In the End, Sharks/Rattlers Could Be Epic

Adam Markowitz
Wednesday August 10, 2011

I'm literally just minutes away from walking out of my house to drive over to Tampa Bay for our flight to Phoenix for ArenaBowl XXIV, and this stunning thought hit me: This really could be a damn good ArenaBowl! In a season with all sorts of duds for games and teams that were wildly inconsistent, we, the Arena Football fans, got exactly what we wanted in this game. We've got the Arizona Rattlers, the best team in the National Conference, playing against the Jacksonville Sharks, the best team in the American Conference.

Perhaps I'm a bit overconfident in this game right now. After all, it's pretty clear that both of these teams would have been smoked by basically any other ArenaBowl team from the 2000s before the league went on hiatus in 2009. The talent level just isn't there anymore for various reasons.

However, if we really look at this closely, what we have is the equivalent of what we saw when the USC Trojans played the Texas Longhorns in the 2005 Rose Bowl. In that game, we had two unbeaten teams who absolutely steamrolled their competition all season long, and we absolutely had the best college players in the country squaring off in what turned out to be the best football game at any level that this writer has ever seen.

The last ArenaBowl to be played here at the US Airways Center was one for the ages. Both these Rattlers and the San Jose SaberCats stood toe-to-toe for the full 60 minutes, and the end result was a 69-62 slugfest that included both teams alternating scores for literally the entire game. It had Mark Grieb throwing for eight TDs and Shredrick Bonner throwing for seven. Names that lived in AFL infamy like James Roe, Barry Wagner, Siaha Burley, Hunkie Cooper, Randy Gatewood, Omar Smith, Rashied Davis, and Sam Hernandez, some of the best who ever played this game were on the field that day, and the end result was truly epic.

Okay, I must admit that Nick Davila, Trandon Harvey, Jason Geathers, Virgil Gray, Chris Jackson, Aaron Garcia, Jeron Harvey, and Michaeux Robinson doesn't quite resonate the same way, but when you take a look back at those Rattlers and SaberCats teams from the past and compare them to these two teams that we have playing in this game, there is no doubt that this is the more intriguing game.

In 2004, both San Jose and Arizona went 11-5. They were amongst the five teams in the league that all posted identical records. The Cats outscored their foes by an average of 8.2 PPG. The Ratts did so by 6.1 PPG. That San Jose team won its playoff games by four and 14 points before the ArenaBowl, and it only had seven wins (including the postseason) by double digits all season long. Arizona won its two playoff games by 17 and four points respectively, and it had eight double digit victories.

Fast forward to the here and now. The Sharks outscored their enemies by 13.8 PPG. They had a quarterback who threw for 116 TD passes, the third most in league history, and they blew out a whopping 12 teams by double digits. Their two playoff games were decided by 15 and nine points.

Arizona outscored its opposition by 15.4 PPG. Davila threw for a league record 117 TD passes. Ten of its wins came by double digits, and its two playoff wins were by 29 and six points.

Go back through the history of the league and look at the ArenaBowl winners and losers and their combined margins of victory. The 2008 Philadelphia Soul had their opponents outclassed by 11.4 PPG. The 2007 San Jose SaberCats were one of the best teams ever assembled, winning games by 15.7 PPG, but look at their lowly foes from that ArenaBowl; the Columbus Destroyers went 7-9 and barely outscored their opponents on the season.

Back in 2002, the Rattlers and SaberCats were clearly the two best teams in the league, but at 15.6 PPG, San Jose was a significantly better team than the Arizona club that only outscored opponents by 7.5 PPG. Needless to say, the end result, a 52-14 win for the Cats, wasn't what the doctor ordered.

The 1998 Tampa Bay Storm were one of the best teams in league history as well. They outscored teams by 20.1 PPG in the regular season, only to lose by 31 points in the ArenaBowl to the Orlando Predators. One of the best games in this Preds fan's memory banks, but not a classic to say the least.

And now, we're back into the mid-90s, where it felt like the No. 1 seed played against the No. 2 seed every single year in the ArenaBowl and the game was significantly different.

Say what you want about the AFL in 2011 (and believe me, I have). For as many bad teams as we have had, we had two truly dominating ones, and fortunately, we are getting exactly what we wanted to see. And, as the winner of the game when these two teams met all the way back, 22 weeks ago in Week 1, the Rattlers have earned the right to host the game and have every home field advantage in the world, including two extra days of preparation.

There were a number of twists, turns, and wild finishes this season in the AFL. With these two teams that we have on the field on Friday night, we deserve nothing more than another wacky, wacky game. Don't be surprised if this is legitimately the best game in the history of the Arena Football League.