Excuse Me… There’s No Excuse for Gruden’s Excuses
Adam Markowitz
Saturday June 30, 2007
Friday night’s 41-26 defeat at the hands of the Philadelphia Soul in the first round of the playoffs was a microcosm of the Preds season. Start strong, don’t finish.
The Preds started both their Week 17 showdown with the Soul and their playoff contest in fine fashion. The defense forced two stops in the first quarter of both games. They found ways to blow two possession leads by screwing up clock management on drives in the last minute of the first half in both games. They went into halftime tied and getting the ball first out of the intermission in both games. They got beat by 2 touchdowns in both games.
That pretty much sums it up.
Now, it’s true that the Predators battled several injuries and questionable officiating all night long, but the best teams find ways to beat these obstacles. However, we’ve been hearing this story from Coach Gruden all year.
One week it was a critical injury. The next it was poor officiating. Then it was a bunch of bad bounces. This week, Gruden mentioned his injury problems yet again. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a game where we lost all three of our starting offensive linemen,” said Gruden. (Hmm… maybe if the AFL went back to Ironman football, more guys would be capable of playing offensive line on the roster, but that’s another article for another time.)
Gruden continued. “[Philadelphia] played better than we did and deserved to win. We’ve had a lot of strange calls go against us this year, but the bottom line is that we haven’t made the plays we needed to make. This has been a tough year on us with the injuries, and we were never able to get any consistency.”
Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic should be paying attention to this. On their show, Mike & Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio, they give out the “Just Shut Up Award” every week to the person in sports who had the dumbest line of the week. Jay Gruden needs to just shut up.
And boy is hell about to freeze over. I’m about to give credit where credit is due.
Dear Adam Locascio: You were right about Shane Stafford. He still can’t perform in the clutch.
Though I would love to sit here and place all of the blame squarely on Gruden’s shoulders, Stafford has been nothing short of god awful in critical moments this year. Name me one game that the Preds won this year after the team was trailing in the 4th quarter. The only one was at Austin, when Brian Partlow and Lang Campbell gift-wrapped a victory for the Preds. No other victories.
The Predators didn’t score a single touchdown in the last 44:53 of the game against the Soul. Embarrassing. In the 2nd half, Stafford went 8/26 for 84 yards, no touchdowns, and a pick. Disgraceful.
Of the 10 games that the Preds trailed at any point in the 2nd half this year, Stafford engineered 27 touchdown drives and 27 non-touchdown drives. Fifty percent is only good enough to make the playoffs when you’re looking at the standings in the AFL, but when it’s your ratio of touchdowns/drives, you’re in trouble. Over the final two games of the regular season, either one of which could have clinched Orlando a home playoff game had they won, Stafford generated four touchdown drives on ten possessions. When the marbles were really on the line in the playoffs, the team went TD-less in the 2nd half. The most important stat, however… In those ten games in which the Preds trailed in the 2nd half: 1 win, 9 losses.
By the way Gruden, that was your hand-picked quarterback that you acquired in free agency last season.
Gruden controls everything about this team. He makes the decisions on personnel, he calls the offense, and he calls the defense. Why is everything that happens on the field everyone else’s fault then? Own up to your mistakes, Jay. You couldn’t make up your mind on your 3rd receiver the entire season, you went through countless linemen (and the one lineman that made the All-Ironman team, Reggie Lee, didn’t suit for some unknown reason against Philly), and it took you half the season to find a holder for Jay Taylor. And you wonder why consistency wasn’t there? Good teams overcome these problems. Bad teams don’t win playoff games. The 2007 Predators weren’t a good team.
As I was watching the game at the fan club watch party, one of the fans there heckled me for only writing negative articles about the Preds lately. Unfortunately, when you lose five out of your final six games, there isn’t much to write home about.
Things aren’t much rosier for the Preds ownership group either. In the last three weeks, not only has the team president been caught telling a fan to do something physically impossible, but the team now needs to refund all of its season ticket holders for the 9th game that they never received. As the Preds advertisements for season tickets this season stated, “Nine games for as low as $54.” You know what happens when you assume…
Here’s the bottom line. The Predators finished 8-9 on the season, and it was the first time since their inaugural season that the team finished under .500. I’m a spoiled fan. My team has won two ArenaBowls and played in five others. This is only the fourth time that the team has been knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. Unacceptable. I expect and demand better from my team. One of my good buddies always told me that there was only one motto you needed to live life by in the business world, and it fits the Orlando Predators perfectly.
“No excuses. Results are what matters.”
Adam Markowitz is an accountant living in Orlando. Adam is an old school AFLer, having followed the AFL since 1991. He attended or covered well over 200 games, including 17 ArenaBowls. Adam worked for the Arena Football League for two years as a columnist and historian before retiring in 2017 when the 50-yard indoor war left the Sunshine State. Adam still muses about the AFL on ArenaFan from time to time, and you can follow him on Twitter @adammarkowitzea.
