats’ victories this season have ranged from blowouts, where they were leading by as much as twenty points at halftime, to stunning come from behind victories like the game against Chicago, where long after the game was over, most fans were still wondering how the score went in San Jose’s favor.
Let’s go
The goal for both San Jose and New Orleans is positioning in the playoffs and bragging rights on who’s a better team will have to take a back seat to that. Home field advantage throughout the playoffs is a luxury both teams are after. There are still five games to be played in the regular season and many teams have good records.
With a win this weekend, the Crush will join either New Orleans or San Jose with nine wins and the playoff picture of taking the top eight teams is still open all the way down the standings to the defending champions Tampa Bay in the thirteenth spot. The Storm can end up 9-7 and not only mathematically are still in it but underscores the intensity of each game from this weekend until the start of the playoffs.
On Saturday night in San Jose, more than just win-loss records are at stake. New Orleans wants to make a statement and wants the best record in the league, but the SaberCats are on a path that they alone have traveled over the last four seasons, and the burden of that excellence that they have carried so well has them again in position to be the best team in the league.
Tim Ball is a writer in the Chicagoland area. Married and father of three, his opinions on Arena Football reflects the positive aspect of the game as a family event second to none in pro sports.
