Blaze – Battle Wings: Quick Thoughts
Don Eisenbarth
Friday April 30, 2010
The Blaze really needed the Jazz to win game 5. The Blaze really really needed the Jazz to win game 5.
Salt Lake City in April is Basketball Central; this city lives and dies with the Utah Jazz. All other sports take a backseat to the NBA playoff. With their game 5 loss to the Denver Nuggets the Jazz now host game 6 on Friday night at Energy Solutions Arena. The Jazz game will be going on in Downtown Salt Lake at the same time the Blaze will be playing in West Valley. Therefore, my prediction is that the Blaze barely get 3,000 people in the seats and the E Center will look mighty empty.
The Battle Wings take flight on a long trip to Salt Lake City. It’s a winnable game for the win-less Blaze, but only if they play a perfect game on all sides of the ball. The Wings are a great team that has already won games against the Alabama Vipers (who have defeated the Blaze in Utah already this year) and the also win-less Orlando Predators.
This Byrd has Flown
After the Alabama Vipers game, there was a lot of rumbling about the missed extra points and field goals of Kenneth Byrd. After leaving 10 points on the board on a 9 point game, Coach Purnsley stated that the Blaze coaches were going to be “looking at his mechanics… We’ll take a peek at him and see how we can help him.” The front office apparently figure the best way to help him was to kick him off the team.
It’s a shame to end a season the way former Blaze kicker Kenneth Byrd did, but the Blaze probably did the right thing for the team in deciding that they needed to look for more experience and signing new kicker Ben Scott; sending Byrd off the no-man’s land of “reassignment.”
Ben Scott is listed as an AFL “rookie” but that’s just not true. He’s played three seasons of af2 football playing for the Bakersfield Blitz, Oklahoma City Yard Dawgs and the Boise Burn. In his last season with the Burn, Scott kicked 7 of 10 field goals and 95 of 112 extra points. Three years of arena football experience is going to be a giant help in one of the final real big holes in the Blaze’s game.
History Repeating?
A lot has been made of Utah’s last season in which they started 0-9 but then won 6 of their last 7 to go 6-10 and host their first playoff game. With the new AFL allowing only 4 teams from each conference to the playoffs, I don’t think 6-10 will be close to good enough for a playoff spot, but I think 0-9 may be another reality for this Blaze team.
If they are unable to pull off this game, their chance of winning one of their first 9 games this season get smaller and smaller as the Blaze find themselves on the road against great Milwaukee Iron and Spokane Shock teams. Games at home against Arizona and at Cleveland look more likely to be wins for the Blaze, but still going into 7 games without a victory is something no one in the Blaze organization want to see again. It may be early to call a game “must-win” but if the Blaze want to have any hope of salvaging this season and having a remote chance of getting to playoffs, they need to win this game at home.
