Heady play by Marcus Pittman sends KISS to win over Sharks
Adam Markowitz
Saturday April 2, 2016
Time and time again, I've preached how important it is to manage the clock properly at the end of the first half. All too often, games are decided by that last possession before the interval, and we saw that on Saturday night when the LA KISS beat the Jacksonville Sharks 64-39 in a game which was nowhere near as lopsided as that final score suggests.
Everything at the end of the first half was setup perfectly for the Sharks. They were involved in a 27-27 game with the ball and 0:30 left in the first half. The ball was on the LA 1-yard line, and Derrick Ross appropriately fell down on the play prior to cause the KISS to burn their last timeout.
After breaking the huddle from the timeout, new Sharks OC Raymond Philyaw had to tell his team to not score on second down. Anything short of the end zone would be great, as the clock could be run down to about 0:10 or so to ensure that drive would effectively be the last of the half.
In fairness to Ross, he really tried to not score when he got the ball in his hands on another carry off the left side. He stood up right near the goal line and was content to not score. Instead, Marcus Pittman came from behind and basically shoved him into the end zone.
Pittman won't get credit for a tackle on that play, but it was the headiest play of the entire game, and it changed the entire perception of the rest of the game.
The Sharks might've taken the 33-27 lead on that run, but Nathan Stanley, who was fantastic in his debut as the starter of the KISS, was spot on with a touchdown pass to Brandon Collins with 0:07 left in the half to tie up the game.
It didn't seem like much at the time, but instead of Jacksonville going into the half up a touchdown, it was on level terms, and LA was getting the ball first in the second half.
The KISS scored on the opening play of the half, and they never gave the lead back.
Sure, there was a little bit of luck involved in giving the KISS such an emphatic victory, not the least of which was a bar ball on the first play of the fourth quarter in what proved to be the turning point of the game.
Had Pittman not shoved Ross into the end zone on the last play of the half, Los Angeles would've been up 40-39 with the ball instead of up 47-39 with it. Following a Rory Nixon touchdown, the Sharks were facing a two-score deficit for the first time instead of being behind by just eight.
The entire perception of the game changed from there. Last season, when the Sharks were in games, they generally won. It's when things started to go wrong that they hit the self-destruct button and turned up with some ugly losses. Apparently, that problem is still in full effect in 2016.
Tommy Grady, who was fantastic in the first three quarters of the game, completed just one of his next seven passes, including an interception down by the goal line. Jacksonville was stopped on each of its next two possessions after the bar ball, and a second bar ball ensured that this game would look like a blowout. It was 40-39 when things started to fall apart. It was 64-39 at the end of the night.
In his halftime interview, Omarr Smith said that he mismanaged the end of the first half. Whether he got an assist from Pittman or coached him up to shove Ross into the end zone on that play at the end of the first half, Smith got it exactly right.
That's why the LA KISS are 1-0 and the Jacksonville Sharks are 0-1.