Maynor Can`t Go Home Again
Dan Ryan
Sunday May 20, 2001
Hey, nothing but love for you, Con, but it’s business. Hang out with us afterwards. Send us an e-mail when you get back.
The return of Maynor to Orlando wasn’t the Arena Football equivalent of MacArthur to the Philippines, football to CBS or David Lee Roth to Van Halen. It was painful. It was frustrating. It was a 58-47 loss.
Maynor threw for 271 yards and three TDs. He still has that are-you-going-to-throw-the-damn-ball-in-this-lifetime? scramble that can both aggravate and delight a coach in the span of a nanosecond.
But this time, the resurgent Predators had more.
Seven times Orlando smashed Maynor into the TD Waterhouse Center carpet, including a throwdown by XXX Ernest Allen on the final play that symbolized the entire night. Buoyed by the addition of XXX Curtis Eason (Ironman honors with three sacks), an XFL refugee who elected to forego collecting unemployment to return to ArenaBall, the Preds increased the pressure in the second half.
A 17-0 run sparked by a Kenny McEntyre-pick and a defensive stop helped Orlando pull away from a 41-all tie.
The 47 points was a little misleading. Two NJ TDs came on special plays. The opening Gladiator score was on a blown call that robbed McEntyre of a pick and gave David Saunders a score. The obligatory meaningless score at the end made it seem a little closer.
”They were able to get a lot of pressure on me in the second half and that made the difference,” said Maynor while exchanging pleasantries with Preds coach Jay Gruden and the rest of the ex-teammates afterwards.
“Connell has a lot of heart of and is a great competitor,” said Gruden, who let Maynor become a free agent during the off season due to a $4,000 difference in the negotiations. “Without him, this could have been a lot more lopsided.”
New Jersey, assembled in just four months, still has some building to do. They could pick up a few pointers from Gruden, who seems to have rebuilt a woeful Orlando team on the fly in just three weeks.
QB Craig Whelihan, making just his third start, finished 15 of 24 for 261 yards and six touchdowns to four different receivers.
XXX Siaha Burley (five catches for 69 yards) and XXX Cliff Dell (four for 88) each caught a pair of scores, and Burley, a former UCF star, added a 57-yard touchdown return that gave Orlando a 41-34 lead in the third quarter.
There were second quarter touchdowns -- one to Burley, one to Bret Cooper that showed Whelihan to be the man. Blessed with an extra second of protection, Whelihan hit his receivers on timing patterns after they juked the Gladiator defender by cutting back on corner patterns.
Then there’s Burley. He’s that good.
”He’s probably one of the best offensive specialists in the league,” Gruden said of Burley. “He could have some fantastic numbers if I didn’t like to spread the ball around.”
Maynor probably would like to spread the ball around also. Instead, he was spread out and spread too thin.
Dan Ryan has been involved with all forms of arena football since 1988, including writing for ArenaFan when Joe Kauffman and Tim Capper aren’t killing his columns because they don’t get his jokes or perspective. His day job is at Bethune-Cookman University, which has produced both an NFL Hall of Famer (Larry Little) and an Arena Football Hall of Famer (Stevie Thomas) and his hobby is tracking how many f-bombs Adam Markowitz drops in the chat room on game nights.
