Quarterbacks Wanted in Tampa Bay... And That's No April Fools!
Adam Markowitz
Friday April 1, 2011
So much for your "Five-Time World Champion Tampa Bay Storm."
About the only thing that Grant Gregory can say positive in this one is that he at least didn't have the worst stats for any quarterback in this game against the Jacksonville Sharks. Of course, the bad news is that Omar Jacobs only came in after the game was already out of hand, and he only went 0-for-1 on the night.
Head Coach Dave Ewart has made no bones about the fact that he is upset with his quarterbacks. He trusted Mike Potts at the start of the season. However, Potts was just absolutely sterling in two games, going 38-of-67 for 340 yards with two TD passes and three picks. One of the two TDs against the Utah Blaze came after the game was already well out of reach. His quarterback rating of 59.30 for the season is over 70 points lower than what John Dutton had in his one game of the year for the Cleveland Gladiators before getting hurt. It is also 53 points away from being in the Top 10 in the league... Not good when you're talking about 18 starting quarterbacks in the league...
Potts started the first game of the year against the New Orleans VooDoo and the third game against the aforementioned Glads before getting the boot out the door.
Enter: Grant Gregory.
I thought that Gregory at least had a shot with this team after watching him in a brutal loss to the Blaze on the road. I gave the kid the benefit of the doubt since a good chunk of the team caught the flu bug right before that game. Through a half of football on Friday night, the former South Florida Bulls signal caller was 14-of-20 for 178 yards with three TDs, and the Storm had 24 points on the board. This was the third most points scored in a half this season.
Then, the very disturbing trend kicked in. Tampa Bay just hasn't been able to string together wins due to the fact that it can't complete games. Second halves have been absolutely brutal to this team all season long. In four games, the Storm have just 45 points scored. That's not in one game or one half. That's all they've come up with in four halves of football after the intermission. Oh, and Michael Lindsey accounted for 13 of those points in the second halves of games via kick returns for TDs.
In the second half of this one, Gregory went 13-of-22 for 108 yards with one score and about a zillion turnovers on downs.
It's not like the defense has been any better. Tampa Bay has allowed 122 points in the second half of games this year as well, 28 of which came in this one. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that that's not very good at any level of football.
Oh yeah, we won't even talk about that 32-7 lead Cleveland got out to here last weekend in the first half...
The Storm only have four quarters this season with more than one TD and only three with more than one offensive TD. To put that in comparison, the Blaze have only had two quarters in three games this year with fewer than 12 points scored.
One of the final songs on the night at Amalie Motor Oil Field at the St. Pete Times Forum was the Sick Puppies' "Maybe." The hook of this song couldn't be more right.
"Maybe it's time to change and leave it all behind."
Change is something that just isn't happening right now for the Storm at halftime, and teams are taking tremendous advantage of the situation. Maybe it's time to change a quarterback, but it's hard to think that just one flip would change the whole tide of this team this season. It's time to make some wholesale changes... 23 of them might do.
Even in 2006, when the team had arguably its worst season ever at 7-9, the Storm did better than this. They averaged 50.6 PPG. Hell, even the 1990 Pittsburgh Gladiators, who moved to Tampa Bay the next season, averaged 35.4 PPG, and that was back in a day when 50 points was a tremendous amount for a team to score in this league. This year's Storm: 34.5 PPG.
If something -- or everything -- doesn't change for your five-time World Champion Tampa Bay Storm in 2011, this team will be lucky to be a five-time winner.
