Inconsistent Offense Costs The Soul, Valor Win 48-41
Harrison Brown
Monday June 10, 2019
Both times the Philadelphia Soul and Washington Valor have met this season the game has come down to the final play, with the Valor once again winning this week 48-41. During the first meeting the Valor won on a last second touchdown, but in this game the Valor had the lead at the buzzer and intercepted Soul quarterback Dan Raudabaugh’s last second heave to clinch the victory.
“We’re going to work hard, we’ll hit the film room,” Raudabaugh said after the loss. “We left some points out there, uncharacteristic stuff. A lot of these wounds are self-inflicted, so we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what it is and get it right,”
The Washington win advances the Valor to 4-3 and ties them with Baltimore for the second-best record in the AFL. The Soul are 3-4 and there’s a strong sense of urgency within the organization to right the ship and get back on track.
“Here in Philadelphia we have a model and a certain type of standard,” Soul defensive back James Romain said. “We’re not living up to that standard right now. Everybody in the locker room, everybody in the stands, from the media to the commentators everybody sees it and we see it also,”
The Soul offense is known for being built around the quick game, three step drops, and Raudabaugh getting the ball out of his hand as fast as possible. The quicker the ball is out of his hand and into his playmakers, the quicker they can make plays. This remained true against the Valor, but the Soul took a noticeable amount of deep shots down the field, more than usual.
This is a big reason Raudabaugh completed just twenty one out of forty-two passes, which is abnormally low for him and the Soul offense. The aggressiveness downfield naturally leads to more incompletions, but the offense once again didn’t look in sync with missed throws, dropped balls, and turnover on downs in key situations.
“The Valor run a lot of ricochet defense, meaning they’ll start over one receiver and then try to ricochet and play press,” Raudabaugh said. “A lot of times they get in their own way and sometimes you get some freebies, and our guys made some plays but not enough,”
“Credit to our O-Line, we’re confident in them to go fifty (five-step drop.) Ferns got a little banged up, but he’ll be alright, he’s been doing a great job at fullback, and the line has been too all year long. We’re going to rock with what we’ve got and if fifties are the game plan we’ve got to execute,” Raudabaugh said.
The offense was able to take advantage of the Valor’s aggressive style of coverage on multiple occasions, with Raudabaugh posting two hundred and ninety-six yards and five touchdowns. However, missed opportunities throughout the game and failing to capitalize on multiple chances to score cost the Soul.
“Our veterans, Dan and Darius Prince, they were a little off tonight to say the least,” Soul head coach Clint Dolezel said. “Dropped balls, missed throws, and those two are usually right on track. You can only practice so much, it’s got to happen in the games and right now it’s not,” Dolezel said.
Prince was by far the number one target tonight, with usual running mates Aaron Wascha on IR and Darius Reynolds at jack linebacker on defense. Prince posted five catches four a hundred yards and two touchdowns, but like Dolezel said the connection between Raudabaugh and Prince was off throughout the game.
“When we played them last time, they definitely got away with one and it happened again tonight,” Prince said. “We’ve just got to go back to the drawing board, and we’ve got the best coach to do it. He makes sure we’re prepared in all three phases of the game, we’ve just got to execute,”
The Soul’s defense had to make an additional few plays to stay afloat despite the offense not being as efficient as usual. In the first quarter Romain recorded his fourth interception of the season which ties him with Joe Powell for the league’s leader. Dwayne Hollis also added an interception.
Valor quarterback Arvell Nelson moved on from the early interceptions and had another solid outing completing eighteen out of twenty-eight passes for two hundred and thirty-nine yards and six touchdowns. Add in a clutch touchdown on the ground with twenty seconds left in the ballgame and the former jack linebacker continues to find his way as the quarterback and face of the Valor.
Nelson has a versatile set of receivers who blend together nicely, with a mixture of speed and big body targets. Reggie Gray is a speedster and also the veteran of the group, who came up big when he caught a forty-five-yard touchdown on a fourth and ten deep in the Valor’s own territory late in the game.
The receiving core is currently headlined by Doug McNeil who has caught ten touchdowns in four games this season. McNeil is rebroadcasting what he displayed in 2014 with the Portland Thunder, a season that has led to a handful of NFL and CFL opportunities. McNeill is back in the AFL with the Valor and caught three touchdowns on four catches against the Soul.
In week one however it was rookie Dezmon Epps who headlined the Valor’s receiving core with a 200-yard opening night, and in week four in the first matchup against the Soul it was Josh Reese after the game winning touchdown. The Valor do a nice job rotating wide receivers into the game and all five active wide receivers caught at least one pass in this week’s game.
“Washington came out with a little different game plan than what we studied,” James Romain said. “I think those guys came out a little bit fierier than us, they wanted it more. We just didn’t show up today,” Romain said.
“We’ve got to play our football, if we do what we’re supposed to do it doesn't really matter what the other team does,” Clint Dolezel said. “Normally that’s the case with anybody we play but right now we’re in our own way, and we’ve got to figure out a way to get out of the way, and we will,”
“It needs to happen pretty fast because there’s only five games left before playoffs start. Right now, I think we’d be the fourth seed because we have the tiebreaker over AC, so it’s going to come down to the end,” Dolezel said.
The Soul will take on their closest and newest rival the Atlantic City Blackjacks next Sunday in a rematch of week one. Philly won the first battle, but it feels like an eternity since that opening day game. Both teams currently sit at 3-4 and are hungry coming off losses in games they felt they should have won. Next Sunday’s game could have lasting playoff implications with just five weeks remaining in the season.
“AC stumbled this past week too so they’re going to be hungry,” Dan Raudabaugh said. “We need to come out with our hair on fire for real. We need to send a message to ourselves this week in practice and come out here and let it rip,”
Harrison Brown is a college student who has been covering Arena Football since he was 12 years old and has been with ArenaFan since 2014. Harrison was a captain of the varsity football team during his senior year of high school and went on to play one season of Division III football in Massachusetts. Harrison has worked for two indoor football teams, in 2018 he was the Director of Player Personnel for the Jersey Flight and in 2016 he was the Color Commentator for the Philadelphia Yellow Jackets. You can follow Harrison on twitter @HarryBrownRusso.
