Crush facing a must win game against Chicago
Michael Hicks
Friday April 25, 2008
With half of the season left to be played after Friday’s home game against the Chicago Rush, it may be a little premature to consider this a must-win game for the Colorado Crush. But if Mike Dailey’s team has any visions of winning the American Conference Central Division title, a victory would go a long way toward that goal.
But winning, as it’s always been heard, is much easier said than done. Just look at the last time these teams met.
Colorado held its own for the first 33 minutes, trailing by five, 40-35. Then the Crush turned the ball over twice and had two field-goal attempts as Chicago scored the game’s final 30 points en route to a 70-35 win.
“The way we approach it is that it’s in the past,” Crush head coach Mike Dailey said. “You could lose by one or be run out of the building. A game in our league can certainly get away from you quickly.”
Now, a month later, Colorado finds itself two and a half games back of Chicago with nine games left. A loss Friday all but hands the Rush the division title.
“Stopping them will be difficult. They are an excellent team all the way around with two good quarterbacks, a great core of receivers,” Dailey said. “We have to make them earn everything they get, no miss assignments. Be competitive, do all the things that need to be done.”
Colorado didn’t do that the last time, and it showed. The Crush had just 2 yards rushing and trailed in the time of possession by nearly 10 minutes. But it was the miscues -- the turnovers and blocked field goal attempts -- that took Colorado out of the game.
“Right after the game, the next practice day look at the film and head back to the field,” Dailey said. “A mistake is only a failure if you don’t correct it. That’s part of the philosophy here. If you see something we did wrong, hope you corrected it and don’t do it again. Limit those mistakes and we increase our chances to win.”
Those mistakes, capitalized on by Chicago, certainly didn’t hurt the Rush’s chance of victory.
“A couple of things happened on special teams, we took care of the football. The basic things you talk about every week,” Rush head coach Mike Hohensee said. “We haven’t done that consistently, but we’ve played hard. That’s only reason we’re 6-2. I don’t think we have that swagger yet. We’re OK with winning ugly games. We have no style points for the last two weeks.”
But they do have the division lead, and it could get a little more comfortable with a win Friday. But, as Hohensee said, a win isn’t a given.
“We understand this is one of those trap games for us,” Hohensee added Wednesday. “We have a long week next week, a short one this week. This is the first day of practice, then we travel tomorrow (Thursday). But we understood that going into this year. Hopefully we took the right precautions.”
Colorado hopes it did, too, especially with kicker Clay Rush, who suffered a mild concussion and missed the entire second half of last week’s loss at Kansas City. The 34-year-old has been medically cleared to play this week, according to Dailey.
That’s good, because the Crush will need all the offensive production it can get against a Chicago team that ranks second in the AFL in points scored and against. But more than just points, the bottom line is that Colorado needs a win to stay in contention.
“I know they don’t want to go to 3-5 and don’t want to see us at 7-2,” Hohensee said.
