Utah Blaze: Blaze may be winless but feeling confident

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.