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AFL I Arena Football League (1987-2008)

John Elway, Danny White Q&A

June 10, 2004 - Arena Football League (1987-2008) (AFL I) News Release


Q: John Elway, you finished the 2003 season with a 2-14 record. Obviously, you've had a great turnaround this year (12-5). What is the biggest reason for that?

A: The number one key is (new head coach) MIKE DAILEY. We hired Mike Dailey last year from Indiana. He's a guy with a great deal of AFL experience and is a great football coach. I give him all the credit for the turnaround. We have six guys from our team last year, but he's done a great job of adding to those guys and molding them together as a team. He keeps them playing hard week in and week out. He has a great coaching staff. He's really done a spectacular job.

Q: Coach White, you started the season 3-5 and have won nine straight games. What have you done recently that you weren't doing at the beginning of the season?

A: There are number of things that go into it. More than anything else, it's the attitude of the players and the fact that the veterans in the locker room took this thing over and made up their minds that losing was not going to be tolerated anymore. We had a ping-pong table in the locker room and they got rid of that and the country-club kind of mentality. The credit goes to WR/LB HUNKIE COOPER, QB SHERDRICK BONNER, OL/DL MARK TUCKER, FB/LB BO KELLY, and WR/DB RANDY GATEWOOD. We sat down and talked about it. Coaches can only do so much. You can scream and yell until you're blue in the face.

But the real difference seems to take place when the idea comes from the players and it was their idea. (There are) also young guys stepping up. We just identified 20 guys that we knew we could trust on the football field and put them out there. That meant some of them had to play positions they weren't comfortable with or hadn't played before. A guy like WR/DB ORSHAWANTE BRYANT becomes a defensive specialist. DS KELVIN HUNTER stepping up at the defensive specialist position and just taking over that secondary. It's a combination of a number of things. But the locker room leadership is primarily responsible for the turnaround.

Q: Coach White, the last two seasons you finished as runner-up in ArenaBowl. Do you sense from some of your veterans, like Hunkie Cooper or Sherdrick Bonner, that this might be their last chance to get an ArenaBowl title?

A: No, I really don't. They both have another year on their contract. Getting to ArenaBowl, doing all things you have to do to get there and then losing it is a feeling you really can't put into words. There's no way really to describe it. Taste still lingers very strong in their mouths and that may be a driving force right now.

Q: John Elway, when you look at what the Rattlers have done under Coach White all these years and now you've been in the league a couple of years, how impressed are you at the fact the Rattlers have been to have such incredible success over such a long period of time?

A: The credit goes to Danny and (Arizona Vice President of Operations) GENE NUDO and the cast of veterans that Danny was talking about earlier and the reason why they've won nine (straight) games. They've done a great job of being able to hold those guys. They've obviously had to make changes over the years, but their core group has been there. And Danny's been there for what, I don't know, Danny, 22 years now? (Laughter) They've had 13 years of stability and have been one of the top organizations in the league. Danny and the Rattlers are one of the big reasons why this league is still around and why this league has survived – because of what they've given and added to this league.

Q: For both of you, in terms what happened between these two teams earlier in the season, does that have any bearing on this weekend?

ELWAY: Anytime you play somebody twice, it's always tough to beat them twice in one year. There is definitely a familiarity between the two teams. The bottom line is that it's such a different period of time. When we played the Rattlers, they weren't playing nearly as well as they are now. Our team knows it. We played them here (in Denver) instead of down in (Phoenix) Arizona. We know that we're going to have to go down there, not make any mistakes and play a perfect game to be able to win.

WHITE: We're just happy to playing somebody who's not in our division. Other than Detroit (5/15/04), our last four games have been against San Jose or L.A. You watch the same old tapes, the same old preparation against the same old team that does the same old stuff. It's been refreshing to look at some different coverages and some different routes on offense. The two teams are vastly improved. (Colorado OS) DAMIAN HARRELL has emerged as one of the best offensive specialists in the league. (Colorado QB) JOHN DUTTON is really seasoned now and is protecting the ball very well. (Colorado DS) RASHAD FLOYD is playing well. We're concentrating mostly on what they've done the last couple of weeks and not so much what they did against us.

Q: As former NFL players, can you relate the NFL to the AFL, or is it a different game?

WHITE: It is a different game. The base skills are the same – tackling, blocking, throwing and catching. I think people need to go to an AFL game expecting something different and not try to compare it to the NFL. We get all kinds of people at our games. People who come to our game and say they'll never go to another NFL game just because of the tempo and pace of the game, the number of big plays and the uniqueness of it all. Then we get others who roll their eyes and say this is not really football, those are the NFL purists. I think people need to understand that all the skills are the same, but game is vastly different and approach the game with an open mind. I think it's a better product because there isn't as much down time, there aren't as many wasted plays, no missed field goals, no guys running out of bounds with the ball or quarterbacks kneeling down with the ball at the end of the game. All that's been taken out. It's football, in my opinion, in concentrated form. That's what I like about it. If fans look at it that way, they'll catch on to it very quickly.

ELWAY: I totally agree with Danny. It's taken me a couple of years to really understand what it's all about. But as Danny said, the base of what football is about is the same. Plus, you have to have heart and courage out there because it's a very physical game. There are big guys out there that are running around there fast and there are some ferocious collisions. As far as the makeup of a football player, it's pretty much the same. Is it a different game? Yes, it is. As Danny said, some pro football people, families and kids, they're going to love it. We don't have a lot of ‘old-time' NFL people that really come in and like it. But then again, there are a lot of people that don't like baseball or basketball. So it is different game. The basis is the same, but there is a lot more scoring and it is a lot more exciting. I like Danny's analogy that it's football in a concentrated form. It's not field-position football. It's possession football. That's the main difference.

WHITE: Another big difference is that guys on offense have to play defense, like they do in basketball. That throws an entirely different twist on the strategy, the preparation for the game and the playing of the game itself.

Q: John Elway, are there any of your NFL championship experiences that you' ve shared with your team heading into this Sunday's game?

A: The only thing that I want to prove to them is that it can be done. It's awfully tough doing it on the road, but it can be done. When we won our first Super Bowl, that's the way we got it done (two wins on the road to get to Super Bowl). That's the thing that I've tried to relay, but other than that I've let Coach Dailey handle that. He's done a great job all year, so I tend to stay out of his way.

Q: John Elway, what exactly do you see in the team that has caused the turnaround?

A: More than anything, it's the attitude. Guys got so down on themselves last year that they were waiting for bad things to happen. Sure enough, when you're waiting for bad things to happen they're going to. This year the attitude has been totally different. I think we've done a much better job of protecting John Dutton. He came in last year and we kind of dumped the franchise on his shoulders. He was coming off of MVP of ArenaBowl last year, so there was a lot of pressure on him. At some point and time it overloaded.

So we've tried to take some of that pressure of off him and surround him with some strong people. Damian Harrell has had a great year. WR/LB KEVIN MCKENZIE has come in and done a great job for us. WR/DB WILLIS MARSHALL has done a great job. We've got OL/DL KYLE MOORE-BROWN, OL/DL HUGH HUNTER and OL/DL BRYANT SHAW up front and we're protecting him better. He's playing with a lot more confidence and he's not turning the ball over like he did last year. Last year, at the end of the season, we finished with a –26 in turnover ratio and this year we ended the season at +14. It was a change of +40 from last year to this year in turnover ratio. That is huge. Plus defensively, it's a different philosophy. We're not giving up as many big plays and we've had some guys on defense that have made plays for us.



Arena Football League (1987-2008) Stories from June 10, 2004


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