Breaking it Down - 2010 Week Three
Andy Lopusnak
Thursday April 22, 2010
High-scoring Arena Football action returned in Week Three as the seven games combined to average 114 points per contest and the old af2 continued its dominance against AFL teams. These and many more interesting tidbits await you if you scroll down to continue on your weekly journey into the inner depths of AFL geekdom in Volume II, Issue III of Breaking it Down. Continue only if you dare…
|
WEEK THREE RESULTS
|
|
TAMPA BAY 54, Dallas 41
|
|
JACKSONVILLE 57, Orlando 31
|
|
Chicago 70, ARIZONA 56
|
|
MILWAUKEE 65, Iowa 48
|
|
OKLAHOMA CITY 63, Cleveland 50
|
|
Alabama 63, UTAH 54
|
|
SPOKANE 78, Bossier-Shreveport 70
|
Home team in ALL CAPS
BYE: Tulsa
SPECIAL NOTE: the AFL finally put out stats for the Orlando-Jacksonville game on Wednesday around noon Eastern – five days after the game was played. This is just another in a long series of problems with the new AFL stats program. My multiple sources within various AFL stats crews say that the issues seem to compound with every game. The program is not user friendly at all and extremely hard to follow if you are a looking at the program screen. After seeing how the program works (or lack thereof), it amazes me that some NAIA colleges use this thing. I’m sure that Daktronics will get it right at some point, but this is a joke right now.
WEEK THREE FEATURED….
· The home team went 5-2.
· Just one team had a bye week (Tulsa).
· Tampa Bay and Oklahoma City recorded their first wins of the season.
· Four teams had their home openers (Tampa Bay, Milwaukee and Jacksonville won; Arizona lost)
· There were 800 total points scored – that’s a combined average of 114.3 points scored per game)
· Thirteen of the 14 teams scored at least 40 points (Orlando put up just 38).
· All seven winning teams scored at least 54 points (averaged 64.3 points per game).
· Fifteen 100-yard receivers and seven 300-yard passers.
AFL HIGHLIGHTS THROUGH THREE WEEKS
· All 15 teams have played at least two games (six have played all three weeks).
· Three teams are undefeated (Chicago is 3-0, while Milwaukee and Tulsa stand at 2-0).
· Five teams are winless (Cleveland is 0-3, while Orlando, Dallas, Iowa and Utah are all 0-2).
RECORD BOOK UPDATE
Apparently, the AFL hasn’t made a record book yet. In its place, the league has made an error-riddled “2010 Yearbook” that wasn’t released until Week Two. I was amazed by how horrible this 24-page monstrosity was, but was told that a second version was sent out and it’s almost as bad. The first had some wrong AFL rules from about five years ago, no bio for the Alabama head coach and no team page from Spokane. There were other errors, some were fixed but a lot weren’t – did you know the trade deadline is June 2, 2004? All trades in the past six years are now null and void.
Anyway…without a definitive record book, I will continue to use only AFL records and mix in same af2 ones (when appropriate) until the league puts one out. Does anyone have a spare 2009 af2 Record & Fact Book? Email me at andy.lopusnak@arenafan.com.
WHAT THE DEUCE?
The transition from af2 to AFL has been very easy for most of the seven former developmental teams. This past weekend, the old af2 again beat up on the AFL mainstays in both head-to-head matchups: Oklahoma City rocked Cleveland while Alabama bit Utah. On the year, the former af2 squads are a combined 6-1 vs. AFL teams. The lone loss being Iowa’s Week One beating by Chicago.
KNOW YOUR OWN HISTORY AFL
In the league’s weekly recap, the AFL claimed that the Sharks home game last Friday night was the first AFL game ever in Jacksonville. Well, since AFL commissioner Jerry Kurz said the AFL and af2 were merging records then this is completely wrong as the Jacksonville Tomcats played in the af2 from 2000-02 in the same arena. Of course, the league’s PDF release also said that Cleveland “unfortunately left as they came” winless. There were many other errors that my old boss, former Rampage GM Scott Woodruff, would have fired me on the spot, but I’ll stop with these two. Why aren’t there any photos on the AFL website? I posted 87 photos from the Storm-Vigilantes game on Tuesday. Come on AFL. What the heck are you doing?
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE BOX SCORES?
The stats program is beyond flawed and should never have been used for the AFL. I have more issues with it than grains of sand at the beach, but why can’t they get the scoring summary right in many of the games. Take a look at the Milwaukee-Iowa box score from the AFL website. It has the score as 65-48 but if you look at the scoring summary it says the score was 65-40 because Iowa’s Ryan Vena’s one-yard TD run is not even on the scoring summary. I had to go through the play-by-play to find it. This is not the first time this has happened. Take at look at the box scores on ArenaFootball.com for any of the Week Three games except the Alabama-Utah game (one out of seven ain’t bad, right?) and every single one has an issue with the scoring summary not adding up to the total score. I seriously hate bashing this program, but it’s a complete waste and continues to give fans and media problems. Please just get rid of it and bring back the StatCrew software. With all these problems, I can’t imagine the league actually trying to import 22 years of AFL history and ten more of the af2 into this stats program – this has to be the real reason the league hasn’t published a record book yet.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Alabama’s Dan Alexander extended his AFL rushing TD lead to 13 with four more rushing scores. The next closest player has just three. His 13th rushing scores are more than he had in his last AFL season (12 with Chicago in 2008). Alexander’s 102 rushing yards is double the next closest rusher (Dallas’ Josh White with 51). Additionally, Alexander is tied for the AFL lead in touchdowns scored. He’s on pace for 69 rushing touchdowns (AFL record is held by Alexander, 41).
IRON GOES TO 2-0
Milwaukee QB Chris Greisen completed his first eight passes, including two TDs as he led the Iron to a 65-48 win over Iowa. Greisen finished the night with 382 yards and seven touchdowns on 25-of-36 passing and on the year is the only starting QB with at least two starts without an interception. Both Tiger Jones and Nate Forse had over ten grabs, 140 yards and three touchdown catches each. Iron DB Virgil Gray returned an interception 49 yards for a touchdown and posted seven tackles (six solo, one assisted).
WHAT A RUSH
Chicago advanced to 3-0 for the second time in team history beating Arizona 70-56. The Rush started 4-0 in 2004 before losing its first game. Chicago went 11-5 on the season and lost to San Jose in the American Conference championship game. In this game, the Chicago defense returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the 14-point win. Linebacker DeJuan Alfonzo got his second INT return for a touchdown on the season (this time for 48 yards). In fact, the Rush have three of the top four leaders in interceptions.
SNAKE EYES
Arizona became the second team this season to have three different receivers post 100 or more yards in the same game. In a losing effort, JJ McKelvey (12-110-4), Rod Winsor (11-108-1) and Trandon Harvey (10-121-2) all posted ten or more catches, over 100 yards and at least one touchdown catch. On the weekend, there were four additional sets of teammates that posted 100 or more yards – the most this season.
SPARKY TOPS THONN IN MATCHUP VS. EX-RAMPAGE HEAD COACHES
Three years ago, the Grand Rapids Rampage fired head coach Sparky McEwen and replaced him with Steve Thonn. On Saturday it was McEwen’s under Dawgz that come out on top over Thonn’s Gladiators 63-50 in a battle of former Rampage head coaches.
MARSHALL SPARKS OKC’S COMEBACK WIN
Yard Dawgz all-purpose monster Timon Marshall’s AFL record-tying 58-yard kickoff return for a touchdown with OKC down 14-0 propelled his team to a 63-50 win over Cleveland. In the game, Marshall’s teammate af2 living legend Al Hunt caught two touchdowns and ran in three others.
DUTTON NOT ON THE BUTTON?
Cleveland QB John Dutton moved into sixth all-time in league history in TD passes (excluding the af2) in the Gladiators’ loss to OKC. Dutton’s eight interceptions are the most in the league thus far in his last 23 regular season games has posted a 6-17 record as a starting signal caller.
A “THONN” OF OFFENSE, BUT AS USUAL NO DEFENSE
Offensive units guided by Steve Thonn have consistently been among the best in the AFL. However, in every instance as head coach, it’s his team’s defensive units that weigh down Thonn’s overall record. In all, he’s 24-51 as a head coach with just one winning season (his first). Yes, he took the Rampage to the American Conference title game in 2008, but that year the AFL allowed 71% of its teams to make the playoffs (53% will be in the playoffs this year) and thus three 6-10 teams made the postseason including Grand Rapids. In 2008, Thonn’s offense finished second in the league in points scored, but was second to last in points allowed. His Gladiators are the league’s lone 0-3 this year. This is the second time Thonn has started 0-3 (previous was 1999 with the Houston Thunderbears).
SHOCKING – THE STATS PROGRAM STILL STINKS
In the highest scoring game on the year so far (148 total points), the 2009 ArenaCup champion Spokane Shock beat Bossier-Shreveport 78-70. Sadly, the AFL’s stat program again is terrible and I cannot give you more details on the great plays from this high-scoring contest. Sure, Raymond Philyaw and Kyle Rowley both had 300-yard passing games, but there’s no play-by-play and the scoring summary is incomplete. The scoring summary does have a zero-yard field goal though the stats showed that no field goals were even attempted.
“PHIL” YER UP
Bossier-Shreveport QB Raymond Philyaw leads the AFL in passing yards (974) and passing touchdowns (26). He did toss his first interception this past weekend in the Battle Wings’ first loss of the season.
WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE POLLS?
The AFL website’s main news content seems to be three polls – one by the coaches (another old af2 thing welcomed into AFL 2.0), one from the fans and another by the AFL Writers Association. In fact, the top three news stories on the AFL site when this article was published are these three polls. Heck, there’s nothing about the Week Three Players of the Week and today’s Thursday.
WEEK THREE’S TOP STATISTICAL PREFORMANCES
|
100-YARD RECEIVERS
|
|||
|
PLAYER, TEAM
|
RECEIVING YARDS
|
RECEPTIONS
|
TOUCHDOWNS
|
|
Larry Shipp, ALA
|
199
|
8
|
4
|
|
Randy Hymes, BS
|
174
|
9
|
5
|
|
Tiger Jones, MIL
|
171
|
12
|
3
|
|
Nate Forse, MIL
|
146
|
10
|
3
|
|
Chris Johnson, CLE
|
133
|
13
|
2
|
|
Trandon Harvey, AZ
|
121
|
10
|
2
|
|
Todd Blythe, IOWA
|
118
|
9
|
3
|
|
Ben Nelson, CLE
|
113
|
14
|
3
|
|
JJ McKelvey, AZ
|
110
|
12
|
4
|
|
Tyrone Timmons, TB
|
108
|
11
|
4
|
|
Rod Winsor, AZ
|
108
|
11
|
1
|
|
Nichiren Flowers, CHI
|
107
|
5
|
4
|
|
Raul Vijil, SPO
|
103
|
8
|
3
|
|
Hank Edwards, TB
|
100
|
7
|
1
|
|
Markee White, SPO
|
100
|
9
|
3
|
|
300-YARD PASSERS
|
|||
|
PLAYER, TEAM
|
PASSING YARDS
|
PASS TDs
|
INTERCEPTIONS
|
|
Chris Greisen, MILW
|
382
|
7
|
0
|
|
Kevin Eakin, ALA
|
375
|
5
|
1
|
|
Raymond Philyaw, BS
|
349
|
10
|
1
|
|
Nick Davila, AZ
|
346
|
8
|
2
|
|
Brett Dietz, TB
|
320
|
6
|
0
|
|
Kyle Rowley, SPO
|
316
|
8
|
1
|
|
John Dutton, CLE
|
309
|
7
|
1
|
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Spokane QB Kyle Rowley
For the first time this season, picking an overall Player of the Week has been the hardest. Three quarterbacks had outstanding games. In a losing effort, Philyaw had ten passing scores. Chris Greisen tossed for an AFL weekly high of 382 yards with seven scores and no interceptions. However, Spokane QB Kyle Rowley completed 28-of-37 passes for 316 yards with eight touchdowns and an interception. He also had a rushing touchdown and even caught one of his own passes for two yards in the Shocks’ 78-70 win over Bossier-Shreveport.
|
2010 BREAKING IT DOWN PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
|
||
|
WEEK
|
PLAYER, TEAM
|
STAT NOTE
|
|
1
|
Chris Greisen, Milwaukee QB
|
83 comp. pct, 327 pass yds, 9 TD, 0 INT
|
|
2
|
PJ Berry, Bossier-Shreveport WR/KR
|
357 all-purpose yards, 201 rec yds, 7 total TD
|
|
3
|
Kyle Rowley, Spokane QB
|
75.7 comp. pct, 316 pass yards, 8 TD, 1 INT, 1 rush TD
|
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN WEEK FOUR
· Both Orlando’s and Dallas’ first three weeks have been exactly the same: bye, loss and loss. Well, Week Four will be more of the same as both enjoy their well deserved second bye weeks. Both will have their home openers in Week Five.
· Speaking of byes, the AFL gives us seven of them in Week Four – that’s the most since Week Two’s five byes (and is now a new AFL record). Who needs a record book when you have stats (or lack thereof) like these?
· There will be just four games played – the fewest in an AFL regular season week since 1991 when the league had eight teams.
Andy Lopusnak is an 11-year AFL front office veteran, spending time with the Tampa Bay Storm, San Diego Riptide and Grand Rapids Rampage. He works as a statistician for NFL and college sports for CBS Sports and is a freelance photographer. Lopusnak received two Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of South Florida and has been a fan of ArenaBall since its inception.
