Classic Arena Football Ending Stuns Steamwheelers
Gary Stibolt
Sunday August 8, 2004
After last night’s playoff win, you can add another to that history as the Fire were staring at defeat when their 53-yard field goal just missed hitting the left upright. The Steamwheelers thought they had won the game; most of the fans thought the same thing too. We know in arena football, a missed field goal is a live ball and it was up to Jeff Hewitt to catch a ball that was bouncing away from him with two Fire players gunning for him and the ball. Fire lineman, Derrick Shepard swooped up the ball on the run and dashed another 10-yards to steal the win away from the Steamwheelers and advance Louisville into the National Conference Semi-Final round of the 2004 playoffs. It was typical of the Fire’s season and the same could be said for the Steamwheelers.
“It’s heartbreaking, it was a crazy bounce at the end, we’re still in shock,” stated a deflated coach Ingold following the game. “I didn’t know what to say to the guys in the locker room. We’re shocked. We didn’t finish, we just didn’t finish it.”
The Steamwheelers have had arguably the toughest schedule this year in the af2 and there were a lot of times when the ball didn’t bounce their way. You can look at the June 5th game back in Louisville for one, or the May 22nd game in San Diego when they lost key FB/LB Brian Berg, or you can look at the July 10 game at Tennessee Valley. Up and down the schedule in both wins and losses, you can point to situations where the Steamwheelers couldn’t get things to go their way. Another example would be their breath-taking win in Manchester in their second game of the season when they narrowly survived an impressive Manchester comeback in the second half. So, for this game to end the way it did, speaks volumes to the Steamwheelers’ season.
How the season ended is most stunning of all. It came down to the last play of the game and, just like last year, it was the last play of the game that kept the Steamwheelers home after winning their division. Last year, the Steamwheelers ran away with the division with a 14-2 regular season record. This year it came down to the last game of the season against Louisville as the Steamwheelers defense tore apart the Fire to claim a 66-38 win and their 4th Midwest Division title.
Unlike last week’s season ending finale, in this game, the Steamwheelers saw a different strategy from Louisville. This week it was a series of on-side kicks by the Fire…a total of 6 in all. “I saw on film that Quad City has a tougher time in the red zone,” explained Fire Head Coach, Tommy Johnson. “They run it a lot when they have a shorter field to work with. I felt we would kick on-side tonight and force them to play a short field and hopefully recover one too.” While the Fire did not recover any of the short kicks, the strategy itself proved to be true as they kept the game close throughout. The Steamwheelers twice had to settle for field goals in the first half and led 20-19 at intermission.
As the closing minutes of the game unfolded, the score was close with the Steamwheelers leading most of the entire second half. When Louisville missed their PAT attempt to tie the game at 48 with 1:18 remaining, all the Steamwheelers had to do was run out the clock but Louisville had two timeouts remaining with nearly :55 seconds to play. Louisville took their last timeout with :49 left on the clock and on third down the Steamwheelers ran it again. As the clock kept running, the Steamwheelers had to snap the ball one more time. On fourth down, Coach Ingold said he put the game in the hands of his line. “I put the game in their hands and they didn’t do it. All Ronnie Gordon had to do was run the ball and make forward progress, we lost two yards on the play and turned the ball over with enough time for them to try a field goal.”
The missed 53-yard field goal attempt , the fluke bounce off the pipes, and the subsequent Louisville touchdown stunned the Steamwheelers. You only see and experience that in a football game with nets where anything can happen. While the loss will eat at the Steamwheelers for days to come, Steamwheelers owner, Jim Foster summed it up, “That’s classic arena football…it’s not over until it’s over.”
Gary Stibolt has covered the Quad City Steamwheelers since their 2000 inaugural season. He also owns, operates and is the Chief Editor/Publisher of SteamwheelerFans.com, a website dedicated to the Steamwheelers and their fans. He coresponds for other media outlets covering arenafootball2. In addition to leading the Steamwheelers Fan Club, Gary serves as Coordinator of the National af2 Fan Club. He is married with two sons and works as an Infrastructure Analyst for Deere & Company in their Corporate Computer Center in Moline, Illinois.