Bleeding Red and Black Isn't Easy Anymore

Adam Markowitz
Thursday April 22, 2010

For those of you that know anything about me, you know that I'm just about as much of an Orlando Predators fan as you can get. I've been going to games since way back when Ben Bennett was the quarterback. I remember Barry Wagner's "Miracle Minute," Jay Gruden kicking the crap out of us time and time again in the mid-90s, Tim Marcum saying that we're what happens when cousins have babies... Herkie Walls was a mainstay, and Durwood Roquemore was my favorite Predator that didn't wear #82. I thought it was a travesty when Perry Moss was fired and practically mourned when Wagner was traded to the New Jersey Red Dogs.

I remember watching George LaFrance light us up in ArenaBowl VI, and then seeing some young gun named Sherdrick Bonner rip my heart out in ArenaBowl VIII.

I was there when the Tampa Bay Storm knocked us off in ArenaBowl IX and thought it was the greatest day in the world when we got our revenge in ArenaBowl XII.

ArenaBowl XIII was nearly the most improbable championship I've ever seen even though we came up just short in Albany, but the next year at home against the Nashville Kats was the best thing ever. I sat there with about 100 of my fellow Preds fans at a bar for ArenaBowl XX and felt like we really let one slip away when the Chicago Rush beat us.

From that day in 2006 though, the Orlando Predators have just never been the same, and I never accepted it. The Shane Stafford era, for my money, was the most embarrassing time in Preds history to date. Here we had this guy that was supposed to be the savior of the franchise for a team that really never had a top notch AFL quarterback, and all that we have to show for it is a couple early eliminations from the playoffs and some subpar regular seasons.

That's not Orlando Predators football...

And then came the day that I thought the Arena Football League died. I was convinced that I would never see my Predators again.

What I'm finding out this year is that, for all intents and purposes, I might've been right.

I'm sorry. I understand that sports are often cyclical in nature and teams that do really well for a long period of years, if not decades, often have a difficult time staying on top. Dynasties are meant to be crumbled into pieces at some point.

But this... this is unacceptable.

Before the year even started, I looked around at the roster at hand in that scrimmage against the Storm and said, "Yikes... this could be a long year."

I was assured that day that this was still a team full of talent. Yes, it was nice to see WR TT Toliver back, and I'm sure that I'm going to fall in love with the idea of WR Derrick Lewis being in black and red as well. FB/LB Marlon Moye-Moore was always one of my favorites as a fan of this team, and K Carlos Martinez was cool with me, especially if he brought that wicked mohawk from his Georgia days with him.

Alas, no mohawk, much to my chagrin.

With so much offensive talent on the field, it's a wonder how on earth this team was held to just seven points in a half of football against the Jacksonville Sharks last week.

It's no wonder to me. The team spent all of their franchise player tags on wide receivers, thus, no quarterback is willing to come play for your "Common Joe" salary. Wide receivers are a dime a dozen in this league. Quarterbacks aren't.

Enter Nick Hill out of Southern Illinois. His only professional experience came with the Rio Grande Valley Dorados of the af2. He threw for 93 touchdowns and led the team to a 9-7 record and a first round exit from the postseason in his lone season there in 2009.

I know I wasn't exactly an af2 aficionado when that league was in existence, but I remember saying one very familiar word when I heard that Nick Hill was going to be our quarterback...

Who!?!?!?!?!

What happened to Clint Dolezel or Tony Graziani or Matt D'Orazio, or even if we had to stoop a little bit, what about Chris Sanders or Sonny Cumbie or Jake Eaton... Nick Hill is what we came up with?

Hill had a great first game against the Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings, which I'll give him all the credit in the world for. He tossed four TDs without throwing a pick and showed a lot of mobility. Most of his passes weren't any more than five yards in front of the line of scrimmage, but he wasn't making mistakes and kept us in the game the entire time.

Then what we found out is that Bossier City's defense is about as solid as Swiss cheese, as this is the same unit that conceded 78 points to the Spokane Shock the very next week.

Throwing just three touchdowns and two picks against the Jacksonville Sharks and putting up just one touchdown in the entire first half didn't exactly give me a slew of confidence in our new signal caller either.

Though the names Kenny McEntyre and Damon Mason are household names in this league, they were names that were great a decade ago. Nowadays... not so much.

They're the "anchors" of an Orlando defense that has mustered four stops on the year, only three of which are of any consequence whatsoever. The secondary has allowed 15 touchdown passes against just one pick all season long. What's worse is the defensive line, which is good for exactly zero sacks to date.

Oh yeah, the offensive line isn't doing a heck of a lot better, having allowed the Sharks to sack Hill four times last week.

I must remember that two weeks doesn't make an entire season, and this wouldn't be the first time that the Preds started 0-2 in a season and still finished with a respectable record and a playoff berth.

Losing games is one thing. Getting embarrassed is another. Not trying as hard as possible is something completely different.

Let's go back to that scrimmage against the Storm for one second. I learned that Orlando only had a few days of practice in it before heading down to Tampa Bay, who had two full weeks. The Preds petitioned the league to start a week after everyone else because of their Week 1 bye. Funny, no one else that had a Week 1 bye decided to waste the first week of training camp. Makes you wonder what we were doing while everyone else was preparing for the season...

Obviously, as we've seen through two weeks of play, it didn't have much to do with football. It makes me wonder whether my black and red are committed to me, the fan of the team, as much as I have been to them over the years.

In Week 5 of the season, the winless Iowa Barnstormers pay a visit to "The Jungle," where the Predators will open up their regular season home schedule and present their new, and hopefully improved product to their fan base.

My hope is that I can come back to ArenaFan that next week and write about everything that this team is now doing right and that the first two weeks of the season were nothing more than an aberration.

However, don't call me an optimist. Bleeding red and black isn't so easy anymore.