Week Two - Brigade

Wow, what a game. It had defense, offense, big hits, fights, blocked kicks, drilled kicks, onside kicks, deep passes, short passes, booing, cheering, oh yeah, and a great final minute.

When I first arrived at Nassau Coliseum with my friend Jeff, our first objective was to rack up pictures - that we did. I took 140 photographs today, chronicalling this great home opener. The team was great to watch live for the first time. I watched the rookies warm up, looked around, met some fans, and took it all in - this is what I had waited eight months for. Once the warm ups were done we took our seats...or did we. Confused by the flawed numbering on the seats, we were moved three times until we finally realized a man with his kids had occupied our real seats all along. Anyways, the turnout was great, and it felt more like a college game than Arena Ball. Why? Well two high school champion teams were in attendance and the full marching band of one of the schools played songs all night. This frustrated the many fans who traditionally liked to dance to "We Like to Party" after touchdowns. Instead, trumpets would sound and drums would be struck. The absence of the "Crazy Pickles", or whatever they are called, changed the atmosphere as well. No more loud drumming, can't complain.


Now to the real stuff! The first half was VERY low scoring, with not much going on in the way of offense. Special teams, however, was very interesting. Peter Martinez, the Brigade kicker and former Columbus boot, was absolutely terrible. He missed something like 3 extra points during this game and a missed field goal or two as well. While the thrashing by the fans was hilarious, we had special teams difficulties of our own. The abysmal offensive line brought itself over to special teams as two kicks were tipped today, one completely blocked. This could have cost us the game very easily, more on that later. Onorato, the Dragons kicker, was for the most part solid. Aside from the blocks (which were not his fault), he kicked some nice balls, but did miss an extra point (maybe two). One was at the very end of the game which could have screwed us out of the win.

Onto that offensive line. Well, failure is never fun, but it can be funny. At times our o-line was so bad that it was hilarious. On one play, for example, after the snap all three defensive linemen, hardly touched, came directly at Davey with absolutely no delay. It was a d-lineman's dream, just a flush charge at the quarterback. Anyone who wants to try and blame Rohan Davey for sacks is out of his or her mind. The failure of the line is in no way result of Rohan holding the ball too long, I can tell you that after seeing this garbage in person. It did calm down though, as the game progressed the line got better, which is actually slightly reassuring. I want to now talk about a very weird play involving this line. On a very random play on about the Brigades 12 yard line, Davey lined up in a SHOTGUN formation. If you don't know, the shotgun is never used in the AFL. In week one it was used by one team occasionally, but that was considered the first time in many years. So, to my surprise Davey lined up a few yards behind center and hiked it. The ball, however, did not get snapped near his area code and was fumbled about 15 yards down field. Davey did fall on it, but this was a very obscure play worth noting, I wonder what the plan was on that one.

On the subject of lines, now the defensive line. The group of Taylor, Nix, Hardee, and Adelekan did seem pretty good, but it was kind of like a cereal box with no prize inside. While the d-line DID pressure Fitzgerald and the Brigade, they never ACTUALLY seemed to sack him. This is not completely negative, because pressure on the QB, regardless of whether the result is a sack, will often create bad passes and poor decisions. Plus, it shows that the line can do the hard part of the "sack", but just needs to finish the job. Often after getting by the o-line, the defenders would kind of try to sack Fitzgerald in a round about way, trip over themselves, run back into o-linemen, and just make overall sloppy attempts at sacks. The great thing about that is those things can be fixed and perfected, while the things they actually do correctly would be harder to teach.
On the topic of defense, the real excitement came from behind the line. I have never in my AFL fanship seen such a meshed, connected, excited, and exuberant bunch of defensive backs/linebackers. John Walker, Billy Parker, Ronnie Amadi, and Levy Brown have extremely good chemistry and they take the best facets of the Arena Football league and run with it. Often times out of no where Levy Brown would circle the field pumping up the crowd, raising his hands in the air to get the crowd louder. Any time one of them succeeded, they would jump at each other, high five, scream in excitement, and point to the fans all around. This seems like a normal thing, but it was definitely a more excited squad than one I had ever seen. It also helped that they were amazing...Levy Brown had 2 interceptions, Billy Parker was alright, Walker did his weekly fumble show, this time scoring his first touchdown in the AFL after picking up his forced fumble and scoring, and Amadi was solid overall. If I wanted anyone to watch an AFL defense for the first time, I would have them watch these guys. On a side note, Levy has quite an arm: after intercepting his first pass, he sprinted forward and heaved the ball into the upper section of the stand. Pretty far.

Now back to the offense with Davey and crew. Jason Willis had a breakout game with four touchdowns, Keron Henry got in there with a long touchdown catch, and Chris Anthony caught one as well. You may be wondering, what about Kevin Swayne? Well, I am wondering the same thing. Swayne did not appear on the field once during this game - and how ironic is that. You take out the two guys the Dragons think are "most marketable" players on the team (Garcia and Swayne), and you get a victory. Go figure. Davey was, for the second consecutive game, great. He threw a pick or two, but he got them out of the way in the first quarter rather than on the last drive like he would of last year. This guy, week by week, can shut up doubters like no other - he just needs the chance. With Garcia supposedly healthy for next week against the Soul, Davey will once again be parked on the bench - forced to watch glass (Aaron Garcia) throw the football. If it ain't broke don't fix it, give Garcia that extra week he really needs to heal, and give Davey a shot to prove that he can win against one of the best teams in the AFL (or maybe lose to them). Watching Davey like this makes me uncontrollably happy, as I was an obsessed fan of his before the season even started LAST year. Yeah, I'm that good.
Well, now some extra stuff. Seeing Horacek and Holder on another team was sad at first, but after a while I started to dislike them both. First, Holder makes an interception. Then, on the NEXT play, a touchdown pass to Horacek. What a nice homecoming for them. Surprisingly, Horacek was booed in his introduction to start the game. I would have bet that we all would have cheered. Only a few did.

Oh yeah, and Dartangon Shack is awesome.

See ya next week,
Ben.