It takes a minute to think bring the guy down, don’t look for the flag. It’s a little sloppy and awkward at first. Who am I kidding, it’s sloppy and awkward the whole time. The scoring began with the man most of us would have bet that tackling would come to naturally. Generally, Beast is hyped for the game – and you had the element of some danger and it seems like an obvious fit. We knew that whatever the matchups were – one team would be better at bringing people down than the other – and that team turned out to be Pray’s squad in white. There was just a qualitative difference in their ability to track, wrap up, and bring down. I already spoke about one of the major storylines of the game which was just being out there. But it would be wrong to talk about this game without talking about injuries. And not just the kind that happened during the game. Beast – despite his big offensive numbers – was slowed by his nagging leg injury. Zero sacks on Yaron – and in a game where fumbles were live!  Storm was not his usual stormy self. Couldn’t cut. Seemed to be backing off contact. And speaking of cutting, Kut was stretching something out all game and fighting through. Hard to watch. PJs got slammed early in the game, but he shook it off. And then we come to Klink who just had some kind of bad luck. You watch the tape and nothing extreme happens, but apparently his arm popped out while trying to wrap up Prime. So, Klink was done fairly early. Around that time, MK needed a breather – and when he came back he took over at official D. While we do have a result – a winner and a loser – Klink down and MK official changed the dynamic of the game.
At the time, I believe it was 2-0 white. For the same reason – Dark could not tackle. First Beast was able to break free and run 40 yards for a score, then Tom did the same thing. But Tom had one man to beat – Yaron at safety tried to bring him down with a tender hug at the 10 yard line; Tom was having none of it. He started to push Yaron away. Yaron changed his plan, realizing the hug wasn’t going to work – quickly, he decided to tickle Tom gently…but that really set Tom off. Some suggest that Tom was “hugged” and “tickled” in camp and had a violent reaction to the flashback. That is the only way to explain the disrespect he showed toward Yaron by planting him in the snow and walking over him like Iverson to put white up 2-0.
Prime was knocking on the door all day. The dude is tough to ground on a flag week – was not surprising that tackling him was a chore. Yaron mixed his ground game with Prime with his overthrow to Rabin game. The result was a Prime score, making it a 2-1 Game. Pray did not like the close game and took a shot with Beast deep. A stunning rainbow pass that Beast caught in full stride directly over the top and took to the house. Beast had dropped a similarly beautiful ball earlier, so it was nice to make up for it with an even better catch than the first would have been.
And speaking of nice catches, Yaron found a reliable receiver to catch a TD pass for him. PJS! Beating Pray over the top and tracking the ball with his eyes the whol way – dives forward, pulls in a pass and lands in the endzone. 3-2.
Just when the game was getting a little exciting, Pray took care of the tension by running for a score on the very next possession. This giving us a final of 4-2.
Jewball goes to Tom. Why? Pray threw 3 TD passes and scored one. Beast scored two. The reason is because there was a stretch in the middle of the game where it was close and Tom went to another level on defense. He was a bit tentative at the beginning, but once he got going he was a tackling machine and took away the middle of the field from Yaron – stuffing play after play. And that made the difference.