Lions deal Sabres a knock-out blow

I guess it should come as no surprise that the Kraft Family IFL regular season finale was packed full of drama until the very last play. After all, that’s the way the whole year went and why would it stop now, just when the action is reaching its peak?

On Friday in the capital, the Big Blue Jerusalem Lions continued their late-season return to form by spanking the Mike’s Place Tel Aviv Sabres, 38-20, in front of a lively crowd at Kraft Stadium. The Lions scored six touchdowns, from five different players, and put up points in every quarter to defeat a Tel Aviv squad that fought valiantly to the very end, but ultimately had their postseason hopes crushed in the most heartbreaking fashion possible.

While the victory was important for the Lions in the sense that it improved the team’s record to 5-3 and ushered them into the playoffs riding a three-game winning streak, in the big picture, the 18-point margin of defeat was the most crucial aspect of the game and the part that will keep the Sabres’ players up for many nights in the offseason.

The Lions came into Friday’s meeting already locked in to its third-place seeding and approaching the game as a tune-up for their first-round match against the Real Housing Haifa Underdogs. Tel Aviv, on the other hand, was fighting for its playoff life, with just one victory on the season and needing another win, or at least a loss by less than 12 points, to beat out the Blue Sun Music Jerusalem Kings for the final postseason berth.

The Sabres all knew coming in that a loss to the Lions by more than a dozen points would spell the end of their season and send the Kings, who would finish with an identical 1-7 mark, through to face the Dancing Camel Modi’in Pioneers in the semifinals, based on the intricate IFL tie-breaker system.

Heading into the final quarter, with Jerusalem up 18-14 and a tight, end-to-end battle being fought on the field, the Blue Sun Music squad, who were in the stands anxiously rooting for a Big Blue blowout, began to see their chances slipping away. However, the Lions scored three times in the final frame and forced a key fumble by the Sabres in the final minute to set up their last drive of the game, which ended in an 18-yard TD pass from Aryeh Bauman to Amichai Bergman with the clock at zero to provide the necessary points to send Tel Aviv packing for the season and the Kings’ players jubilantly streaming onto the field.

It was a cruel fate for a Sabres squad that had really shown drastic improvement in the past month and was definitely not the fifth-worst team in the league at season’s-end. But them’s the breaks – as they say, all’s fair in love and football - and Mike’s Place will now have to wait to next year to resume its rebuilding process and continue its climb up the echelons of the IFL elite.

For Big Blue, Friday’s contest was exactly what it needed to prepare for next week’s big showdown, which has been switched to a home game for the lucky Lions to accommodate Haifa’s scheduling needs. Both on offense and defense, the Lions were able to work out kinks in their game-plan, especially in the passing attack, and use the high-intensity of their opponent, for whom Friday’s game was a essentially a playoff match, to test themselves and try various personnel combinations.

Bauman continued his string of impressive performances at quarterback and came out gunning early. On Jerusalem’s first possession of the day, He completed six passes to three different receivers and finished off the drive with a TD run of his own to open the scoring and stake his team to a 6-0 lead. The Big Blue signal caller would have his best game of the year, bettering his last outing and finishing 15-29 for 173 yards and two touchdowns in the air, with no picks. Bauman also added a pair of scores on the ground and ran the ball for a team-high 60 yards on his way to picking up Mike’s Place player of the game honors for the second straight week.

Even after being scored on first, Tel Aviv refused to lose its poise and marched down the field on a 15-play drive that spanned almost eight minutes to take an 8-6 lead on a touchdown and two-point conversion from Eitan Ben David. Hammude Kassas was once again the main focus for the Sabres’ offense, coming out of the backfield to get the majority of touches. However while continuing his bruising style and finishing his runs with both speed and power, Kassas was unable to find many holes in the Big Blue line. Even though he finished with 51 yards and two touchdowns, his 2.5 yards/carry average was mediocre, at best, and he was stuffed for losses by the tenacious Lions defenders numerous times throughout the afternoon.

Most of the second quarter was a classic battle between the teams for field position. Both the Lions and Sabres were stifled by each other’s dogged defense and they traded three-and-outs back and forth like old baseball cards. An inadvertent whistle (on a play that would have resulted in a muffed punt by Big Blue and a Sabres’ possession) allowed Jerusalem to regain control of the ball and Bauman would not waste the gift of an opportunity, orchestrating another scoring drive to retake the lead for good on Yonah Mishaan’s two-yard burst into the end zone just before the half.

Down 12-8 at the interval, the Sabres weren’t where they wanted to be, but they also weren’t in a terrible spot either, and it appeared that they had enough in the tank to at least keep the contest close enough to get them into the dance. However, Tel Aviv couldn’t seem to get any sustained momentum going on offense, and QB Tamir Elterman tossed his only interception of the day, to safety David Sidman, setting up a Bauman 32-yard bomb to Gai Van Straten on the very next play for a touchdown and 18-8 lead. Van Straten would be a safety blanket for his quarterback all day, making a number of acrobatic catches on balls that were difficultly placed. Between him, Bergman, Mishaan and Akiva Rindenow, Big Blue finally has a number of viable options at the receiver position, something that was a glaring weakness for much of the year.

That score seemed to infuse a little more desperation into Mike’s Place and the club stormed out and punched in another six points before the third quarter came to a close. Kassas punctuated another drive of double-digit plays with a lunging dive into the end zone to keep the contest within four points, at 18-14, heading into the fourth.

However, Big Blue would execute three-scoring drives in the final frame, each starting from deep in their own territory, to squash any hopes Tel Aviv had of coming back, or even staying close. Matan Lavi provided crucial chunks of yards, with almost all of his 46 rushing yards coming in the last quarter, and his touchdown with 11 minutes left seemed to open the floodgates for an outburst of offense. Kassas would score his second of the day midway through the fourth, but Bauman would respond with an 18-yard keeper to boost the lead back up to 12 at the two-minute warning.

Had the game finished with exactly a 12-point margin of victory, the final playoff spot would have had to be decided through a coin toss. Evidently, the football gods did not like that potentiality and wanted to ensure that a true winner, with postseason seed included, would be decided on the field. At first, it seemed as if the Sabres would be the ones to score the final points to push them forward for another week. They had the ball and were driving deep in Big Blue territory with five straight chances to score from relatively close.

However, Liran Hovav fumbled the ball on a fourth-down reverse attempt, allowing Jerusalem to regain one final possession with 36 seconds remaining. Wanting to see their cross-town rivals, the Kings, in the playoffs, and also wanting to play to the very end in a game which they themselves had nothing to lose, Big Blue steeled itself for one more drive and after a completion, a defensive pass interference, and a 20-yard Bauman scramble, the Lions’ QB finished off his gem of a day with one more pin-point pass to Bergman in the back of the endzone for the game’s final – and most dramatic – points, the knock-out punch, so to speak, to the Sabres’ season.

The IFL’s playoffs get under way next weekend with a pair of Saturday night semifinal matches. The Pioneers host the Kings in Modi’in in one contest while the second-seed Underdogs travel to Jerusalem to face Big Blue in another. The winners of those games will meet in Israel Bowl II at Kraft Family Stadium on Friday, April 3 for the championship.