Wheels fall off for Storm against Dallas
Adam Markowitz
Saturday April 23, 2011
For the better part of 29 minutes, the Tampa Bay Storm were dominating the Dallas Vigilantes in Week 7's Arena Football League action. And then, the wheels fell off...
A few weeks ago, I addressed Tampa Bay's problems with quarterbacks after getting shellacked by the Cleveland Gladiators at Amelie Motor Oil Field at the St. Pete Times Forum. However, I'm starting to wonder after the most lopsided 67-61 loss in the history of the AFL at the hands of the Vigilantes whether the problem is the personnel or the coaching.
Head Coach Dave Ewart has never done anything of any note as a head coach in this league, save of course for those few games in which he was replacing a suspended Tim Marcum with the Storm in 2005 and 2006. Aside from that though, he is just 23-35 in his career as the man in charge dating back to his days with the St. Louis Stampede. That 1996 season was the only time that he was able to take the team to the playoffs, and the Stampede crashed out against the Iowa Barnstormers. Even then, Ewart didn't start with that team as the head man in charge, as Earle Bruce was in charge of St. Louis for the first four games of the campaign.
That being said, with teams that he was with from start to finish, Ewart is a whopping 17-31 with zero playoff appearances. Nice .354 winning percentage, Coach. Hell, Ray Bentley went 17-23 (.425) in his career, and Weylan Harding, one of the worst X's and O's coaches that the league had this side of Sparky McEwen had a .500 mark for his career... Of course, he had Aaron Garcia on his side when he wasn't in a boot or crutches... At least Ewart is no Sparky. Sparky went 19-45 in his coaching career with the Grand Rapids Rampage and the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz. Of course, if the Storm lose their next 10 games and Ewart is still around to see it, he'll have a worse winning percentage with teams that he had from start to finish in a season than McEwen did, and that's pretty much the standard for as bad as it gets in this league.
Sure, the INT that Grant Gregory threw to Justin Warren, a defensive lineman that was returned for a TD was nothing that Ewart could have helped, but the next minute might have destroyed Tampa Bay's season. Before that TD, the Storm led 27-19, and they had led 27-12 before that. Head Coach Clint Dolezel did it right at the WOOM (TM) (which, for those of you that don't know, is ArenaFan speak for the one minute warning), onside kicking. Tampa Bay recovered the onsider, but promptly threw three incomplete passes, all of which went into the end zone, and then he was picked off on fourth down. Dallas got the ball into a position to kick a field goal and missed, but thanks to some sloppy fielding by Michael Lindsay, Greg Ryan was able to fall on the ball for the game changing TD.
From there, the wheels just fell off, even though the Storm did take the 34-33 lead two minutes into the third quarter. Dallas scored 34 of the next 41 points in the game to put it away once and for all. This capped a whopping 52-14 run for the Vigilantes.
By the way, this was a Dallas team that hadn't won a game on the road all season long prior to this.
First off, Ewart absolutely screwed up at the end of the first half with that last drive. Why on earth you don't try to eat Dallas' timeouts is beyond me. I'll never figure out what in the world is so difficult about using 50 seconds in the AFL when you have 18 yards of space to work with. There's no way that the Storm should have been trailing at halftime, and the end result proved to be backbreaking.
Beyond that, the Storm have been picking up a ton of penalties that are just foolish. The team has played three home games this year, and in those three home games, they have committed a whopping 12 personal fouls, three of which have been called on the bench. There's just no excuse for that.
On top of that, the third quarter continues to be where Tampa Bay is getting killed. Halftime adjustments are absolutely crucial in this game, and Ewart just isn't getting those done. The Storm have been outscored 88-35 in the third stanza this season, including giving up 20 straight in the third to the Vigilantes on Saturday night.
There are just too many indicators right now that the problem the Storm are having have more to do with the coaches on the sidelines than the players on the field. Sure, the players are the ones that ultimately have to get the job done, and I'm not so naive to think that the Storm have the talent of an ArenaBowl team right now, but with some proper coaching, things would look a lot differently right now by the Bay.
And now, the bitter irony of it all... Remember when Tim Marcum -- all 211 wins of win, 156 of which came with the Storm -- "resigned" at the beginning of this season? Remember when Woody Kern owned this team? The team that Marcum is now a consultant for came and that Kern once owned came into town and whooped up on Ewart and the Storm.
And how sweet that win must have been for the Vigilantes... About as bitter as it was for the Storm.
