AFL Playoffs: Conference Championship Games Preview
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by user Cobras36
We're down to the last 3 games of the Arena Football League Season. Up on Saturday are the Conference Championship games, with Arena Bowl 21 scheduled for July 29th.
Saturday, 14 Jul 07, 1300 ESPN, Greenberg and Golic on the call
#6 Seed, 3rd Place Eastern Division Finisher 9-9 Columbus Destroyers at #2 Seed, Southern Division Winner 15-2 Georgia Force: Franchise records vs: Nashville/Georgia leads the all-time series 7-1 over Buffalo/Columbus: Georgia vs Columbus: the Force lead the series 4-1. This is the first playoff meeting between these two franchises. With an odd-team-in-the-league schedule, these non-divisional teams met home-and-home this year. In Week 4, Columbus won a barn burner 62-61 in Columbus, while in Week 14, Georgia asserted it's itself in a 54-33 win.
The Game: For the second straight year, a 7-9 team is attempting to pull of a 4 game road trip to take the championship. This year's candidate, Columbus, has shown that the 5-game losing streak at the end of the season (only broken by running over a depleted New York team in the last week of the season) wasn't indicative of how well they can play. The Destroyer QB, Matt Nagy, is only two years removed from taking the Force to the Arena Bowl and has brought a winning mentality to one of the worst franchises in AFL history. These are Columbus Coach Doug Kay's first playoff games, and he has shown a calm, determined demeanor, not getting rattled when the Destroyers have gotten behind. On the other hand, fiery Force Coach Doug Plank is 4-2 in AFL playoff games, and has his rookie-QB-led squad pounding opponents in all 3 facets of the game. The Force will field the 3rd ranked scoring offense on Saturday, matched up with the deceptively ranked 8th ranked scoring defense. That defense has held 3 of their last 6 opponents to under 40 points in a league-record scoring year. (Compare, last year's NFL combined score per game was just under 42ppg, while in the AFL it is 107.6ppg).
The Prediction The game will be a cross of the two regular season meetings, with Columbus staying much closer than their Week 14 performance, but I see the Force taking this one 58-52.
Saturday, 14 Jul 07, 1600, ESPN, Schlereth and Wingo on the call
#2 Seed, Central Division Winner 13-4 Chicago Rush at #1 Seed, Western Division winner 14-3 San Jose SaberCats: Franchise record vs: These teams have met 8 times in 7 years, with the regular season split 3-3 and the playoffs at 1-1. Over the past 7 years (that's how long Chicago has been in the league), Chicago has posted a 72-50 record (9-5 post season) with an Arena Bowl win (last year) while San Jose is 88-34 (10-4 post season) with two Arena Bowl titles. Chicago won a Week 2 meeting, 48-45 in Chicago.
The Game: The tale of this game will be told on the back of Rush QB Matt D'Orazio, which nearly kept him out of the game last night. If Matt is healthy enough to play effectively, he should be able to do the same thing that Colorado's John Dutton did to San Jose on last Saturday: light up the score board. If he's not able to perform, there's not enough defense in the whole of the AFL to keep Matt Grieb and the rest of the 'Cats from putting up 75+ points. Both SaberCat Coach Darren Arbet and Rush Coach Mike Hohensee are Top Ten AFL all time coaches; expect the unexpected from both to try to gain the upper hand.
The Prediction: If D'Orazio plays effectively, this will be a complete shootout and Chicago will win the American Conference title in San Jose for the second year in a row 70-65....if he can't go.....San Jose will set all sorts of AFL playoff records and run the Rush out of the building 87-30.
[[Category: Opinions]]
