ArenaBowl XIII (8/21/99): Albany vs Orlando

Brown, Pawlawski help Albany claim first league crown

ALBANY - For the first time in his life, Eddie Brown was standing on a football field and didn't know what to do.

For the first time in his life, Derek Stingley tasted champagne.

For the first time in their long Arena Football League life, the Albany Firebirds are champions.

The Firebirds held off a furious comeback by the Orlando Predators to win ArenaBowl XIII, 59-48, before an earwax-evacuating sellout crowd of 13,652 at Pepsi Arena on Saturday.

It was the perfect ending to the 14-3 Firebirds' 10th anniversary season.

The Predators (9-8) played like the defending champions they were, almost overcoming a 17-point halftime deficit, but in the end, Albany's offense, spearheaded by Brown and quarterback Mike Pawlawski, was too much.

Brown broke ArenaBowl records for receptions (12) and yards (185), and Pawlawski broke ArenaBowl records for passing yards (347) and touchdown passes (seven).

The records were trivial sidelights, like the tiny scraps of confetti that fell from the ceiling after the game. This was a team that had put up eye-popping offensive numbers for years, but never played in an ArenaBowl.

"It's a super feeling - world champions," Pawlawski said. "It's probably going to take a while to set in, but there's no question about it, it's the high point of my professional career. I love this, period. I have a fantastic wife at home, and I leave her to come here and do this. She gets to come out, and I adore her, but this is so much fun, and I know I'm only going to get to be a kid for so long."

"I could have played for Orlando in 1996, and I could have gone to Arizona, but I chose to come here, because I thought they had the best winning program, and I thought we could do it here," lineman Joe Jacobs said. "I can't even put it into words. It's just . . . it's . . . thank God."

The game wasn't really over until Pawlawski floated a six-yard touchdown pass to Jon Krick with 10 seconds left to produce the final score.

Don Silvestri gave Orlando no chance to get a good re- turn by kicking the ball over the end zone nets, right to a guy in an Eddie Brown jersey and top hat as the crowd went crazy.

Brown, who doesn't play on defense, stayed on the field until head coach Mike Dailey's salty coaxing got him back on the bench. Orlando ran two plays, and the game was over, sending thousands of fans onto the field.

"I didn't know what to do [after the kickoff]," Brown said afterward, a look of wonder on his face. "We had won. I didn't want to come off the field until Coach Dailey screamed `Eddie get your boop-boop-boop off the field.' We had never been in this situation, so I didn't know how to act. We had won."

Albany got interceptions by Evan Hlavacek and Greg Hopkins to help build a 38-21 halftime lead.

Brown got in a groove right away, catching a 12-yard touchdown bullet from Pawlawski one play after Hlavacek picked off Connell Maynor on Orlando's second play of the game.

Brown went into his trademark end zone shimmy as the crowd chanted his name, a familiar scene, but never this loud.

"When that mood hits you, you just got to shake it out," Brown said. "When lightning runs through you when you catch a touchdown pass and the crowd just goes screaming and screaming, electricity runs through you, and it just makes you shake. I had to shake and get it out."

Albany seemed to be in control, but Pawlawski threw two interceptions on tipped balls in the third quarter, and the Predators turned each into a touchdown to pull to within 38-34.

Orlando stuck around and cut it to 45-42 with 4:35 left, but Pawlawski and Brown hooked up one more time from five yards out.

Brown was covered in the right corner of the end zone, cut back to the left, and Pawlawski found him for a diving grab and a 52-42 lead with 54 seconds left.

"You total it up, we probably throw a 1,000 balls to each other in practice over the year, so you'd hope we have some kind of chemistry, right?" Pawlawski said.

Orlando answered with a 39-yard bomb from Maynor on fourth-and-10 to get back within 52-48. The Predators tried an onside kick, but with shoulder pad-popping collisions all around the ball, Brown got his hands on it and curled up on the ground. Three plays later, Krick scored.

"We were a little tight," Hopkins said. "When it got within four, we regrouped, took a deep breath, realized what we had to do and went out and did it."

"No one panicked, no one freaked out," lineman Mark Valvo said.

In the hallway outside the locker room, Stingley, the Firebirds' defensive specialist who will likely be headed for an NFL team in two weeks, got a mouthful of champagne poured down his throat by his brother, Darryl Jr.

"That's a nasty feeling," said Stingley, who had never tasted an alcoholic drink before. He smiled when he said it.

Before Saturday, Dailey had never had a drink before, and he still hasn't. That doesn't mean he didn't cut loose in his own fashion.

"I had a Suzy-Q," said Dailey, grinning, while his players broke out cigars and champagne. "That's my poison. [Team doctor] Doc Marotta knows my poison, and he brought a box of Suzy-Q's, and I've already had one."

Suzy-Q's? Remember, they're new at this.