Destroyers Get Second Chance To Slay The Dragons
Tom Ando
Friday June 8, 2001
 Derrick Chachere has had an outstanding career in a league where the running game is secondary. Image courtesy of Jeff Marshall |
Mounds has spent time with the Memphis Pharaohs and Florida Bobcats in seasons past. He started this year with the Carolina Cobras before being waved. His aggressive style of play should mix in well with the Destroyers already physical secondary. “Otis is a solid veteran player, he’s a very physical player. I think he’s going to be a great addition to our secondary, I feel that one of the biggest components of secondary play in Arena Football is number one: you have to have good man to man coverage skills. It’s a man to man coverage game,” explained Bentley. “But number two is, you have to punish those receivers, because with the rules and the nature of the game, they’re going to get open and they’re going to catch the football, so you’ve got to do something to discourage them, and in my mind, that’s a punishment. Otis will punish people. He’ll be number 25 and he’s going to run around and he’ll bring a load with him when he shows up.”
New York comes into the game with the best numbers offensively of any team with 339.7 yards per game. “This is the most prolific offense in the Arena Football league that we’re going to face in the New York Dragons,” said Bentley. “They’re number one in scoring, they have the best quarterback in the league in my opinion. They have a great scheme. It’s a great challenge for us, and so to be up for that challenge, we’ve decided to go heavy on the defensive backs, which will give them not only a different look schematically but also personnel-wise. I think we’re a much better football team right now then we were when we went in there.”
Last week, Buffalo soundly beat New Jersey 51-31. In that contest, Buffalo’s OS Willie Latta, fresh off of the inured list, set team records with 30 points and five touchdowns, and tied Kevin Mason’s team record of four receiving touchdowns. “It’d been tough to know whether or not he would play, because of the shoulder injury that he had,” said Bentley. “But he said he’s ready to go, and I took him at his word, and apparently he was because he was outstanding, and he’s just going to get better. He hasn’t played that position for that long and as he continues to play it, he’ll get better at it and he will become, if he stays healthy, one of the best in this league at this position. I believe he has that kind of ability.”
Latta ranks eight in the league in scoring despite missing three games.
Destroyers quarterback Jim Kubiak is also setting records. Just past the midway point of his first season, Kubiak has already become the all-time leader in passing yards (2262) and touchdowns (39) in the three-year history of Buffalo’s franchise.
"Touchdown" Tom Ando is a free lance writer from South Buffalo, NY and has been covering the Arena Football League in one capacity or another since the 2000 season, when he was 17 years old. Tom Currently writes for Sports & Leisure Magazine in Buffalo covering the NLL's Buffalo Bandits and NCAA Division I football. In 2001, Tom was the only writer in the country to cover the Houston "Travelin' " Thunderbears, where he befriended his mentor John F. "Hondo" Hahn.
