Even the best fall down sometimes.
Saturday’s loss to Baltimore hurt us all, but as we sit three games away from the 2017 Arena Football playoffs, all Soul fans should be feeling more than good.
Why? Well, after careful research, we have come to the conclusion that each of the last 29 Arena Bowl champions suffered at least one loss that season prior to lifting the trophy.
No one is perfect, but some teams are closer to that plateau than others.
Saturday was the imperfect game for the Soul, starting with one of the most outrageous ejections you will see in professional sports, and on the national stage no less.
But the Soul struggled out the gate from the bye week, and after putting forth their lowest performance of the season, Baltimore was able to just edge the Soul at the end of the game to stay in the midst of the Brigade’s own playoff race.
Thoughts of a perfect season are over, but as we’ve stated from day one, the goal was never to become the first team to finish undefeated. The goal has always been to keep the trophy in our backyard and repeat as world champions.
And honestly, it's better the loss came in early July rather than late August.
Fortunately while the Soul were struggling Saturday, their biggest competition the Tampa Bay Storm were suffering even bigger problems in their loss to Cleveland. The Storm benefited from the (controversial) return of Joe Hills, but the team looked human even with their biggest weapon back on the field.
That means the Soul still came out of the weekend with positives, as their magic number for homefield throughout August has dwindled down to just one game thanks to Cleveland. That means a Philadelphia win over Washington Saturday, or a Tampa Bay loss to that hot Baltimore team will put the Arena Bowl at the Wells Fargo Center if the Soul reach the title game.
Now Philly is hosting a Washington team that had much promise at the beginning of the season and were picked by many to reach the Arena Bowl in their first season, but after a series of injuries that led to elite quarterback Erik Meyer announcing his retirement last week, the 1-9 Valore are all but eliminated from the playoffs in the five team league.
Philly’s going to be looking for a strong rebound from last week’s loss, and with their final bye week coming next week, the Soul won’t want to go into that week off thinking about a two game losing streak.
This game will show the true character of the Soul, and could define their season more than any other match this season.
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