2002 SaberCats Voted Best in AFL History
The Arena Football League Historical Society has confirmed what most insiders and informed fans already knew: The 2002 San Jose SaberCats are the greatest team in league history.
The vote, held on May 17, placed the 2002 SaberCats above the 1996 Tampa Bay Storm and ’97 Arizona Rattlers.
And what a season it was in San Jose.
The team had it all – talent and depth at every position – with a hunger for success. The 2002 SaberCats set an AFL record for wins in a season, going 16-1 and winning the franchise’s first ArenaBowl title.
Led by quarterback Mark Grieb, who was named the Offensive Player of the Year, and defensive specialist Clevan Thomas, who won both the Defensive Player and Rookie of the Year honors, this San Jose club won its first 12 games of a 14-game regular season and were within James Hundon’s fingertips of going undefeated.
“We won a few close games early in the year,” coach Darren Arbet recalled. “Then we just steamrolled everyone until that Arizona game when Grieb got hurt.”
Facing the Rattlers in Week 13 – with an undefeated season on the line – the SaberCats built a 17-point lead in the second quarter but saw it slip away. Arizona went on a 21-3 scoring run and grabbed a 45-44 lead late in the third quarter. On a San Jose possession near the end of the stanza, Grieb was thrown to the turf by Stacy Evans and sustained a broken collarbone.
“He (Grieb) was having such a great season and to see him go down on a play like that really hurt,” Arbet said.
Backup John Dutton stepped in and, with San Jose trailing by seven points late in the game, drove the team to the Rattlers 11-yard line. His fourth-down pass glanced off the fingertips of an outstretched Hundon in the Arizona end zone. The SaberCats suffered their only loss of the season.
San Jose would extract some revenge in ArenaBowl XVII by posting the largest victory in championship history, 52-14, before a sellout crowd in HP Pavilion. Dutton earned MVP honors by throwing five scoring passes and the SaberCats held the Rattlers scoreless for nearly three-and-a-half quarters.
Dutton would go on to lead the Colorado Crush to the ArenaBowl XIX title.
Arbet has been named AFL Coach of the Year twice during his tenure with the SaberCats.
San Jose set AFL records for regular season wins (13), overall wins (16), consecutive games won (12) and consecutive games won to start a season (12) in 2002. The team posted the second-highest per game scoring average in league history (62.7 ppg) and became the first team to score 50 or more points in every game.
The 1993 Tampa Bay Storm and ’99 Albany Firebirds rounded out the eight-person committee’s top-five choices in the poll.
The SaberCats have reeled off seven consecutive winning seasons and are currently in their seventh consecutive postseason. San Jose, the 2006 Western Division champion, hosts Arizona on May 23 in a divisional-round matchup.
HAMILTON GETS THE BOOT: Remy Hamilton of the Los Angeles Avengers was named 2006 AFL Kicker of the Year on May 22. Hamilton is the first player in AFL history to win this award in back-to-back seasons.
Hamilton recorded a league-high 173 points among kickers, connecting on 27 of 36 (75 percent) field-goal attempts and converted 92 of 98 (93.9 percent) extra-point attempts. He broke his own single-season record for highest field-goal percentage, exceeding last season’s mark of 74.4 percent (29 of 39).
(Neil Fuller is a member of the Arena Football League Writers Association and currently covers the expansion Kansas City Brigade. Fuller also covered the now-defunct Carolina Cobras for three seasons.)
