Playoffs in Gladiators’ hands

Adam Candee

Monday, May 16, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

LOS ANGELES -- One pondered, one wandered, one squandered.

Lineman Steve Konopka parked on a large utility cart outside the visiting locker room at Staples Center, staring down at his tape job as though it might provide answers for another near miss by the Gladiators in a key game.

Fellow big man Lucas Yarnell made aimless trips up and down the tunnel to the field, 315 pounds of bewilderment wearing a path into the ground. His team held a halftime lead and stopped the league's hottest pass rush, so how had it given away the division crown to Los Angeles and lost control of its playoff fate?

Kicker Mark Lewis, his two missed extra points a primary reason for the Gladiators' crushing 63-60 loss Saturday night, simply shook his head in the hallway. He looked ready, if at all physically possible, to boot himself through the 9-foot-wide uprights that are killing his season, and maybe that of his team as well.

Lewis is not alone, though. After first taking the ball out of the hands of its best players, the offense could not squeeze out less than a yard on its biggest play of the season. And the defense gets no free passes, which are what it gave to Avengers quarterback John Kaleo for most of the game.

"It comes down to making plays when you have to," Gladiators quarterback Clint Dolezel said. "Once again, we didn't make those plays that we needed to make. That was the difference in the game."

Yet another missed chance at prosperity means the Gladiators (8-7) now need help in the final week of the season to make the playoffs. First, they must complete a season sweep of Arizona (6-9) on Sunday at the Thomas & Mack Center. Without a win, they have no shot.

Even if the Gladiators win, they must also have a loss from either San Jose (8-7) or Chicago (8-7) to earn a wildcard berth in the American Conference. Having lost season series to both the SaberCats and Rush, the Gladiators would lose tiebreakers against either team.

San Jose hosts Georgia (11-4), the league's best team. The Force, however, have already clinched the top seed in the National Conference and may not overwork their starting group. Chicago travels to Nashville (6-8-1), where the red-hot Kats have not lost since March 26.

"At least we still have an opportunity with the loss," Gladiators coach Ron James said. "It's difficult, but it's still there."

Having to scramble is the essence of this team's three years in Las Vegas and Saturday's game proved that in many ways.

The Gladiators held a 41-35 halftime edge, the six-point margin not being seven because of a Lewis extra-point miss. After having two touchdowns on an early fourth-quarter drive called back on penalties, the Gladiators still managed to score in the possession on one of Dolezel's four scoring hookups with receiver Marcus Nash. With momentum and a 54-49 lead, Lewis pushed another kick wide right.

Lewis has converted 81 of his 100 PAT tries, which ranks Las Vegas 15th out of 17 teams in conversion percentage. The only worse teams are expansion Nashville, which has used three kickers, and Orlando, which features Brian Gowins, the former Gladiators kicker jettisoned after last season.

"PATs, they're hard to make," Dolezel said. "It's 9 feet wide. It's not easy. By no means did that cost us the game."

They certainly made it harder. The Gladiators later failed on a two-point try necessitated by the PAT misses, allowing Los Angeles to build a three-point lead on fullback Michale Spicer's bruising 1-yard scoring run with 1:49 to play despite the teams scoring the same amount of touchdowns.

The Las Vegas defense made just one stop of the Avengers, that coming on Marvin Taylor's second-quarter interception. After mobbing him in Las Vegas' 46-37 opening-week victory, the Gladiators put little pressure on Kaleo, who completed 20 of 30 passes for 269 yards and five touchdowns.

"One defensive stop on the interception and in the second half, we didn't have any stops," James said. "That's the difference."

Another difference was the Gladiators' highly conservative play in the final two minutes of the game as they attempted to run down the clock to try for a last-second score. They completed three of four passes on their last drive for five yards or less, including Dolezel's 4-yard out to Nash on 3rd-and-5 from the Los Angeles 9-yard line.

With 37 seconds to play and their season essentially on the line, Dolezel and James elected to try for the first down instead of looking to score on fourth down either by field goal or by touchdown. Curiously, they chose to go away from their money guys in Dolezel (350 yards, seven touchdowns) and Nash (12 catches, 132 yards) on the play, instead opting to let fullback Marlion Jackson carry up the middle.

Jackson gained about a foot of the two feet that Las Vegas needed for a first down. Both Dolezel and James said they did not consider going for a touchdown, insisting that leaving any time for Los Angeles to score would have been a problem.

Without a score of their own, though, the Gladiators didn't end up needing to worry about that possibility. It was too late and they came up with too little in their third try this year to go three games over .500 for the first time in their Las Vegas history.

"We went for it on fourth down when we needed a yard, and we couldn't get a yard," James said. "If you're going to win the championship, you've got to get that yard."

Another big stage and another failure for the Gladiators now leave no margin. Arizona is playing as well as any team in the league, having beaten Chicago and San Jose in the past two weeks. Judging by their post-game hangovers Saturday, the Gladiators need to do some major regrouping before the Rattlers arrive.

"All these games are like playoff games to us," Nash said. "We're fighting for a lot. We have to win these games. Not to win them, it's hurting our chances when we don't take advantage of it."

So many chances - the loss to Austin at the buzzer, the pass interference non-call on the winning two-point try at Chicago, the wasted 28-point comeback against San Jose - are gone. Somehow, in this season of inconsistency, the Gladiators get one more.