Grizzlies’ new faces have same old effect against Corpus Christi
Published Sunday, May 25, 2008
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At this point, it’s become a cycle — the Grizzlies lose, John Fourcade promises changes, those new faces come in and the Grizzlies still lose.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
The cycle repeated itself again Saturday as the Grizzlies dropped a 77-54 fight-marred decision to the Corpus Christi Hammerheads at the Carlson Center in the third iteration of the Chad Dittman Bowl.
“This team can’t play 60 minutes of football, and I have no clue why,” Fairbanks coach John Fourcade said. “How can we come out in the second half (so well) and how couldn’t we do that in the first half?”
Fairbanks trailed 40-19 at the break and despite changing over most of their defense the past two weeks, the Grizzlies couldn’t find enough stops to let the offense mount a comeback.
The Grizzlies biggest problem was their inability to stop the Corpus Christi passing game, which threw for 272 yards and seven touchdowns.
This time, though, Fourcade said the biggest change will be focus on the secondary during the next week, not a slew of new players.
“We need to let (new addition) Terrel Sutton do secondary duty, but he only got here one day ago and didn’t get a chance to practice,” Fourcade said. “But then, he came in (on the Texas road trips) and did the same thing. We had guys not on the same page as Terrel. Our secondary is just lost.”
And once the offense started turning the ball over, the game was finished.
“We just need to communicate better as a team and have the same effort for all four quarters,” lineman Shane Tufford said.
They also need to get better at preventing the big play. Four of Corpus Christi’s passing touchdowns were at least 25 yards, including Matt Ross’ 46-yard trick-play reception from Nathaniel Dunn.
“We just can’t get burned deep. We’ve got to keep plays in front of us,” Tufford said. “As long as we keep it in front of us, we then get another chance to stop them and we’ll do a lot better.”
Hammerheads quarterback Dustin Almond went 12-of-23 for 226 yards and six touchdowns, while Dunn accounted for the Hammerheads’ only other pass.
“We’ve got individuals who want to do their own thing,” Fourcade said. “I’m trying to help the defense, but they want to do everything themselves. It’s a team sport and they don’t play like a team.”
With the Hammerheads pinned back at their own 4-yard line, Almond tossed the ball behind the line to Dunn, who then threw a pass to a wide-open Ross standing at the 25 yard-line. Ross then ran the rest of the way to Corpus Christi up 21-6 as the Hammerheads started pulling away.
“We just had a way we were trying to get up,” Dunn said. “Coach asked me if I think we could throw it and I said ‘Yeah.’”
The Grizzlies offense didn’t reach full throttle until the second half, and by then it was too late.
Fairbanks would pull within 49-34 on Anthony Parks’ 4-yard end-around, but that was as close as they’d get.
“First half, we beat ourselves,” Parks said. “We missed opportunities and took points off the board.”
Diamond found Schuyler Anderson all alone on the next play for a 36-yard touchdown strike to answer right back. On the next Grizzlies drive, a Bo Bartik fumble was returned for a touchdown on the ensuing kickoff, Corpus Christi’s Jason Lee simply took the ball out of the hands of Fairbanks returner Derek Zak and ran it in for a touchdown.
Just like that, the game was all but over with the Grizzlies down 70-34.
The game was delayed shortly thereafter when players on the Hammerheads’ bench got into a fight with one of the fans, leaving the bench to enter the stands.
“I want to apologize on behalf of the Corpus Christi Hammerheads and the Fairbanks Grizzlies,” Dittman, the owner of both squads, told the crowd shortly before play resumed. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
After going scoreless in the first half the previous week against Louisiana, the Grizzlies performed much better Saturday. Nursing a sore hip, Bartik completed 21 of 44 passes for 224 yards, six touchdowns and one interception.
And, just as important, he didn’t get sacked once.
“I thought Bo played a better game today. He made a few bad passes in the first half, but overall he was a lot better,” Fourcade said. “I thought the O-line played really, really well.”
Anthony Parks and Solomon Jones caught two touchdown passes apiece and Kenny Wilson had his best game as a Grizzly, catching a team-high eight passes for 59 yards and one score.
“I think we got people moved around, and Kenny really stepped up and gave us the third receiver we needed,” said Parks, who was in his first game back from injury. “The offensive line played great. The offense is looking great, but it’s a team game. Everyone needs to play well.”
Community Discussion
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It looked like and sounds like Forucade was taking a more active role in the defense. Has Lee Mireles (the best coach for the job, right Mr. Dittman) been demoted again?
yes, bo bartik over all play a better game, now he needs a little help from defense.
yes, bo did play a better game, but had a few fatal mistakes, like the fumble that corpus christi scored on...the secondary needs to all be on the same page, there were too many blown coverages leaving corpus christi receivers wide open at times. with the addition of terrell sutton, i hope he can be a leader and take all of the db's under his wing and play a much better game in 2 weeks against the wild, a team everyone in fairbanks wants to beat!! we need to stop giving up the long ball and get back to force them to throw hitches and slants all night. points will be scored in arena football, but this 1 or 2 play td drive stuff is killing us because it doesn't run any time off of the clock.
Nicely said footballman, you got it right on. I would really like to see them end the season with two great games against the Wild. Things could have gone better this year but it would be great to see them end the year on a good note and have a better second year.
Maybe Dittman will put something on the line against our Anchorage rivals to heat up the action a bit.
I hope that the Grizzlies come out and play a full game against the Wild and beat them! They have enough talent to beat the Wild, it's just a matter of putting that talent to use for the full 60 minutes!!! Anyways, I don't know if anyone else remembers, but on that kickoff that was nearly returned for TD by one of our defensive lineman...I thought that was great...it really caught the Corpus Christi players off guard! It would have been awesome if he would have scored, by he did set our offense up for an easy score at the 4 yard line...
does anyone know if he is a local player or not? there are not many left...
He's a local player and a good one also! Problem is, all of our locals players have been either quitting because of the head coache's nonsense or force to quit because of constant inactivability and lying by the headcoach! He really do believe the out of state players are better. There's been a couple but they left the team because of the coach's promises, lies and constantly being pushed to the side. Plus bringing these guys up here on the day before or gameday is utterly rediculous! You can win games when you bring guys up here and right before or on gameday tell him he's not playing because you've been replaced by the new guy who nobody knows; they wonder why they're losing! This game is too fast to be out of touch of the game, timing and fine tuning with your would be teammates and you wonder why there's so much tension on the team and field! Fourcade can care less about the Fairbanks or out of state players! What this team needs is our own owners, representatives and staff to run this team and recruit from with-in the state. There's way too much talent being wasted on watching the game when I know we have serious talent in the stands....it's football on a shorter field...still football!
By the way, Lee Mireles doesn't run the defense...Fourcade does from what I heard! Lee just wears the title and shirt....Fourcade pretty much blows his coaches off and runs the entire offense/defense to suit his purpose! I wonder who that sounds like that got demoted....lol! Hmmmmm and you wonder why our Fairbanks Grizzlies are losing.....I'd rather Chad kept Lee as headcoach if this same nonsense was going to continue. Seems Fourcade is worst! LOL!
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