Jack Plummer had his best passing game of the season and the Orlando Storm had every opportunity to take control of their game against the Birmingham Stallions at Inter&Co Stadium on Sunday night.
But they didn’t.
Mistakes spelled doom for the Storm. Orlando turned the ball over three times — twice inside the red zone — and there were also untimely penalties and numerous missed tackles as Orlando lost for the second straight game 20-14.
Orlando had an opportunity to make things interesting with 3:03 remaining and facing a 4th-and-2 situation at their own 48-yard line. Coach Anthony Becht, however, made the decision to punt the ball and hope his defense could hold and give the offense one more shot.
Birmingham, led by former Orlando quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, made enough plays to run out the clock and the Storm never got another chance.
“I put my trust in the defense,” Becht said. “I wanted to see if my defense could hold true. We punted, we had three timeouts left. … I don’t second-guess that move. We just needed to get a stop … we weren’t able to do that.”
The Storm also spotted a team a two-touchdown lead to open the game — Birmingham led 14-0 — for the second straight week, and again, they did not have enough to recover.
“There is something about our team right now … that we’re not living up to the expectations that we need to be,” Becht said. “We’ve got a lot of good players, a lot of talented guys in that locker room, but right now we’re all taking turns with these mistakes.
“We had three fumbles today, two of them were snaps … both in the red zone. They were critical, tragic and I felt like we were moving the ball at will and then we just couldn’t finish the deal.”
Plummer had a terrific game throwing the football, completing 26-of-37 passes for 324 yards and two touchdowns, but it was his two fumbles, both on the center-quarterback exchange, that ultimately created the Storm’s play-from-behind situation.
“Yeah it definitely is a weird feeling when you walk off the field and you feel like you played a good game and you feel like you helped the offense move the ball down the field but then it just doesn’t show up on the scoreboard,” Plummer said.
Plummer even had time to throw, as the offensive line held up in protection and kept the quarterback upright then entire game. Receivers also gave him better targets from last week, especially KJ Hamler, who returned to the lineup after missing two games with a hamstring injury to catch 8 balls for 113 yards and a touchdown.
The tight ends also got involved, as Steven Stilianos and Shawn Bowman both had big catches during the Storm’s two scoring drives.
These were all things the Storm should have been celebrating afterward, but yet, for the second week in a row, the coaches and players will be headed back to the film room to figure out what went wrong.
“We’ve got a kind of come-to-Jesus moment right and we gotta look ourselves in the mirror,” Becht said, “and find out what we want to be as a football team. Two straight losses, backs against the wall, that’s all great, but we’re in a good position to finish out the last four games.
“But we have to make a hard choice on what we want to be as a football team.”
The slow starts are baffling to Becht. Last week the Storm let St. Louis build a 25-0 lead, and then spotted Birmingham 14 on Sunday.
“We can’t go out there and expect teams to do what they want and we also can’t spot teams,” Becht said. “I just don’t understand. For whatever reason, we’re just not coming out and executing early in football games.”
The missed tackles are also concerning.
“We can’t be diving around trying to get kill shots. We have to run through the five more and wrap up. We gotta gang tackle,” Becht said. “It can’t be one guy here and one guy there. We gotta swarm the football better. … I saw the other team do it all day.”
Some of the announced crowd of 9,107 fans welcomed back former Storm quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson with excitement as he ran onto the field in his Stallions uniform. He played well, completing 19-of-27 passes for 271 yards and a touchdown, and also used his mobility to avoid any sacks.
DTR’s biggest play came on the Stallions the second play from scrimmage.
After Plummer had fumbled on the Storm’s opening possession, Birmingham took over and wide receiver Jaydon Mickens caught the Storm defense sleeping and found himself wide open. DTR, ran around to avoid a sack, and then saw Mickens and hit him with about a 20-yard pass and Mickens did the rest, running the ball down to the Storm 11-yard line before he was stopped, after 56 yards.
Snoop Connor scored on the next play and Orlando was back in familiar territory, trailing at home and only about 5 minutes had gone off the clock.
DTR hit John Ross with an 11-yard touchdown pass later in the opening quarter and a pair of Anders Carlson field goals would be all Birmingham needed the rest of the way.
It was a nice return to Orlando for DTR, who said he was thankful to the Orlando coaches and players for his time in Orlando and also for the team trading him to Birmingham so would not have to sit and watch in Orlando behind Plummer.
He had a brief moment with Plummer after the game.
“I said good job and made sure he was healthy. I knew he got nicked up a little bit last week,” Thompson-Robinson said. “But, I’ll definitely be chomping it up and chirping at those guys when we get back. I got a little bragging rights now.”
Now the Storm (4-2), who sit in third place, will try to turn things around. They have four games left to solidify a playoff spot, which goes to the top four teams. The Storm finish the season with back-to-back games against the league-leading D.C. Defenders.
“I challenged our players, they got off tomorrow, but to come back with a purpose and we gotta find ways to clean it up,” Becht said. “It’s gonna start with me. I gotta kinda reset the way I handle things throughout the week and make sure our focus is better, but ultimately … you gotta go our there and make plays when those moments are there and we’re not making enough of them right now.”
Chris Hays can be found on X.com@OS_ChrisHays.
