Oh... The first game in the AF2 (better known around the league as simply "The Deuce"). Surprisingly I was not as nervous as I thought I was going to be, which is good because I'm normally frayed before the game. I was comfortable with the offense and the players and the game in general before we stepped onto the field. However, the first quarter didn't turn out the way I expected it to be.
In Arena football must like the NIFL last year with the Marshals, the offense is expected to score on every drive. Well, we had a bumpy start caused by my bad decisions and a pair of dropped balls, but that is going to happen in the first game. In the first quarter we put up a big goose egg.
I knew we were right there on the first three drives of the game, we just needed to execute better and we were going to be fine. Luckily for us, the other team had a rookie QB and struggled in the first half as well.
After those awful first three drives of the game, we started to turn it on via the deep ball. (Why? "Because chicks dig the deep ball") my first AF2 touchdown pass was to our WR/DB Cesere Manning. (I'm going to have a Rules and Terms page for everyone to read that doesn't know much about the Arena League, hence the WR/DB position.)
It was good to get the first TD out of the way and finally get on the board. After that our offense started to click, but so did theirs.
(You'll notice when I do these entries I write more about our wins than I do when we lose, cause I don't like talking about it.)
For pretty much the rest of the game we traded with the lead for most of the game, we score, they score, we score, they score. Well one time we got like 50 penalties in one drive and we had to kick a FG.
Anyway, on to the end of the game, they scored with 40 seconds or so to give them an eight-point lead. We had the ball on their 4-yard line with 5 seconds to go down 8 points. I dropped back to pass and threw to the right to our OS Rob Mager. He was in the endzone right on the line when he caught it and got hit at the same time but the guy was behind him and hit him back into the field. But according to the rules of football in all leagues if you have possession of the ball in the endzone it?s a touchdown. However, the ref ruled that he caught it on the one-inch line instead of in the endzone. So that is how we lost. We still would have had to get the 2-point conversion but we had a special play for that and I think we would have.
We have a bye week then we have our first home game versus the Manchester Wolves on April 14.