Marshals vs. River City Rage (St. Louis)
On Saturday, we hosted St. Louis as part of our opening home stand. Five out of our first 6
games are at home. Their record was 1-0 and ours was 0-1. Our game attendance was a little
down due to the University of Louisville playing in the Final 4 that night.
In the first half our offense didn't play that great. On the first play of the game, we had a deep
play-action pass on a post route and one of our best receivers dropped it in the end zone. Then we
had a penalty on the next play so we stalled. We should have been up 7-0 on the first drive of the
game and instead it was 0-0. We ended up jumping up on them 13-0, but our offense still wasn't
playing real well. I watch the film today and at one point in the game I was 5-16 passing, with 4
dropped passes. Even with little passing stats we were still up by 9 points at halftime.
Our defense played well in the first half coming up with two big interceptions. Our offense stalled
from penalties and lack of execution.
In the second half, our offense took a series to get going while the St. Louis offense was money
from here on out. Then it was one of those games where we were up by 3 then they were up by
4 back and forth back and forth through the 3rd quarter. Then trouble struck for the Marshals; all
of a sudden I had trouble getting the snap from our center two plays in a row, which back us up.
However, we got a first down, but two plays later a man got free and I tried to force one and it
got picked off. They scored, and then we scored quickly. Then with under a minute they had a
4th and 2 at midfield. St Louis was up by 2 at this point and ran a QB keeper up the middle and
got it by about a foot. If we could've stopped them there we would have won.
However, I'll take the blame again for the loss on the late int. I just can't make mistakes in this
league; you have to score on every possession because of such a short field. Our team is learning
and getting more experience with every game.
On our team we have the league's leading rusher from last season, so our offense tends to revolve
around him. We only have 3 or 4 players on our roster that have ever played indoor football
before, while most other teams only have 3 or 4 rookies on their team. So we need to get some
experience under our belts to compete. Our running back's name is Rayshawn Askew; his brother
is BJ Askew of the NFL's New York Jets. Anyway Askew had all 7 TDs for us in the game, 4
rushing and 3 receiving.
In this game I had 3 passing TDs and one interception for about 150 yards. The final score was
55-53. We were close and should have won the game. I would say if our offense had played
better in the first half OR our defense wasn't Swiss cheese in the second half OR I hadn't thrown
that interception we would have won the game. We just need to play better more consistent
football and I think we definitely will.
This week we play Fayetteville out of North Carolina and they are also 0-2 but lost to St. Louis in
the same sort of fashion that we did in the 4th Quarter. They are also very young and
inexperienced like we are so we match up well against one another, it should be a battle.
Oh yeah, NEWS FLASH, our league has just let a new team in our league from Dayton, OH,
which is only about 1 hour away from Cincinnati so we will have at least one close away game the
locals can make a road trip to. It will probably be next week.
April 2, 2005