Somehow, I had a feeling this game would come down to the last play. It did. It just didn’t go the Fishers Freight’s way.
The Freight had the ball on the Orlando 17-yard line with one snap left and everything riding on it. Felix Harper’s pass toward James Blackman in the end zone fell incomplete, and the Orlando Pirates escaped Fishers Event Center with a 67-63 win Sunday afternoon — and with the last playoff spot in the Indoor Football League’s Eastern Conference.
The stakes could not have been simpler heading into Fan Appreciation Night: winner in, loser out. Orlando arrived at 9-6, Fishers at 8-7. The Pirates finish the regular season 10-6 and advance to the postseason. The Freight end their second season at 8-8, still looking for the franchise’s first playoff berth.
It was clear early that these evenly matched teams would trade punches to the finish. Both staffs had their clubs ready, and neither side could put the other away.
There was one bizarre sequence in the middle of it. An onside kick bounced loose and rolled all the way into the end zone before Fishers fell on it. The referee first announced that Orlando would take over at the Fishers 1-yard line. After several minutes of discussion among the full crew, the call was reversed: Fishers had the ball at its own 1.
Orlando finished with 244 passing yards to the Freight’s 196. Fishers deserves credit for what it did to Pooka Williams, the Pirates’ star back and a former Kansas standout, holding him to minus-3 rushing yards. But quarterback Paxton DeLaurent again proved to be the problem. He added 24 yards on the ground and threw the ball well — the same formula that beat the Freight 60-57 in Orlando on May 9, a game decided by a leaping catch over the wall as the clock hit zero.
Sunday’s result leaves Orlando 4-0 all-time against Fishers, including a sweep in 2025.
The Freight missed the postseason, but they can hold their heads high. They lost a stack of close games this season and played what was arguably the toughest schedule in the league, and they were still alive on the final play of the final week. That is a long way from a year ago, when the expansion Freight dropped nine straight before closing with five consecutive wins.
Now comes the offseason. Coach Dixie Wooten and his staff will start rebuilding the roster for 2027 — the team’s third season in Fishers, and the first with real expectations attached.