Short Week of Practice Won`t Make it Easy for Firebirds
Matthew Pickut
Thursday May 9, 2002
Well at least you know where to start…
Offense: Last year’s explosive offense became this year’s struggling Firebirds attack. Indiana needs to regain last year’s form because by scoring a meager 47.3 points per game they put a lot of stress on both the special teams and defense. Coach Dailey’s use of OL/DL Ricky Hall in the backfield provides an extra blocker, which helps, but the problem seems to stem less from a lack of skill and more to from a lack of consistent execution. At times the offense looks great, (see WR/DB Gary Compton gm1, and OS Eddie Brown gms 2 & 3), but overall the team ranks ninth in the AFL in passing offense.
Consistency comes from practice, and this week the Firebirds play on Thursday rather than Saturday, making things more difficult. At 2-1, you can only complain so much about a team, but a team at 2-2 is a lot more open to criticism. If the Firebirds can put together a good week of practice, they have a good chance to improve to 3-1 and put a shaky start behind them. As OL/DL Mark Valvo told me as I left the locker room after last week’s win “When we win, everything is good in Firebird land.”
Defense: The work here needs to come around the line. The defensive backfield accounts for most of the league leading +5 turnover margin. WR/DB Gary Compton, DS Cornelius Coe, and Dejaun Alfonzo each have a pair of pick-offs and Alfonzo and Coe rank 5th and 9th in the league in tackles. On the other hand, the Firebirds lacked even a single sack all season – a stat that while unfortunate does not mean that the line’s play is all that bad.
From my view, the DL suffers from the same sporadic play problem that the offense faces. At times the rush looks great, especially the blitz of the LB’s, but far too often the opposing quarterbacks remain unmolested. With FB/LB Ummar Muhammad on the shelf due to injury, FB/LB Leroy Thompson will fill Ummar’s spot with only a few days to get the extra repetitions in practice. OL/DL Hugh Hunter, who the team brought in to help the pass rush needs to be more of a factor in the line play and allow less time for the opposite signal callers to wait on the defensive backs’ coverage to break down.
Special Teams: K Nelson Garner’s struggles this season with PAT and FG’s may be the result of a leg injury suffered in the preseason and the team placed Garner on injured reserve this week just to be sure. This season Garner, holder QB Chris Boden, and long-snapper Brian Creel look out of synch. With the goal posts roughly ½ the size of outdoor regulation, the timing between kicker, holder and snapper needs to be down cold. If the ball is a little too late because of a high snap, the kicker pushes the ball because he holds up on his follow through. Add to that new kicking trio some new rules that allow for more of a defensive rush making timing more difficult, and you get an explanation for the kicking woes.
For the record, I watched the team try out kickers in the preseason and not one of them came close to matching Nelson’s leg, especially on field goals. Coach Dailey leaves the option of returning last year’s holder QB Raymond Philyaw back on special teams, “it’s possible that we could put Raymond in as a holder,” said Dailey, “but I don’t want to rush to judgment.” Part of his reluctance stems from the new rushing rules that place the holder at increased risk.
This week the team brought K Andy Payne into camp to fill in for Garner. Payne hit all of his PAT attempts when he played for the Firebirds in the preseason, but failed to connect on either of his field goal attempts.
Overall: If this week’s practice schedule can make up for a short week the Firebirds can only get better as they become more consistent. Without consistency, the Firebirds will need to get very lucky to improve to 3-1.
Matthew Pickut is a pastor in northern Indiana and a long time AFL fan. He also writes for his own website: The Brown Paper Blog. He graduated from Taylor University in Upland Indiana (class of `96) with degrees in Biblical Literature and Sociology as well as a healthy respect for the medicinal properties of coffee.
