Force Have VooDoo Seeing Yellow
Jack Bedell
Monday March 28, 2005
The fact that the VooDoo lost such a close game to a team that’s been imposing its style of low-scoring domination on a good bit of the league this season isn’t all that upsetting. But the fact that blame for the loss must be placed on crucial mistakes and a lack of composure in tight situations is. For the second game in a row, the VooDoo have been guilty of losing their cool. Against the Chicago Rush, another physical team, multiple fights broke out that could have easily swung that close game, but didn’t. The VooDoo ran out of such luck against the Force.
From the opening series on, when a roughing the passer penalty against OL/DL Mike Landry resuscitated a stalled Force drive, the VooDoo compiled a litany of personal foul, offsides, illegal formation, interference, and holding penalties that forced them to play in horrible down-and-distance situations all night on offense and which kept scoring drives alive on defense. As a frustrated Coach Neu stated in his post-game comments, "At the most inopportune times, it seems like we had a penalty in all three phases. Whether it was offense, whether it was defense, or whether it was special teams, you just can’t do that. You know, we pride ourselves on playing fundamentally sound football. We’re one of the least penalized teams in the league. The performance tonight was not indicative of the type of football team we’ve been all year."
Two of those "inopportune" penalties were enough by themselves to swing the balance of the game. The first was the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that resulted in the ejection of defensive specialist and team leader Monty Montgomery. After a pretty pass defense by Montgomery drew a questionable interference flag, Monty bumped the official while gesturing and was sent to the showers.
The second game-turning flag flew on a crucial third-down conversion with the VooDoo up 34-31 and driving to go up two possessions on the Force. When a pretty pass to the perimeter netted the first down for Quarterback Andy Kelly, Referee Jerome Boger realized offensive holding actually was against the rules, after watching it happen on both sides of the ball all night, and flagged OL/DL John Hilliard, negating the first down and eventually causing a down and distance the VooDoo couldn’t recoup. Unfortunately, that stop put the Force in control of the game, and they never relinquished the advantage.
It may be hindsight now, but the VooDoo seemed intent on handicapping themselves all night. Monty Montgomery’s ejection left the defense in an untenable substitution situation and as Coach Neu said, caused stress throughout the roster, "What happens in that situation, you put your team in a bind. You’re down to 19 guys now. You’re asking Alvin Porter to play in the middle for the first time in his career. Alvin’s up for any challenge, he stepped in and competed, but you put yourself in a bind from a substitution standpoint. We can’t continue to put ourselves behind like that and expect to win against a good team like Georgia."
The ejection was the second for Montgomery this season, both occurring in tight games when his talents could have made the difference for his team. As Coach Neu explained, "The back judge told me at the beginning of the second half that he gave Monty an opportunity to walk away, and he didn’t. The bottom line is, we need to keep our cool. We need to stay away from the officials, don’t even go near them, because obviously, they have the final say with the final outcome. Yeah, it bothers me. Obviously, it’s not something I can accept as a head coach."
Hopefully, mental error and loss of composure are unacceptable to the rest of the organization, too. With seven games left in the season, the VooDoo are in solid position to claim a playoff spot. The next four games are against teams with a combined nine wins. Coupled with a bye week, these four games give the VooDoo a shot at getting healthy and at sticking close to Georgia in the Southern Division. Somehow, the team needs to shake the notion that the last two losses were games that just barely "got away from them," and get back to being the tough, disciplined team they’ve been the majority of the franchise’s existence.
UP NEXT
The VooDoo (6-3) travel to Austin on April Fool’s Day to take on the Wranglers (3-6), fresh off a 51-21 pasting delivered by the Orlando Predators (6-3). Holding the tie-breaker advantage over Dallas by virtue of their week 6 victory, the VooDoo need to keep pace with Orlando in the National Conference in order to lay claim to one of the wildcard playoff spots up for grabs.
Jack Bedell was an inaugural season ticket holder for the af2's Lafayette Roughnecks and the AFL's New Orleans VooDoo. He's been a fan of the league since he first saw Browning Nagle heaving touchdowns for the Buffalo Destroyers. Jack's married to a lovely wife, Beth, and has two sons, Jack and Samuel Eli. He works as an associate professor of creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University.
