One-quarter of the Arena Football League season is over for the Utah Blaze and they still have a big goose egg in the win column. Utah, a team with championship aspirations entering the season, is one of only two winless teams in the 17-team league.
Yet the Blaze players and coaches, at least on the outside, remain surprisingly optimistic.
"We have been right there in every game," said Blaze receiver Aaron Boone. "We're still positive we can get on a roll. We don't look at it like things are half empty. It's half full."
While the start of the year has certainly been frustrating, Blaze coach Danny White is clearly not ready to punt the season just yet.
"It's still early. We're just two games out of first place (in the AFL's Western Division)," said White. "We still have five out of our six division games in front of us. So, from that standpoint, we're not in as bad of shape as it may seem."
It's true that none of the four teams in the Blaze's division currently is setting the world on fire. In fact, all three of the other teams are just playing .500 football at 2-2.
But four games and four narrow losses into the 2008 campaign, the Blaze are in desperate need of a victory this Saturday when they host the 1-3 Georgia Force at EnergySolutions Arena.
"We definitely need to get some positive momentum going and it's going to take a win to do that," Boone said.
But wins have been impossible to come by for the Blaze this season so far. Their two home games have epitomized the problems. In the opener against Arizona, the Blaze lost when their last-second, game-winning field goal clanked off the upright. Then, last Friday night, Columbus came away with the win when their last-second field goal was good. The two road losses were by one score, too.
"We are four plays away from being 4-0," said White.
But after the 0-4 start, the team has to at least modify its lofty preseason expectations, right?
Actually, White won't even go that far.
"This is a talented team," said White. "I've said it from Day 1 that this is a team that can go as far as they decide to go. I still expect to achieve all of our goals for this year."
Those goals included having a good enough record to not only make the playoffs, like the team did in the first two seasons of its existence, but to also host a playoff game. Then, once the playoffs are secured, the Blaze set a goal of winning at least one postseason game.
While the slow start has Utah in a hole, it certainly wouldn't be too difficult to climb out of as long as the Blaze go on a winning streak in the near future. Plus, getting to the playoffs this season is easier than ever since there are only eight teams in the Blaze's American Conference and six of them will advance to the postseason. Currently, the two teams tied for fifth place in the conference, Colorado and Grand Rapids, have just one win each. Kansas City, like Utah, is winless.
Plus, success in the regular season doesn't necessarily mean success in the playoffs. Last year, for instance, the Dallas Desperados finished with a league-best 15-1 mark, but lost in their first playoff game. By contrast, the Columbus Destroyers squeaked into the playoffs with a 7-9 mark and ended up going all the way to the ArenaBowl.
And it's not like the Blaze haven't had times of struggles before. In their first season they suffered through a four-game losing streak and they lost five in a row at one point last season. The difference was that those skids didn't come right out of the gate like the current one.
Still, White believes the timing of this losing streak may be better than the midseason ones his Blaze teams have had before.
"If you are going to have a losing streak and you know you are going to have one, you'd much rather have it at the beginning of the year because you want to be playing your best football at the end of the year," said White.
The Blaze have made some big changes to try to get on track, replacing kicker Steve Videtich with Steve Azar, trading for veteran defensive back Damon Mason and changing the assignments of the assistant coaches. No major shakeups are expected before Saturday, though.
Now it's just a matter of putting things together and picking up that elusive first win.
"We're going to get on track and get rolling," Boone predicted.
They'd better, since it may not be too late for the Blaze to turn the season around, but time seems to be running out.
Blaze on the air
Georgia Force (1-3) at Utah Blaze (0-4)
Saturday, 7 p.m.
EnergySolutions Arena
TV: KJZZ
Radio: 1320 AM
E-mail: lojo@desnews.com