Walking Off What Gladiators Do
Adam Markowitz
Wednesday August 20, 2014
At some point in the late-90s, the term "walk off" became big in baseball. It's where a team wins a game on the final at bat of the game, meaning the home team has to score the winning run in the ninth inning or in extra innings. It's not a term that you hear all that often in football, but for all intents and purposes, it's what the Cleveland Gladiators have been doing all season long.
We all know the stats by now. Six wins decided on the last play of the game; each was seemingly more remarkable and unlikely than the last. Heck, in six games this year, the Gladiators were losing when the clock read 0:00 in the fourth quarter. Only a game against the Pittsburgh Power was lost. The other five were all won.
The Gladiators broke the league record for walk off wins in a regular season with five and walk off wins in a season including the playoffs with six. The next closest team since 2000 was the 2005 Colorado Crush who won three games via the walk off. The Philadelphia Soul managed to be sulking off of the field three times against Cleveland this year, and that was only half of the damage that the Gladiators did around the AFL in 2014.
There have been 97 examples of games in the AFL since 2000 that have ended in walk off fashion. Over half of the 97 ended in game-winning field goals, and over two-thirds of those were kicks in a tie game that, if they were missed, would have ended in the game going to overtime.
Aaron Pettrey made three game-winning field goals this season. That's more game-winning field goals than the Tampa Bay Storm, Orlando Predators, Philadelphia Soul, and Jacksonville Sharks had in total field goals all season long.
There have only been eight games in the playoffs since 2000 that ended on the final play of the game with a score. Only in six of those games was the team that won the game at the gun trailing going into the final snap. The last time it happened was two seasons ago when Marco Capozzoli knocked through a 51-yard field goal to beat the Georgia Force. In fact, the Jacksonville Sharks were the only team before this year that had won a playoff game in walk off fashion, doing it both in 2012 in the Georgia game and in ArenaBowl XXIV against these very same Rattlers. That Aaron Garcia to Jeron Harvey pass is the only thing separating Arizona from having three consecutive championships already and being on its way to an unprecedented fourth.
Speaking of ArenaBowls, there have only been three ArenaBowls in league history that have ended in walk off fashion. The Orlando Predators were the first to pull off the feat in ArenaBowl XIV, and they did so by getting a David Cool field goal at the gun to beat the Nashville Kats. Five years later in ArenaBowl XIX, Clay Rush booted the Colorado Crush to a Foster Trophy at the expense of the Georgia Force.
In both cases, had the field goal been missed, the game would have gone to overtime.
Do I even have to mention the only time in league history that a team was leading going into the final play of the game and lost again?
The Rattlers surely hope that the history of ArenaBowl XXIV doesn't repeat itself.
