Page 46 - Fl Stats News Today

There are a lot of really smart people in the Arena Football League, and I've had the pleasure of interviewing several of them over the course of the last week. Most recognize the fact that the Philadelphia Soul are going to be decided underdogs on the road against the Arizona Rattlers in ArenaBowl XXIX on Friday night, but the common bond, regardless of who you speak to, suggests that physicality is going to end up being the key to the game.

The Predators not only helped a brother out on Saturday night, they helped the officials out by recovering from a horrible call going against them to get a win over a very talented Philadelphia team.

The American Conference is woeful this year against the National Conference. The story has been the same for the defending ArenaBowl champions. This season, the San Jose SaberCats are 0-4 against the Nationals and will take on two more in the final two weeks of the season. Their first task will be the five-time ArenaBowl champion Tampa Bay Storm tonight.

March 8th, 2012 could go down as one of the darkest days in the history of the Arena Football League. On Wednesday, the Arena Football League Players Union approved strike ballots, which could lead to a work stoppage that puts games for this weekend and potentially beyond at serious risk.

The city of Washington D.C. is known for its politics, so it's only apt to make a political comparison on the day Washington AFL officially became a thing.

Six of the nine games were decided by a seven or fewer points. The biggest point differential was the 12 points that Spokane beat an Orlando team without its top two receivers. Arizona became the first team to go 6-0 since 2008. Iowa dropped its second straight by a last-second field goal. This and more awaits in the Week Seven edition of Breaking it Down.

The league-wide bye week in Week 14 for the Fourth of July gave all eight teams one last shot to reassess the situation they're in heading down the stretch of the season. For my money, little has changed across the league for a lot of the year, but with three teams still chasing down that last playoff spot and three teams still in sight of what could be a pivotal advantage as the No. 1 seed, there's a lot more drama down the stretch of the year than most of us probably envisioned in th...

For the third time this season, I've got a new team sitting atop my Power Rankings. Even though the Soul struggled more down the stretch with the Predators than they probably should have, they were dominant for large stretches last week, and they've earned their right to be called the best team in the league for the time being.

It's the story that no one in the Arena Football League wants to talk about. But last Friday, when the Florida Times Union reported that Aaron Garcia had retired, the cat was officially let out of the bag.

Baseball purists say that you see something odd in their sport every single day. Maybe we should start saying the same thing about the Arena Football League. A night after watching the Orlando Predators get shut out in the second half for the first time in a decade and a half, the Tampa Bay Storm and Jacksonville Sharks put on a show at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.