'Birds hang on in opener (Full Story)
May 2, 1998 - Final 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Totals Portland 15 21 3 19 58 Albany 21 23 14 7 65 Firebirds hang on in opener
By James Allen
ALBANY � The Albany Firebirds were well on there way Saturday night to a resounding victory. The offense was clicking, the defense was stingy and the special teams dominated.
Still, with two seconds left, Albany somehow faced the possibility of losing its Arena Football League opener to the Portland Forest Dragons.
It wasn't that Portland did anything out of the ordinary to stop the Firebirds. Albany did plenty to stop itself.
The Firebirds knocked down quarterback James Guidry's Hail Mary pass to end the contest and registered an uneven 65-58 victory before 10,427 fans at Pepsi Arena.
Albany nearly squandered all of its 26-point lead established early in the fourth quarter.
"It was an ugly win � a horrible win. I feel like we should have steamrolled that team," Albany lineman Joe Jacobs said. "We made a lot of first-game mistakes. If we do that against New Jersey (Friday's opponent), they will steamroll us. I guess the old cliche applies here � a win is a win."
"Oh yeah, we tried our best to give it away," Firebirds head coach Mike Dailey said. "The encouraging thing is we still won the game and we had (five) turnovers."
The Firebirds played a very loose fourth quarter after offensive specialist Eddie Brown put his team up 65-39 with his fifth TD reception of the night with 11:01 reamining.
But fumbles by Chad Dukes and Brown allowed Portland to reel off three straight scores � the last one coming with 25 seconds left on a 1-yard TD pass from Guidry to Oronde Gadsen.
Albany tried to run out the clock, yet decided to go for a 29-yard field goal with six seconds remaining. Pete Elezovic hooked it wide left to give the Forest Dragons one final crack at victory.
"I think we allowed that game to be close when it shouldn't have been," said Brown, who hauled in 11 passes for 172 yards. "We played a sloppy second quarter and a terrible fourth quarter."
While the Firebirds found plenty of fault with their performance, there was no denying that Albany clearly controled most of the action.
It started with the offense.
Quarterback Mike Pawlawski, coming off a record-breaking season in 1997, picked up right where he left off with Brown.
The Forest Dragons spent the majority of the first half as if Brown was a rookie and not one of the AFL's all-time greats.
Against soft coverage, Brown used two straight post-corner moves � the best in his arsenal � to score on touchdowns of 26 and 25 yards. He would have made it three straight in as many attempts, but a penalty negated that connection.
The Forest Dragons did have a partial excuse for their pouress coverage. Defenseive specialist James Fuller, who attempted to play despite missing the entire preseason with a leg injury, aggravated it in warmups and did not play.
That left Mark Ricks, a player that Brown has victimized badly over the years, to shadow the league's premier receiver. It turned out to be a complete mismatch once again.
"I told (Dailey) that Ricks would be playing me man-up. I wanted to put him out of work," Brown said.
"He gets open. (Brown) is a very nice receiver," Portland head coach Stan Brock said. "He has a quarterback who can get him the ball and they protect him."
Brown's third and fourth TD grabs threatened to turn the game into a rout early in the second quarter. Jacobs then proceeded to sack Guidry in the end zone for a safety to give Albany a 30-15 cushion with 11:45 left in the second quarter.
The Firebirds, however, lost the ball on an interception and fumble over their next two possessions as Portland pulled within 44-36 by halftime.
Jacobs' brother Andy notched the last score of the half for Albany on a spectacular 12-yard interception return. The 6-foot-3, 255-pound lineman snagged a Guidry pass with one hand and broke two tackles on his way to the end zone.
"It was a situation where I wasn't going to be denied," Andy Jacobs said. "I just kept pumping my legs."
His brother quickly broke into the conversation about the play and said, "I taught him everything he knows."
Albany again attempted to put Portland away to start the third quarter.
On a third-and-1 play, Dukes took an inside handoff and picked up the first down. He wouldn't go down easily. In fact, Dukes delivered the jukes. A spin move and a stiff arm allowed the Colonie High graduate to shake loose for a 31-yard TD scamper as Albany grabbed a 51-36 advantage.
The rout appeared to be on again when Guidry drove the Forest Dragons in for an apparent TD pass to Gadsen, but the strike was waved off because of a hold against Akaba Delaney on Albany's Mike Jones.
On the next play, Guidry overshot his attempted pass to Gadsen and Tommy Johnson hauled in the miscue and raced 53 yards for another defensive score � an AFL record for return yardage.
The Firebirds lost Jones for the season on the return when the lineman suffered a ruptured patela tendon in his left knee. The Brockport State product, in his first game since 1994, needed three years to recover from an injury to his right leg.
Portland avoided being shutout in the third quarter when Daron Alcorn drilled a 52-yard field goal.
Guidry, who finished 19 of 36 for 294 yards and seven touchdowns, hit Brian Greene, Ryan Benjamin and Gadsen for scores in a six-minute span to rally the Forest Dragons.
The Firebirds' defense sacked Guidry three times and pressured him throughout. The secondary came up with three interceptions as well, yet Joe Jacobs says it will have to better against New Jersey.
"We could have done a lot better," Jacobs said. "There were times when we did pretty much whatever we wanted."
