Road to Las Vegas Getting Longer for Arizona
Patrick Daly
Thursday March 10, 2005
So far this season, the Arizona Rattlers (1-5) have started their trip to Las Vegas, the site of this season’s ArenaBowl, by heading in the exact opposite direction. For the most part, it’s been more about the Rattlers hurting themselves than what any of their opponents have done. In Sunday’s 33-29 loss to the Los Angeles Avengers (4-2), both teams made mistakes that normally cost you a win. However it was the Avengers who got execution when they needed it most, leaving the Rattlers mired in frustration.
"When you work hard on something all week and don’t come out here and execute it, that’s the price you pay," said Rattlers QB Sherdrick Bonner. "We had plays there, but no execution. It’s frustrating when you don’t execute."
A lack of execution has become the theme over the past five games, all losses. Competition in the Arena Football League has grown to the point that there are no ‘easy’ games on the schedule and opponents will take advantage of every mistake, every failure in execution.
This is an entirely new situation for Rattlers head coach Todd Shell and most of the players themselves. Never before had a Rattlers team lost more than two games in a row, let alone five straight. In 2003, Shell took over a winless New York Dragons team that fell to 0-6 before he eventually guided them to an 8-8 record, although he wasn’t there during the rough start.
"This is new to all of us," said Shell about the stretch of losses. "When you get into these situations, you’ve got to really reach down inside. We’ve continually beaten ourselves. That’s the frustrating part of it. It’s been a struggle for me to put my finger on what the problem is. We go out in practice and look good, then we get in game situations and we have a breakdown here and there. It seems like it’s one guy here, one guy there."
While it’s the players and not the coaching staff that we see on the field, Shell doesn’t put all of the responsibility on the players. Half of the game is putting players in a position to succeed. The most successful coaches can take a group of players that my not be superstars and make them a winning team – with extra emphasis on team rather than individuals – by putting the team in a position to be successful.
"We get into situations where we have critical plays and maybe we have a breakdown in blocking or we have a dropped ball, but there’s times where I look at and I say it’s not just the players," said Shell. "There’s times where we had plays that maybe weren’t the right ones at the right time. That’s what the whole game is; it’s a strategic chess match. I’m not putting this on the players by any means. I’m taking responsibility. I told them in [the locker room] that it’s my job to make sure that they come out and execute. Right now, this is on me and I’m a big boy. I’ll take responsibility for it."
With a shot at the playoffs slipping away with each loss, making Las Vegas an unlikely season’s end destination at this point, there’s little time left to put an end to the problems and salvage what started as a promising season.
Patrick Daly has been an Arena Football League enthusiast since he first stumbled across the late-night ESPN broadcasts and has followed the Arizona Rattlers since their inaugural season in 1992. He graduated from Arizona State University with an engineering degree and is currently a member of a web development team for Direct Alliance in Tempe. Patrick currently resides in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona with his beautiful wife, son and a very large football helmet collection.
