It’s doubtful anyone can appreciate the improbability of what happened Sunday more than Mike Hohensee.
This is the man, after all, who has had a highly improbable 20-year run in the Arena Football League–first as a player and now as a coach–and even admitted he wasn’t really sure the league had legs until around his 18th season.
Twenty years after playing in the first ArenaBowl as a quarterback with the Pittsburgh Gladiators, Hohensee directed the Rush to its first AFL title Sunday with a 69-61 victory over the Orlando Predators before 13,476 at the Thomas and Mack Center.
For Hohensee, it was his first trip to the title game since that inaugural season of 1987 when just four teams played a six-game season and few people noticed.
There also were few who could have expected in late April that the Rush would hoist a trophy at season’s end. A 55-20 loss to Georgia left the Rush 5-9 and needing wins in its last two games just to make the postseason.
Hohensee’s team didn’t lose again, winning its final two regular-season games and then three straight road playoff games leading to Sunday.
“It feels like I thought it would,” Hohensee said. “These are the type of men I thought I would be surrounded by. That’s what makes it special.”
The championship, in the Rush’s sixth year of existence, adds another title to the football career of part-owner Mike Ditka, who now has won a Super Bowl as a player and coach and an ArenaBowl as part-owner.
“It’s incredible for the players and coaches,” Ditka said. “They weren’t a good football team in the middle of the season and they knew it. It means another championship for the city of Chicago, and that’s something I’m proud of.”
Rush quarterback Matt D’Orazio (26-for-36, 250 yards and six touchdowns) said the one constant this season was that the team always believed it could win.
“We lost five games this year on the last play of the game,” D’Orazio said. “We just kept working hard and believing.”
Sunday’s game started more like a December game at Soldier Field than the high-wire act that defines the AFL. The Rush led just 10-0 after the first quarter.
Only four times in 20 games this year had the Rush managed to shut out an opponent in a quarter.
Orlando made up for it with a 28-point second quarter, but the Rush scored 10 points in the final six seconds of the first half and 14 in the first 4 minutes 53 seconds of the third quarter to turn a 28-24 deficit into a 48-28 lead.
“We like to finish strong to end a half and come out strong to start the third and we did neither,” Orlando coach Jay Gruden said. “That was the difference in the game.”
While it took Hohensee 20 years to get back to the championship game, Gruden has had nearly a standing invitation.
The brother of Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon, Gruden has won four AFL titles as a player and two as a coach. He also has a Super Bowl ring as an assistant to his brother in Tampa. Orlando was making its AFL-record seventh title-game appearance.
The AFL has almost as much in common with the NBA as the NFL, and even though it led 55-34 with 13:09 left in the third, the Rush had to recover two onside kicks and tack on another touchdown in the final 40 seconds to preserve the win.
“We’ve had a lot of heart-to-hearts this season,” Hohensee said of the struggles.
“I just did what I was supposed to do. [The players] did a great job.”
Improbable as it may seem–both for the team and the man coaching it.
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rfoltman@tribune.com
