Knights Conquered by Conquest
Keith Murphy
Sunday May 8, 2005
Macon Head Coach Mike Hold says that the game turned just before halftime. "The fumble going into the end zone, right before halftime, killed us; but, yet we still had the lead at half. It could have been a touchdown lead. In the second half we came out and just got whooped up on. In any game, indoor or outdoor, if you control the line of scrimmage, you’re gonna win, and they controlled the line of scrimmage."
Fixing the problems with the line is an issue that Hold says will be at the center of his attention during the bye week, "That’s a tough question because you don’t want to say anything out of haste before you watch the film; but, I think it goes without saying what might need to be done. I don’t want to say anything too hasty; but, there are some issues with our pass blocking right now."
The focus of those issues was Knights’ quarterback Lionel Hayes and while he was only sacked twice, he spent most of the game either fleeing from pass rushers or lying on his back because he got flattened after he released the pass. "I think the pass protection kind of broke down tonight. We did a good job a little bit in the second half, we started coming together, but it broke down again at the end of the game." Despite the constant pressure, Hayes had a good night statistically: he completed 23 of 40 passes for four touchdowns with only one interception.
Macon Defensive Coordinator Derek Stingley says that a big part of the Knights’ problem is that they are a team who is still searching for an identity. "Somehow we’ve got to find our identity on this team. Right now I think we’re searching. We’ve got some guys that play with heart; sometimes, truly, I question some people. It’s hard for me to get the character of this team. I wish I could look inside somebody’s chest and see what kind of heart they’ve got. But I want them to know one thing, the season isn’t over. We’re losing. We’re on a down-slope and we’ve got to find a way to pick it up. I truly think that with the week off coming up that we might have time to lick our wounds and, as a staff, figure out what we need to do to straighten things out and play better football for the rest of the year. If you look around at the talent on this team there’s no way we should have lost three games so far. We just got some bad breaks. That’s football."
The Conquest were led by D. Bryant who completed 21 of 43 passes for 211 yards and six touchdowns. He was intercepted twice and sacked once. Jeremiah Pope pulled in seven of Bryant’s passes for 102 yards receiving and three touchdowns.
With the loss, Macon falls to 2-4 on the season. They have the next week off. Their next game is May 21 at Tulsa; they return home on May 28 to host the Arkansas Twisters. Albany runs their record to 2-3, the Conquest hosts Manchester next Saturday.
Dr. Murphy has nearly 20 years of media experience ranging from radio to the Internet. He has served as webmaster for two AF2 teams and the football team at Fort Valley State University. He is a professor at FVSU and directs www.bunniwerks.org, a non-profit rabbit rescue organization. He has been commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel. Murphy is also serving as a first party editor of af2 stories for ArenaFfan. For more information about Dr. Murphy see: www.keithmurphy.info