Garcia Finally Ready for Big Show, Likely for the Final Time
Adam Markowitz
Thursday August 11, 2011
It took over 6,000 pass attempts, 50,000 passing yards, and over 1,000 TD passes, but here Aaron Garcia is, leading the Jacksonville Sharks into ArenaBowl XXIV against the Arizona Rattlers.
Garcia looked cool as a cucumber at the podium on Thursday's Media Day, about 30 hours before he straps on his helmet, cracking jokes on his teammates and his coach while getting grilled by the media.
This is a heck of a situation here that Garcia has been put in. He is returning to where it all started, playing at home with these Rattlers in 1995 taking over for the injured QB Shredrick Bonner for a 72-69 win over the Las Vegas Sting.
The words "storybook ending" came up quite a bit in Thursday's press conferences, and the feel in the Hyatt Regency was that this would be Garcia's final game.
It's hard to imagine an Arena Football League without Aaron Freaking Garcia. (And yes, if you throw for 50,000 yards and 1,000 TDs, you're good enough to have "Freaking" as your middle name.)
But then again, it's really hard to think after stints with the Rattlers, Connecticut Coyotes, New Jersey Red Dogs, Iowa Barnstormers, New York Dragons, and now the Sharks, that a quarterback who has consistently been in the Top 5 quarterbacks in the league had never played in an ArenaBowl either.
Garcia and his Sharks averaged a whopping 64.3 points per game this year, and they scored at least 62 points 13 times on the campaign. His club won 13 straight games after losing for the first time this year to Arizona.
When asked what the key was to his offense from a year ago, Head Coach Les Moss attributed it to the continuity from one season to the next. "We were able to get 95 percent of our offense back from last year."
Jacksonville only allowed 11 sacks all season long, something that is definitely going to be a key to the game. Garcia and the rest of his team joked about his age and that he can't do some of the things that he used to do when he was in his 20s, but it's most certainly the truth. Moss recognized all of this and said, "We've got to protect Aaron and he has to make the right decisions."
The Sharks are definitely up to their eyeballs in reasons that they could lose this one. They only punched their ticket to the ArenaBowl on Monday by winning the American Conference Championship Game against the Georgia Force, and they have had minimal practice. This has been one of the most widely noted handicaps that Jacksonville is carrying around, but both Garcia and Moss played it off.
After shrugging it off, Moss said, "We just have to go out and play the game." Garcia echoed those sentiments as well, saying, "We just have to take it one game at a time."
On top of that, the Sharks remember their 55-52 loss at the outset of the season against these Rattlers right here at the US Airways Center.
But if you talk to Garcia, this game is about a heck of a lot more than just a title. His final words at the podium before taking questions were, "We're here for revenge!"
For Garcia, if this really is the end of a storied career, there would be no other way to end it all with him lifting the Foster Trophy. When asked if he could sum up his career in one word if it were to end with an ArenaBowl title, he did so with no hesitation.
"Achievement."
It's about achievement for a second year franchise. It's about achievement for a coach who has won the whole enchilada three times in his career but never as a head coach. But most importantly, it's about achievement for Garcia, capping what has been one of the greatest careers that any quarterback has had in professional football history.
