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Week 9
Admirals @ Thunder 10 - 41
By: TonVFor an explanation of the shovel rating system, head here.
by TonV
Impressions
Well, that was it. Our last chance to win an away game this season and we blew it. In style. Damn.
A little about the Trench Crew trip, to put off the moment where I actually have to start talking about the game... Velcro and I stepped on the train at Amsterdam CS at 8:13am and arrived in Berlin six and a half hours later. Taking the train is a very comfortable way to travel there! Reasonably expensive (but a lot less than flying) at f 230 each, but you step on, have quite a bit of legroom and get off again in the center of Berlin without any of the usual airplane hassles. Plus, you can bring as much beer as you like.
After arrival, we wandered up to the first hotel we could find to get a room. It was full. We wandered to the next one and they had a two-person suite left for a special offer. We were perilously close to missing drinking time at the power party so Velcro just plonked down his credit card and we were laughing our behinds off when we saw the size of the room. It was about the size of my entire appartment! Not cheap, but a great breakfast was included, so we didn't care.
On the subway we went, straight for Jahn stadion, which was easy enough to locate on the little free Berlin maps at the hotel and they were kind enough to point out which subway was the easiest. While we were asking that, the clerk wondered if there was 'something going on at the Jahn stadion then', and apparently had never heard of the Berlin Thunder or American Football in Berlin. They have still a ways to go there, when even the passport guy at Schiphol (on the way to Glasgow) asked me if we were going to the game in Scotland. At least everyone and their neighbour knows who the Admirals are now.
Anyway, the stadium was easy to spot and we just followed the handful of Berlin supporters down there. Boy oh boy, their power party is almost as boring as ours. But they do try their best. And they've got plastic mugs with handles for your beer! How cool is that? Makes it a lot easier to carry five of the damn things. Another cool thing were the girls passing out Berlin Thunder matches to the present fans. At first sight at least, at second: no. Berlin Thunder condoms... In order to 'let it really thunder tonight' (I'm not making this up, that was the slogan on the packet). Admirals office: take note! We want stuff like that at our games. Claymores might want to stay away from this, with their abundance of 10-13 year olds at their games. Although those condoms did make for pretty good balloons...
Back to the power party: we met up with a few dozen Admirals fans (again: a great travelling amount!) and the Berlin bowlhunters who were quite impressed I was wearing the helmet they made for me at the previous WB (read about that here). I was pleasantly surprised at the stadium itself: while very small, it did seem reasonably full and there was a good atmosphere. Everything looked clean and in good shape (not like the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam of early years) and we had a great view right behind the Admirals' bench. Not that we needed that, since almost nobody took the effort to come and shake our hands afterwards...
But I suppose I cannot put off writing about the game now. Oh well.
Offense
The stats aren't all that bad (again). Compared to the Thunder stats, they only outgained us severely in rushing. And even that wasn't disastrous (like that one particular game in Dusseldorf). Where the big difference lay was in effectiveness. Their passes arrived and were caught. The ball wasn't dropped. They could put a drive together that started from the spot they got the punt on and ended in the endzone, instead of a few dozen yards out. It was great to watch the Berlin offense go to work, like a well-oiled machine. I would have actually appreciated it if we weren't on the receiving end. Personally, I hope they make the WB instead of Fire (if it cannot be us, which looks unlikely), because they have an exciting offense to watch. The Fire have... eh... well, they've got Carmazzi who runs around like a rb. Oh wait, he left back for the states. The Fire have no offense.
(You might have noticed I talked more about the Thunder offense than our own. Three guesses as to why!)
Wynn was inconsistent again, but once again, this was due in equal parts to him, the protection he got and the receivers not getting open.
Defense
I have to check, but I think this is the first time I had to give them just one shovel. They couldn't stop the run and they certainly couldn't stop Quinn tearing our backfield to shreds with his passes. As I was afraid would happen: our secondary had no chance against receivers who could catch, coupled with a qb like Quinn. Our only chance lay in just piling on the pressure by blitzing and blitzing some more, but it seemed to me that our d-line wasn't all in it. Quinn hardly touched the turf. He also appeared to have a quicker release than most qbs I've seen so far.
41 points. Just awful.
Special Teams
Two missed fieldgoals added to our offensive woes. Although coverage on returns was good, and Williams and George combined for some excellent kick-off returns. Still, if you get to take 8 kick-offs (from one Berlin score after the other) you get so much practise you expect to be good.
Coaching
Where was the heat on Quinn? I was expecting the same kind of game plan that made short work of the Dragons in Amsterdam: blitz, blitz and some more blitz. Or was it just the uninspired playing by our defense? And what kind of excuse is 'oh, we had to travel for too long' to explain this horrible loss? I don't care if you had to walk to Berlin on foot! They are professional athletes, they ought to perform better.
Final thoughts
Very very disappointed in the players for not heading over to us afterwards and sharing in our grief (with the notable exception of two of our nationals). We were still singing and cheering when it was already lost. They must have heard us.
Very pleased by our fans on the other hand. No ridiculous badmouthing despite the horrible loss. Still cheering when the fifth touchdown hit. A good atmosphere.
After the game we headed to the Axel Kruse bar in Berlin. What a dump that was. Ok, there were players and quite a few fans (though most of those were Admirals, it seemed), but the mood was just boring. The players were just interested in the gaggles of young girls who arrived by truckloads and just went straight for the Americans. It really was ridiculous and not a little depressing. Service was as bad as the game: it took literally up to an hour to get a beer.
Brief impression on the not so important games
by TonV
Claymores @ Dragons
As expected, the Dragons made short work of the Claymores and their final WB hopes. If the Dragons would oblige us by beating the Galaxy next week then at least we can be the only team that was able to kick their butts.
Galaxy @ Fire
Curses! The Fire get lucky again and win a game they shouldn't have. It was their defense that bailed them out again and suddenly propelled them into the best seat in order to clinch the last WB spot. Incredible crowd of close to 52 thousand. Can you imagine a Fire-Galaxy worldbowl in Dusseldorf?
Next week? In all likelyhood, the Thunder will spank us again. We simply cannot answer their type of pass-happy offense. With the Fire beating the Claymores (they should at least: the Claymores have even less of an offense than they do), the most likely outcome will be a tie between the Thunder and Fire for the WB spot. Decided on off/def ranking. If the Fire manage to lose, and the home crowd in the ArenA shouts the Admirals to victory and the yardage goes our way, the Admirals could still sneak into the Bowl. But I'm not putting my money on that.