The obvious nature and unapologetic goal of indoor football is to short-circuit the scoreboard.
The indoor game, whatever the league, is about offense. It operates on the premise that spectators pay to see touchdowns. The rules and schemes are obscenely skewed in favor of the offense.
The game banks its future on the concept that more is better. More points. More noise. More pyrotechnics. More, more, more.
Of course, that’s about as newsy as the declaration that water is wet.
Overlooked are defense and special teams. Football purists may dismiss the indoor game as pinball with helmets, but the Everett Hawks defeated Billings Friday night 97-60 in the first round of the National Indoor Football League playoffs with their superiority in all three phases of the game.
It reminds no one of the Baltimore Ravens, but the defense has a definite role in the indoor game. If it forces the offense into an occasional mistake, it goes a long way into deciding a game.
“They say that if you get two defensive stops, you should win the football game,” Hawks defensive back Keyon Kemp said. “You try to shut them down and get two stops because the offense pretty much scores at will.”
Ordinarily, to give up 60 points means the defensive unit runs stairs until Thursday. But we’ve seen how ordinary the indoor game is.
Defensive stops are a rare and coveted commodity in the indoor game. Everett coach Dan Maciejczak’s goal each contest is for the defense to prevent a touchdown once per quarter. On Friday, Everett came up with four stops in the first half alone.
It was challenging enough for the Mavericks that they allowed the Hawks touchdowns on all 11 offensive possessions, an explosion that included nine touchdown passes by 37-year-old Everett quarterback Albert Higgs. Add to that the three touchdowns on kickoff returns by the blurring, flashy Hassan Brockman and the pressure was on the Mavericks offense to be as flawless as that of the Hawks.
Billings had little chance. Everett’s defense made the matter moot early in the game.
Defensive lineman Sabree Anderson gave much of the credit to Sam Adams, the team’s owner and all-NFL defensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills.
“Sam wanted us to be more physical,” said Anderson, who batted down a pass and helped keep pressure on Mavericks quarterback Chris Dixon. “We had to bull-rush them every play because they had a running quarterback and we had to limit his range.”
Everett’s defense stopped the Mavericks on their first offensive possession. Unhinged by a personal foul when 275-pound offensive lineman Jason Marufo slammed into Everett linebacker Travis Salter roughly a month after the whistle, Billings gained just 3 yards on its opening possession. Kicker Geoff Groshelle badly hooked his field-goal attempt, which sent spectators seated in the area of the 10-yard line running for cover.
Everett’s defense simply overpowered Billings in the second quarter, allowing just six points. Early, Anderson batted down a pass and nearly picked it off for a touchdown. Later, the Hawks took over on downs, relentlessly harassing Dixon into throwing four consecutive incompletions.
Ordinarily, Anderson said, he would have caught the ball.
“I’m playing with a broken finger for the last four weeks,” he said. “It ain’t like I can go home, know what I’m saying? I batted the ball and saw it, but pain shot through my hand and it stopped me. That’s all right. We’ve got next week.”
The Hawks stopped the Mavericks again on Billings’ last two possessions, one coming on a dropped pass in the end zone as the halftime gun went off. By then, Everett had built a 49-18 lead and forced the Mavericks into desperate attempts to keep the Hawks offense off the field. On special teams, they used onside kicks and pooch kicks, hoping to recover the ball. On offense, they gambled more frequently with deep throws, with only some success.
They could never recover, however, from four first-half stops.
So the Mavericks ended their season, while Everett moves on to the second round.
“Next week is going to be way tougher,” Anderson said. “I hope we can score 100 throughout the playoffs, but next week, the reality is that there’s not going to be no 90 points. It’ll be a dogfight, regardless of who we’re going to play.”
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