No Storybook Ending for Columbus
Jack Bedell
Sunday July 29, 2007
Down the stretch, Columbus defeated some of the best teams in the AFL with solid defense and consistent offense. Facing the SaberCats’ this afternoon, however, the Destroyers couldn’t slow down Mark Grieb and the San Jose offense, and they couldn’t hit the big plays they needed to loosen up the SaberCats pressure and coverage.
After starting the ArenaBowl with two long, sustained drives for touchdowns (featuring mostly short completions underneath the SaberCats’ coverage), Matt Nagy and the Columbus offense hit a lethal patch of ineffectiveness and frustration that began with Nagy’s interception to Clevan Thomas in the endzone mid-way through the second quarter swinging the momentum and the scoring in San Jose’s favor and that ended mid-way through the third quarter with the Destroyers down 34-20.
Talking about the period of the game that saw Nagy go 5-14 for 21 yards, Coach Kay admitted that his club lost a bit of its composure in the face of the SaberCats’ pressure and physical coverage, and in his mind that’s where the game turned.
“When we were here before in this venue, we lost our poise, and today we got a little shaky with that. What was unique about today was that our receivers had difficulty getting off smacks and presses at the line and we tried to invent ways to do that, but it goes back to recess, and you’re not going to be able to do that in this league if you haven’t prepared for it beforehand. In our situation today, we just got frustrated and tried to force some balls, and it doesn’t work that way.”
Kay also felt San Jose’s consistency, particularly the patience and efficiency of Grieb, was the death knell for his team. As he put it simply, “Mark Grieb does an excellent job of taking what’s given to him. You can’t play good defense in this league without borrowing space from somewhere, and Mark does a great job of being patient and taking what’s available, not forcing things.”
For his part, Matt Nagy didn’t duck the issue of getting flustered against San Jose’s defense. As he put it, “For the past five weeks, we’ve been in a really good rhythm, but today we just couldn’t find that. We felt we had played well against some really good defenses, but San Jose is a great defense. They’re well-coached and they showed why they are ArenaBowl champions tonight. Their d-backs press well and play good defense. We knew how they were going to play, but we didn’t react very well to it today.”
All game long, Nagy faced pressure in his face and had defenders at his feet, and he was simply unable to get the ball down the field. The SaberCats really only gave him two choices—dump the ball off or float passes downfield into tight coverage. Neither was conducive to winning football. Especially not against an offense as efficient as San Jose’s.
In the end, Columbus’ glass slipper was shattered after a great playoff run by a superior team, a three-time ArenaBowl champion. There’s no shame in that, and Destroyers fans should take heart in the fact that Kay, Nagy, and the rest of their team weren’t satisfied with making it to ArenaBowl XXI and losing. To a man, they’re ready to use this afternoon’s defeat as the fuel to fire a more composed run next season, a run that won’t involve carriages that turn into pumpkins and glass slippers.
Jack Bedell was an inaugural season ticket holder for the af2's Lafayette Roughnecks and the AFL's New Orleans VooDoo. He's been a fan of the league since he first saw Browning Nagle heaving touchdowns for the Buffalo Destroyers. Jack's married to a lovely wife, Beth, and has two sons, Jack and Samuel Eli. He works as an associate professor of creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University.
