Tommy Gun takes aim at championship, fulfilling legacy

Adam Markowitz
Wednesday August 26, 2015

Over the course of the first several years of his AFL career, Tommy Grady developed a few stigmas. He's really tall. He throws a ton of touchdowns. And he never wins the big game. But now that he has gotten the Jacksonville Sharks to the ArenaBowl behind two incredibly good efforts on his part, he can evolve into the really tall quarterback who throws a lot of touchdowns and has won the big one.

It hasn't always been easy being Tommy Gun. Yes, he had an amazing season in 2012 in which he smashed records which still stand to this day in passes attempted (743), completed passes (507), pass yards (5,870) and passing touchdowns (142). However, that year, his Utah Blaze tapered out of the playoffs in the conference title game to the eventual ArenaBowl champion Rattlers. But he's never had the greatest team in the world around him, and even when he did last year with Pittsburgh, his 15-3 record was only good enough to have to go on the road to Orlando in the first round of the playoffs thanks to Cleveland's 17-1 campaign.

It's also human nature to put labels on our athletes when they can't stay in one place for too long in his career. But that's just not the case for Grady. After the 2010 season, Oklahoma City folded. After the 2013 season, Utah folded. After the 2014 season, Pittsburgh folded. So now we have a man who has been on four teams in six seasons, which makes it awfully difficult to try to build up continuity and make a run at a championship.

By all statistical accounts, Grady was largely unspectacular this year. He threw for 95 touchdowns against 11 picks. However, when you look closer and see that the Sharks scored 132 offensive touchdowns, you have to be impressed, even if Grady didn't make the final play of many of those drives.

In the fourth quarters of games this year when scoring really matters, the Sharks averaged 14.9 points per game, even more than the 14.4 points per game scored by San Jose. Twenty-eight of Grady's touchdown passes this year came in the fourth quarters of games.

Maybe this guy is clutch after all.

For our money, Grady has been the best quarterback in the league over the course of the last two weeks. Sure, his completion percentage against Philadelphia last week was a relatively woeful 15-of-29, but he took a ton of shots down the field and put many of them right on the money. His passes in the red zone, save for one fade pass which he admits he "lost focus on" against the Soul which was picked off, have been right on the money, and the rapport between he and Joe Hills has turned this tandem into arguably the most dangerous in the AFL. Hills has nine touchdown grabs in the postseason, all but one of which came from inside the opposing 10-yard line where it is hardest for quarterbacks to make magic in this league.

Grady knows what type of player he has to work with in Hills.

"Joe's a monster all over the field, but once you get in the red zone, you see him have a knack to get open," Grady told ArenaFan.com in an exclusive interview. "He's a big target, he goes up and gets it. I have a lot of confidence in Joe."

In a day and age where championships are few and far between for teams not named Arizona, it should be noted that there are only two starting quarterbacks, Nick Davila and Kyle Rowley, who are active with ArenaBowl titles as starters, and only Davila started this season as a No. 1. Guys like Erik Meyer, Dan Raudabaugh, Shane Austin, Jason Boltus, Randy Hippeard… no championships for any of them.

To be the starting quarterback for a championship team puts you in an elite club no matter the level of football. Legacies are started by amassing stats, something that Grady has done a ton of in his career. They're cemented though, by championships.

If Raudabaugh never goes on to win an ArenaBowl, he'll be remembered as the guy who was never good enough to beat Davila when it mattered most, not a guy who will almost certainly finish his career ranked in the Top 10 in AFL history in both passing yards and passing touchdowns.

Next season, Grady will likely join another elite club which currently has just seven members: The 30,000 passing yard club for a career in the AFL. He'll also likely become just the eighth man to throw for 700 touchdown passes in his career. Getting to 50,000 passing yards and 1,000 touchdowns is entirely plausible by the time his career is said and done with.

But without that championship, Grady will always just be that really tall, stat-sheet stuffing guy who never was good enough to win a title.

"People's legacy – me, I don't have a championship. I think winning a championship is big for me and for our team," said Grady. "I think we're ready for the challenge."