Time to Admit Mistakes

Adam Markowitz
Monday May 7, 2007

I guess it’s time to start admitting my flaws for the year.

The Los Angeles Avengers aren’t going 2-14 with the only two wins coming against the Las Vegas Gladiators.  Matt Nagy isn’t the worst quarterback in the AFL.  The Columbus Destroyers might make the playoffs after all.  Scoring didn’t go down with free substitution.  The Grand Rapids Rampage aren’t playoff bound.

But worst of all, it’s time to admit that I was wrong about the Austin Wranglers, and I think it’s about time for Doug MacGregor, Glyn Milburn, and the entire staff in Austin to admit it as well.

Let’s flashback one season.   Last year at this time, the Wranglers were coming off of a rather humiliating 47-37 loss to the Orlando Predators in front of their home crowd, which saw Austin collapse in the 4th quarter, conceding 21 consecutive points.  The loss dropped the Wranglers to 6-3, but they still sat atop the Southern Division.  The Wranglers finished up 10-6 on the regular season, but crashed out of the 1st round of the playoffs against the Philadelphia Soul by the count of 52-35.  The offense was embarrassing in that playoff game, the first in the franchise’s history, and as a result, head coach Skip Foster was dismissed from the team.

Fast forward to 2007.  With Foster out, Doug MacGregor and the brass of the Wranglers got together and hired Brian Partlow, who had no head coaching experience prior to this season.  Many questioned the move, while Foster very quietly was signed as the offensive coordinator of the Columbus Destroyers.

Foster exacted his revenge on the franchise that booted him out the door after an incredibly successful 10-6 season.  On April 14th, the Wranglers headed up to Columbus to meet their former coach, and the result must have been shocking.  Austin was defeated in Nationwide Arena by the count of 72-49, as Foster’s offense racked up 349 yards of total offense and ten touchdowns.

That wasn’t nearly the low point in the season for the Wranglers.  This weekend was.

The Wranglers had just come off of an emotional 45-38 victory in overtime against the New Orleans VooDoo two weeks ago.  A bye-week was perfectly placed in the schedule for the stretch run.  With games against Tampa Bay and Arizona on the horizon, things were looking good for the Wranglers to be 5-5 and in the thick of the playoff chase going into a Southern Division showdown with the Predators on May 20th.

As for their first opponent in that two game stretch, the Tampa Bay Storm had every reason to be down.  QB Brett Dietz was set to make his first AFL start after John Kaleo suffered a shoulder injury last week.  True, the Storm had just beaten Foster’s Destroyers 34-32 in Week 9, but they were still just 2-6 and certainly had to be considered one of the worst five teams in the league.

The first half wasn’t completely disastrous for the Wranglers.  In a half that saw the offense get stopped on three possessions and poorly manage the last minute of the half, Austin still trailed by just a touchdown at halftime, receiving the ball first in the 2nd half.

McPherson came out in the 3rd quarter and immediate found a wide open receiver on a crossing route.  The problem was that receiver was Storm DB Jeroid Johnson.  Johnson raced back inside the Wranglers’ 5 yard line, which saw the Storm almost immediately punch the ball into the end zone, extending the lead to 14.  The Wranglers would never get closer than 7 points again and were never in a position to tie the game.  The loss dropped Austin to 3-6 and into the gutter in the Southern Division.

Within three hours of the conclusion of the game, Wrangler fans poured onto their message boards and expressed their displeasure with the team’s performance.  “… painful to watch.”  “I was absolutely ashamed to be a Wrangler fan during this game.”  “There will be no playoffs this year for Austin, nor do they deserve to speak the word at this point.”  These are all quotes from some of the angry fans on the boards.

The stats also don’t lie.  Last season the Wranglers averaged 51 points per game.  In a year where scoring is way up throughout the league, they average 52.1, but the biggest difference is in the defense.  Last year’s Wranglers gave up 47.3 points per game, 5th best in the AFL.  They racked up 14 sacks and 28 forced turnovers.  This year, they are only on pace for 11 sacks and 19 forced turnovers, but are giving up a staggering 57.7 points per game, dead last in the National Conference.  Against Dietz and the Storm, the Wranglers only mustered one stop after holding the Storm to a field goal on the opening drive, and surrendered 66 points.  The Wranglers have also allowed six of their nine opponents to reach 60 points this year, something that only happened twice all of last season.

Skip Foster got fired for less than this.  By the way, Foster’s Destroyers have scored one fewer touchdown this year than Austin has, yet they are two games in front of them in the standings.  I think Foster will take the exchange.

The firing of Foster put an immense amount of pressure of high expectations on a young coach.  Ten wins and hosting a playoff game simply wasn’t enough apparently.  I admire MacGregor for having the desire to win championships, not just a bunch of games, but let’s tell it like it is.  This is a train wreck.

There is no way that this offense should be struggling this season.  The receiving corps should be amongst the best in the AFL.  Derrick Lewis and Kevin Nickerson combined for 41 TDs and over 200 catches last year.  Otis Amey is having a fine season for a 3rd receiver, and Sedrick Robinson, despite missing time due to injury, is still an explosive option as a “slash” sort of player.  Dane Krager had 12 rushing touchdowns last year, and though he has played mostly defense this season, former Ironman of the Year Chad Dukes should have been able to fill in adequately.

The defense shouldn’t be struggling either.  I understand that Greg Brown has been hurt for the majority of the season, but so many other pieces to this defense have returned.  Krager and Dukes both are excellent linebackers.  Highly touted rookie Mike Williams has replaced the veteran Tom Briggs.  The signing of Nate Coggins was supposed to make the Wranglers secondary even more physical than last season.

My question: What happened?

It’s time to point fingers.  My finger points in three places.

1) Adrian McPherson.  I’m sorry, but this is not the same AD Mac that led the Indiana Firebirds years ago.  Nine games into the season, and McPherson is still throwing 95 MPH fastballs to receivers on 3 yard sideline routes, tripping over his linemen, and trying to force balls into impossible areas.  Only Nashville Kats QB Jeff Smoker has a worse touchdown to interception ratio than McPherson does amongst starting quarterbacks in the AFL (4.2/1).  He hasn’t thrown more than 6 TD passes in a game this season and has had more games with at least one interception (5) than games without throwing an interception (4).

2) Brian Partlow.  Like I said before, Skip Foster got fired for less than this.  This team is more talented that last year’s Wrangler team, and I don’t think there are many people that would argue that with me.  Yes, the competition is tougher and the league has gone through a massive rule change with free substitution, but that is no reason to be 3-6 at this point in the season.  Austin is a better team than Tampa Bay is.  Period.  There’s no way around that.  Though an innovative coach without a doubt, game and clock management are not Partlow’s strengths.  Not only did he run himself out of time by getting too cute at the end of the first half (which resulted in a field goal instead of a touchdown), he failed to pull McPherson in a game which saw him complete just 19 of 45 passes and two costly interceptions.

3) The Wranglers brass.  Boy, do I hate to point the finger at MacGregor, Milburn, and the gang, because you won’t find another ownership and management group that wants to win as badly as these guys do.  But it’s time to make some changes from the top down.  Maybe bringing in a young head coach with no experience wasn’t the right move.  Maybe bringing in McPherson when proven winner, Joe Hamilton was still available was a poor choice.  Maybe signing Nate Coggins and releasing Donvetis Franklin was a premature move.  I guess anyone can second guess things, but the fact of the matter is that it’s beyond time to make changes to salvage the 2007 season.

I guess if one thing can be said for the future of the Wranglers, it’s that I have put a curse on just about everything I’ve written about this year.  On March 20th, with the Wranglers sitting at 1-2, I said that they were a top 5 team in the league.  They’ve gone 2-4 since.  On April 19th, I wrote a piece on how great Clint Dolezel and the Dallas Desperados were, and they promptly got blown away by the Georgia Force a few days later.  This week, I mentioned that the Orlando Predators had turned a corner on offense, which was followed up by a 34 point effort against the Force.

Look out Arizona Rattlers… The curse of Adam Markowitz is coming to get you!

In June when Coach Partlow was signed, I questioned the move.  I mentioned that signing an offensive-minded coach was a calculated risk that needed to show in the win column to be considered a more exciting brand of football.  This isn’t exciting.  This is frustrating.  

However, as I warned in that same article, if the Wranglers failed to at least duplicate last year’s ten win season, “… this will be a move that is questioned by the rest of the Arena Football League for quite some time to come.”

The jury has made its decision on the ’07 Wranglers and the verdict speaks loudly in a 3-6 season that is likely all but over.