Buffalo Destroyed
Tom Ando
Monday July 9, 2001
The Destroyers did get on the board first with a 12-yard touchdown pass from Jim Kubiak to WR/DB Hassan Probherbs. After the touchdown, Buffalo attempted an onside kick, which ended up breaking their night instead of making it.
“They have a good return game, Anthony Derricks is a good return man,” said Destroyers Head Coach Ray Bentley of his decision to attempt the onside kick. “Carolina used that tactic against them last week and then they brought extra guys up every time and it took away the return, so it was worth the gamble, heck, if we had a good kick, we get the ball. If we just execute... and that’s the problem with this football team right now, not executing. For whatever reason everyone is worrying about what everybody else is doing instead of their own damn job, so we’ll fix that, but if we execute, now we have the football, and we’ll go up 14-0. But we don’t execute and now they’ve got the ball and we need to play defense and they run a toss the first play and nobody’s showing up and everyone in the whole house knows it’s going to be a toss. My guys are yelling ‘toss’ and they still don’t get there. So they’re just now playing and we’re going to play, we’re going to change that around, I guarantee it.”
Toronto then scored a pair of touchdowns before Buffalo tied it up at 14 with a pass from Kubiak to “Downtown” Eddie Brown to end the first quarter, but it was all Phantoms from that point forward as they shutout the Destroyers in the second and third quarters.
 Kevin Mason relieved Kubiak in the second half, but faired no better Image courtesy of Tom Ando |
“Not throwing to the open man hurt, that was the problem with number 18 out there,” said Bentley of Kubiak’s poor performance. “We had guys open all over the place out there in the first half and it was like we’ve never seen zone before, it was disappointing”
After the loss, offensive specialist Reggie Allen talked of the team’s disappointing showing.
“We didn’t play to the level that we needed to play tonight because we knew what we had at stake,” said Allen. “And tonight was not a very good show of what we prepared.”
Just what exactly does this team need to do to get back on the winning track?
“We have to play football, it’s simple as that,” said Allen. “We have to play football, play what we practice and go out as professionals and execute like we need to.”
“I think all we got to do is go back and look at film and see what we did wrong and evaluate ourselves hard and try to come back and get this thing together and try to get in these playoffs,” said Taylor.
Bentley’s answer was much more detailed, and came as a bit of a challenge to his ball club.
“They‘ve got to figure out how to win again, I think maybe this football team lost that edge. Give them (Toronto) credit. They played a good game. They didn’t hurt themselves at all, but they didn’t do anything different; anything we haven’t seen on film. This was the same Toronto Phantoms that we’ve been watching on tape. They didn’t come in with a new game plan or a new personality or anything like that. I’m very disappointed that we didn’t get more done. That was basically ridiculous in the performance that we gave, and we’ll take a real good look at this film.”
With that mentality, Bentley promises that the Destroyers will come back swinging for a playoff run, rather than folding the tent.
“I don’t know what it is, but something’s going to have to happen, believe me, the coaching staff isn’t going to sleep until we figure out what it is,” explained Bentley. “We’re not going to roll it up, we’re going to show that we’re not going away, we’re going to get this thing done.”
"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.
