Lackluster first half ruins Knights
Keith Murphy
Sunday May 21, 2006
Pioneers’ head coach Rich Ingold says that his squad rebounded well from their first loss of the season, last week’s 53-37 home loss to the Tulsa Talons, "I thought, in the first half, that we looked pretty good. We just, offensively, missed on a few things. The third quarter, though, was a flukey quarter. . . . I don’t think we were flat. We just weren’t executing and let them back in the game."
Knights’ Head Coach Derek Stingley says, bluntly, that this wasn’t the performance that he wanted to see, "This wasn’t the performance that I wanted to see at all. This was more about first half blunders. A fumble here, not moving the ball there. Not reaching the net on kickoffs. Everything that I thought could go wrong, went wrong in that first half. If I could erase that first half and we could just play from that second half on it would be a better ball game. But I am sick of losing. I just have to do something about the whole attitude of this team. I think that slowly I am doing that. I have some key positions that I am making some moves on and that will happen."
"Flukey"
"Flukey" is perhaps the best word for the third quarter. After the Knights offense had struggled to score only three points for the entire first half, an Ellis Spears fumble at the end of the first quarter spurred a 16 point Wilkes-Barre rally, which was capped by a Tyre Young safety with two minutes to go in the first half to give the Pioneers a 24–3 halftime edge. In retrospect, that was all Wilkes-Barre would need.
No matter who you were rooting for, the third quarter, was worth the price of admission. Macon, despite all of their struggles this season and despite a first half where nothing seemed to go their way, the Knights came out of the locker room with their teeth bared and their claws out. Two James Hickenbotham (WR/DB) touchdowns and a Jamal Garman (WR/LB) interception return for a score brought the Knights to within 9 points, 31–22 of the Pioneers with over 12 minutes to play. Had the kicking game been hitting, the Knights would have been within one score of the Pioneers with momentum on their side and lots of time to play.
Ingold summed up the Knights comeback in this manner: "We came out in the second half and we were ready to go to put them away and he [Garman] got this crazy interception on us for a touchdown and, I’m not going to say anything, but the jack linebacker was way out of the box. But that team [Macon] fought. That’s what Stingley will do. He’s a good coach, the players believe in him and these guys fought hard. We just made some mistakes and let them back in; but, what happened was, when we let them back in, we ended up closing the door on them."
Stingley says that he was pleased that, in the second half, his team didn’t quit. "At first, I thought I saw some quit. But then we made a couple of big plays in the second half and it turned the game around for us. But they should have felt that way in the first half. We should have had people stepping up and making those big plays. Wilkes-Barre is a great team. The thing about their team is that they don’t make mistakes. They are a very well-coached team. They know how to play team ball and everybody knows their responsibilities. Once I get my team to understand that; we’ll be a much better team. That’s why Wilkes-Barre is 6–1 right now and we are 2–5."
Wilkes-Barre’s offense closed the door on Macon with just over five minutes left to play when Granieri hit Yardon Brantley for an eight yard touchdown to put the game out of reach. Macon continued to scramble and fight, but trailing by just over two scores limited their already limited offensive options.
Limited Arsenal
Why were Macon’s offensive options limited? Last week, the Knights released Assistant Offensive Coordinator Teddy Wilson and, according to Stingley, "that wasn’t something I was really looking forward to doing. Teddy is, always, a good friend of mine. It was tough, because everybody needs to be on the same page I was on. That decision still upsets me now, because I brought him all the way from Idaho to help me as a coach; but I just wanted somebody to come in here and relieve me of almost everything [on the offensive side]. Even though I think Teddy is capable of doing that, I just felt that he was still kind of green at it. He will be a good coach one day. It’s just that right now I need more instant success. I need someone with real arena experience."
Enter Rickey Foggie. Foggie, recently, ahem, parted ways with the troubled management of the Everett Hawks, where he had been head coach. Last year, he was coordinator of the top scoring offense in af2 where he led the Amarillo Dusters to an average of 55.8 points per game. Hardly a shabby average. Twenty years ago, Foggie quarterbacked the Minnesota Gophers to two bowls, that was followed by a career in the CFL and ten years indoors in the Arena League. He’s now, officially, a "volunteer" assistant offensive coordinator, he can’t be on the field, but he’s always in Sting’s headset: "Truth be told, I didn’t call a play tonight. I think I called a couple of screens here and there. The flow of the game was kind of slow in the beginning, but the second half, Rickey Foggie took over and that was his play calling. Maybe once he gets a whole week under his belt, and a whole game to prepare, things may be different. Like I say, I’ve got some more personnel that are coming in and I think they are really going to help this team. It sucks that we are 2 and 5 right now."
Remember, though, The Knights were 2-5 at this time last season, too. Then Stingley took over for Mike Hold at head coach and racked up a 6 and 3 finish to propel Macon into the playoffs where the Knights came within seconds of a first round playoff upset win.
According to Stingley, the addition of Foggie is already visible, "We took away a lot of things from the game plan. Rickey Foggie was helping me to call plays from the sidelines, so we had to keep it vanilla so Rickey could understand it. It was a way for him to keep the quarterback in some kind of synch. In the second half, it worked, but we were fighting from so far behind. I think if we had come out in the first half and done what we did in the second half this would have been a different story."
By the Numbers
Pioneers’ quarterback, Mike Granieri didn’t have a stellar evening, completing only 19 of 40 attempts for 190 yards and 3 touchdowns. He was sacked once, intercepted once and his longest completion of the evening was only 16 yards. Granieri says that, "Personally, I didn’t have the greatest game. We didn’t execute the way we wanted to some times; but we got it done. They [Macon] had a good pass rush, a good speed rush on the outside that was getting to me; but, I had to step up and get rid of the ball." Pioneers’ head coach, Rich Ingold said that Granieri’s play was overall, "pretty good. He missed a couple of open receivers. But he made some plays, too. It’s the learning curve he’s going though. In my eyes, he gets better every week. By the time the playoffs come, he will be as good as it gets at this level."
JR Thomas led the Pioneer receivers with six catches for seventy yards. Yardon Brantley caught four for 41 yards, two of which were touchdowns and Yaacov Yisrael caught the Pioneer’s third touchdown pass. Wilkes-Barre also ran the ball eleven times for forty-two yards and two scores.
The aggressive Pioneer defense was led by WR/DB TuTu Ferguson with ten tackles, OL/DL Tyre Young racked up a pair of sacks and two tackles behind the line of scrimmage, and FB/LB Doug Harding also sacked Knight’s quarterback Chad Elliott and picked up two tackles for losses.
Despite the loss, Macon QB Chad Elliott continues to put up consistent numbers. He completed 24 of 36 passes for 229 yards. He only threw one touchdown pass. Elliott was under a lot of pressure from the Pioneer defense, he was sacked three times, hit a number of times, and picked off once, he also rushed seven times and not all seven were by design.
The kicking game was also spotty as Byungwoo Yoon continued to struggle, missing two PATs and dropping a couple of kickoffs short of the net. He did, however, nail a 22-yard field goal for Macon’s only first-half points; so he continues to show the promise of brilliance.
Macon’s receivers were led by James Hickenbotham who continues to show why he is a special player. Despite receiving heavy coverage he caught 14 passes for 147 yards and Macon’s only touchdown pass and only rushing touchdown.
Miracles and Manifestations!
Reporting on the officiating gets tiresome, I don’t enjoy sounding like the grouchy old man who sits in the corner and complains about everything so much that everyone ends up ignoring him; but, after being stopped by a number of fans, Knight’s employees, and even a couple of af2 employees, who said they were "eager to see what I had to say about tonight’s officiating," here we go:
For much of the first half, this crew of official seemed to half left their flags and whistles at the Holiday Inn. They ignored pretty much every violation and let the teams play. Frankly, as long as the blindness is being applied equally and no one’s health is being jeopardized, I can live with that style of officiating.
In the second half, however, as the game became more contentious, and the play became a bit "chippy," the flags began to fly and some of the calls were, well, "curious," at best. Perhaps the league has issued a "2.0" version of the rulebook and the press’ copies are still in the mail. There were three calls/no-calls that stunned even the local crowd (many of whom are still learning the intricacies of the arena rules).
For instance, on one pass play, Pioneer quarterback Mike Granieri was, at least, 2 to 3 yards past the line of scrimmage when he threw a touchdown pass. He was so far past the line that both linebackers were out of the box, the defensive backs had dropped out of coverage and were heading toward the line and, oh yeah, the officials had moved out of position as well, assuming that they were going to cover a running play. Yet when he stood upright and threw the ball, miraculously, the yellow line that you see across the field on NFL broadcasts of games to indicate the line of scrimmage had stretched 4 or five yards to bubble around him because none of the officials threw a flag for illegal forward pass. They didn’t even huddle to discuss it. The sad part is, neither did they flag Macon for illegal defense.
Then there was the play where a Wilkes-Barre receiver, somehow (again another miracle in Macon) crossed the goal line while not catching the touchdown pass, mind you, there was no reception, so no touchdown, but somehow, even though there was no reception in the end zone (or on the field of play, mind you again—no catch was made so there can be no fumble only an incomplete pass) there was a fumble which was recovered for a touchdown by the Pioneers. Now, generally, when a pass is dropped, and rolls across the ground, that is called incomplete. Saturday night in Macon, it was a fumble, and recovered for a touchdown by a different player. Sorry if you find this confusing, but so was the play AND the official’s attempt to untangle the aftermath.
Let me try again. You’ve got the picture, right? The quarterback throws the ball, the receiver drops it while crossing the goal line. Incomplete pass, right? Wrong, well at least last night. Last night that was a non-completion, and a fumble, recovered, by someone else (which is illegal) for a Wilkes-Barre touchdown. I’ll bet that play never shows up on "You Make the Call."
The calls didn’t all go against Macon, but for Knights’ fans, I’m certain it seemed that way. I love the af2, but the league needs to work to provide a more consistent quality of officiating. The men who worked the game tonight were perfect, professional, gentlemen. They just need more and better training. The key to selling the product as professional is consistency in the officiating. The af2 just isn’t there yet; although I will admit that this game is tough to officiate as it is fast, the rules are intricate, and the officials, at the af2 level, don’t officiate as a career.
A Look Ahead
The Knights head to Birmingham (3–4) next weekend to take on the Steeldogs. Stingley says that the Steeldogs are, "coached by a veteran of arena football. He knows what he’s doing out there. I’m quite sure that they are going to be a well-coached team that we are going to play against. We’ve just got to get back into the grind of it and see what we can do to beat Birmingham. It seems like every week I go out and put together a great game plan . . . it’s discouraging when you see it fall apart."
The Birmingham game is followed by a June third rematch with the South Georgia (1–6) Wildcats before they return home the tenth to host Arkansas (5–2). Wilkes-Barre is on the road again next weekend at Manchester (3–4), they will return home June 3 to host the Louisville Fire (3–4).
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
