Arizona Rattlers want to make history, win fourth straight championship
Feb 12, 2015, 4:20 PM | Updated: 4:20 pm
The Arizona Rattlers are the class of the Arena Football League.
Of that there is no debate.
The Rattlers have won three consecutive ArenaBowl championships. If not for a last-second touchdown scored against them in the 2011 game, the streak would be even longer.
But before you think there is any complacency within the organization, think again.
“We’re going for four,” head coach Kevin Guy told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday as part of Newsmakers Week. “We’ve won three championships in a row and our staff has been working very hard this offseason to try to put us in position to try to go for four.
“Two teams in the history of Arena Football have won three in a row — Arizona and Detroit — and we want to be the first to try to get that four.”
They would have to be the favorites to do it.
The Rattlers return the 2014 AFL Offensive Player of the Year in QB Nick Davila, who threw for 4,778 yards and 127 touchdowns last season, along with star wideouts in Rod Windsor, Maurice Purify and Kerry Reed. They also have a stingy defense that finished tied for third in the AFL with 31 interceptions.
And, maybe surprisingly, they have no shortage of motivation due to the ArenaBowl loss in 2011, which came down to allowing a touchdown on the final play of the game.
“That year, I think set the state for what we were going to do the past three years,” Guy said. “It bothered me a lot. It still bothers me. I still think about that one play.”
Guy and his team have rebounded from that disappointment quite nicely, though.
“I think from a mindset standpoint, we had a young group then. We’ve been able to get a lot of mileage out of this core group, and we’ve been able to come back and win the last three.”
