Piranhas Let Barnstormers Slip Away With Win

Thankfully for the Piranhas, they have a bye week coming up.

It will probably take them two weeks to get over Saturday night’s 50-44 loss to the Iowa Barnstormers in front of an announced arena-football record crowd of 15,835 at the Pond. With one game remaining at Orlando, the Piranhas are 9-4 and will probably play their first Arena Football League playoff game on the road.

And when they step on that plane, the Piranhas and their coaching staff might think back to Saturday night’s six-point loss that could have been prevented.

Piranha kicker Ian Howfield missed a 25-yard field goal and an extra point, but it was the two field goals he never attempted that made the biggest difference. With the Piranhas trailing, 40-31, in the third quarter, Howfield tried to catch Iowa (10-2) off guard with an intentionally short drop-kicked field goal that he hoped the Barnstormers would fumble. The unconventional play almost worked. Iowa did not handle the ball cleanly, but recovered it on the 10 and went on to score on a 23-yard field goal by Mike Black.

The Piranhas tried some more trickery in the fourth quarter when quarterback Scooter Molander tried to pass instead of holding for a 50-yard Howfield field-goal attempt. Molander was hit hard and fumbled before he could pass. The ball rolled out of bounds on the Anaheim one. Two plays later, Iowa scored on a six-yard pass from Kurt Warner to Willis Jacox to make it 50-38 with 5 minutes 38 seconds remaining.

“We tried a few gambles and they backfired,” Piranha Coach Babe Parilli said. “We had to do something to keep the ball away from them. But it didn’t work.”

Somehow, the Piranhas still had a chance to win. Molander, who came off the bench in the fourth quarter, threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Jemone Smith with 1:19 left to bring the Piranhas within, 50-44. The Piranhas got the ball back with 29 seconds left, a lifetime in Arena Football.

But Molander tripped backing away from the center and was tackled for a loss. By the time he was able to stop the clock on an incompletion, there were only 12 seconds left.

Molander’s fourth-down desperation heave to Adrian Jarrell was batted away in the end zone by Iowa’s Weylan Harding with one second left.

Who will start at quarterback in the Piranhas’ season finale is anybody’s guess. Molander, who started the first 12 games, and Troy Kopp, who started Saturday, had no idea. And neither did Parilli.

“It doesn’t matter who starts,” Parilli said. “We can win with either of them.”

Kopp, who came off the bench to rally the Piranhas to a second-half victory last week over Charlotte, completed 15 of 29 passes for 174 yards and two touchdowns before being pulled after three quarters.

“It’s not that Troy wasn’t doing well just like Scooter wasn’t playing bad last week when I put Troy in,” Parilli said. “I was just trying to make something happen.”

But Kopp didn’t understand Parilli’s reasoning.

“I think I played well,” he said. “But it’s beyond my control. I was throwing the ball in the right places. You don’t just pull somebody like that.”