It’s hard to break down this game. You gotta love the fact that New Jersey found a rushing game in the red zone. You have to love Rickey Foggie for tossing only one interception, one that was only picked off because Jay Jones made an unbelievably acrobatic move in the end zone to snare what looked like a sure TD. And you have to love Alvin Ashley’s game leading 108 yards in receptions. But Foggie did fumble when he collided with RB Jermaine Younger and even though he recovered the loose ball, it cost critical yardage on third down forcing a field goal try in the fourth quarter. Steve Videtich missed that field goal, and one other to allow Albany to get back into the game with successive TDs. But do you point to individual mistakes, like the Red Dogs not calling a time out with :44 seconds in the game and running out of clock on their own potential game-winning drive or do you look at the fact that New Jersey scored only three points in the entire second half?
When a team starts having so many little things go wrong that cost them games that they should win, you have to look at the bigger picture. Frank Haege’s offense has to score more points. The Red Dogs have never lost a game when they score 50 point or more. But now New Jersey isn’t even cracking the 40 mark. This is just unacceptable in the AFL. And there is another area where the New Jersey Red Dogs need to take a hard look at themselves. One fan mentioned last week how the team looks like they have lost it’s confidence. If that is true you can throw out game plans and statistics. Hopefully, this three-game skid has not gotten inside the heads of the players. And it’s going to be up to a rookie coaching staff to turn this around. One player after the Albany game said, "something has got to change".
That something is attitude. Every player and coach on this team has to focus for sixty minutes and that’s not being done now. Just playing hard doesn’t cut it. The other team is playing hard too. You can’t have players doing self-indulging sack dances while down 19 points to an 0-6 team. You can’t have players taunting Albany fans at halftime just because you’re up by a few points. You can’t have coaches sitting on time-outs while critical seconds waste away, seconds that eventually run out while you still have the ball in hand and are about to score a game-winning TD. This team has to make a commitment to winning. Not every team does that. Some are just satisfied by being competitive. But those teams shake their heads at game’s end and say ‘something has got to change’ while the other team, the focused team, chalks up the win.
New Jersey is now 3-4. That’s not the end of the world when you consider that they were 3-4 at this point last season and still made it to the final four. But this isn’t last year. This season they can kiss the division title goodbye. Albany, not New Jersey, or even New England will win the east. Mark it down now. And they Red Dogs can kiss a home play-off game goodbye. Yes, mathematically they can run the table and finish 10-4, but they would still need help since eight teams have fewer losses than the Red Dogs. The Red Dogs have to focus on every game as the only destiny they still control is to make the playoffs as a 5-8 seed. They can go no worse than 5-2 the rest of the way. 4-3 might not get it done. And they have to start this week as the New England Seawolves come to the Meadowlands Arena.