Results from the AF El-way: Ironman is Definitely Dead
Adam Markowitz
Friday March 2, 2007
If I hear one more person say that players that can play both offense and defense are a commodity in the AFL, I’m going to puke. This means you, Jon Bon Jovi, John Elway, Mike Greenberg, Merrill Hoge, Ron Jaworski, Mike Golic, and any other supporter of the rule that effectively was the death sentence of the AFL as we know it. Stop lying between your teeth. You know that Ironman football is dead, yet somehow you have convinced a small percentage of us die hard fans that it isn’t, while marketing free substitutions as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
You want proof that the Ironman is dead? Just look at the box score from Thursday night’s game…
Nashville had a whopping five players collect stats on offense: QB Clint Stoerner, FB Dan Alexander, and WRs Cornelius Bonner, Jason Shelley, and Alonzo Nix. These five players combined for exactly zero sacks, zero tackles, and zero interceptions. Columbus had six people collect offensive stats: QB Matt Nagy, FB Harold Wells, and WRs Damien Groce, Darcey Levy, David Saunders, and Josh Bush. The six of these combined for four and a half tackles, zero sacks, and zero interceptions, and one of those tackles was Matt Nagy tackling DB Keon Raymond after he intercepted Nagy.
An even more sickening stat… Josh Bush had exactly one offensive statistic: one carry for nine yards. That being said, from here on in, I will refer to Bush as what he is: KR Josh Bush, as he returned three kicks for 79 yards as his biggest contribution to the game.
So congratulations to David Saunders, who is the early front runner for the 2007 Ironman of the Year Award. Should he continue at this pace, his numbers will be a very Ironman-esque 112 catches for 672 yards, 32 touchdowns, and 40 tackles. That’s right, a whole 40 tackles!
As if this charade wasn’t figured out earlier in the week when rosters were trimmed… Though they were also very arguably salary cap moves, is it any wonder that Willis Marshall, Ahmad Hawkins, and Etu Molden were all released? Hawkins was the only player to appear in every game in the history of the Colorado Crush before his release this week. He was third on the team in tackles in ’06 and fourth in receiving. His former teammate, Willis Marshall was seventh on the Crush in tackles and third in receiving. Etu Molden was second on the Chicago Rush in touchdowns while manning the fort as one of the better jack linebackers in the AFL in ’06. In ’05 he led the team in interceptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns. Surely if players that can play both ways are a commodity, these players wouldn’t be unceremoniously released, right?
Please spare me of this question: “But Adam, what happens if someone gets hurt?!?!? With roster sizes so small and teams up against the salary cap, someone’s going to have to play both ways!” Cry me a river. Every team in the AFL this side of Las Vegas has enough veterans who played in the “good old days” of arena football to cover a spot if someone gets hurt. I’m sure Jay Gruden is relieved to know that he won’t have to use Marlon Moye-Moore as his yo-yo receiver because of those pesky substitution rules when the Preds travel to Tampa on Friday night. I’m sure Barry Wagner also feels bad that one player is going to have to play both ways when he not only had to play both ways, but last year had to play fullback because of injuries and the substitution rules during one of the SaberCats’ playoff games.
By the time the veterans are all fazed out of this league, roster sizes surely will have been expanded to completely eliminate this debate, thus making the Ironman completely unnecessary.
Speaking of the greatest Ironman in football history… Not that I really thought that Barry Wagner would make the Tampa Bay Storm roster this year, but it’s a shame that his career has potentially been ended, not because he decided it was time to hang it up, but because he doesn’t have a place in the league that he helped create. I don’t need to give you a rundown of the greatest moment’s in Wagner’s career, but a player like Wags is completely useless on the current rosters. No one is going to use a roster slot on a guy who is a pretty good receiver, a pretty good linebacker, a pretty good defensive back, and a pretty good up man on kick returns, because he’s not great at any of them at this point. If this were last season, the SaberCats probably would have never let him go.
Just look at Barry Wagner’s season in 1995, arguably the greatest Ironman season in AFL history. Eighty-one catches, 1150 yards receiving, 27 receiving TDs, 65 carries, 137 rushing yards, 21 rushing TDs, 87.5 tackles, 11 pass deflections, 3 forced fumbles, a recovered fumble, and three picks. He also served as the up man for Herkie Walls on kickoffs. Did I mention that this was in a 12 game season? If you project that over the current 16 game schedule, Wags would’ve amassed 108 catches, 1533 yards receiving, 183 yards rushing, 64 total touchdowns, 117 tackles, and 4 picks. That’d be good enough for 4th in the league in receiving, 2nd in rushing, 1st in total touchdowns (even more than the gaudy TD numbers Damien Harrell put up last year), and 3rd in tackles.
You want to talk about putting the best players on the field at any given time? Can you imagine telling Wagner to only play one side of the ball? That would be like telling Albert Pujols to just DH when he is still a Gold Glove winning 1st baseman.
Maybe the timing of everything is appropriate. In the same week, Barry Wagner was denied his chance to put on a uniform and play the game he dominated for so long, and the position he epitomized, the Ironman was officially proven to be dead.
I guess the good news from the Nashville/Columbus clash was that the game itself hasn’t changed. The 58-56 score line proved that points can still come in bunches in this league. The nets still provide crazy bounces, the crowd atmosphere of the indoor game is still more intense than that of the outdoor game, and just when you think something is about to happen, everything changes in the blink of an eye. That was the relief of Thursday’s game.
But the harsh reality finally showed. The debate is over. The Ironman is dead. The “Elway rule,” as proclaimed by Bon Jovi, has taken the league by storm, and step one towards “making the AFL as much like the NFL” and “as ‘watchable’ as possible,” as quoted by Elway, has taken place. Like it or not, we are here, no longer doing things the AFL way. We are now without a doubt, doing things just like John Elway wants: The AF El-way.
Adam Markowitz is an accountant living in Orlando. Adam is an old school AFLer, having followed the AFL since 1991. He attended or covered well over 200 games, including 17 ArenaBowls. Adam worked for the Arena Football League for two years as a columnist and historian before retiring in 2017 when the 50-yard indoor war left the Sunshine State. Adam still muses about the AFL on ArenaFan from time to time, and you can follow him on Twitter @adammarkowitzea.
