- Slug: Sports-Rattlers Deadder,590
By CUYLER MEADE
Cronkite News
MESA – Chase Deadder caught as many touchdown passes Saturday night as he did all of last season.
Deadder, in his first year with the Rattlers, hauled in five touchdowns and led the the team with 91 receiving yards as Arizona defeated the Tampa Bay Storm 69-46.
He made the most of the opportunity presented to him following Markee White’s season-ending injury a week earlier.
“He’s a big guy, a big receiver,” quarterback Nick Davila said of the 6-foot-5 Deadder. It was Davila’s first game back after a toe injury that kept him out for five weeks.
“He makes big-boy catches and he ran a couple guys over, and he’s just trying to improve every week,” Davila said.
Deadder is the most recent man to step up on a Rattlers team which has been riddled by injuries and departures as it seeks a fourth consecutive ArenaBowl championship. White, the man expected to replace end zone threat Tysson Poots after Poots signed with Las Vegas in the offseason, saw his season come to an abrupt end after breaking his back during the June 2 game against Spokane. Deadder was next up.
Deadder took a winding road to the Arizona desert. He starred as a junior for Sacramento State in 2010 before an injury caused him to miss his senior season. He spent a summer with the Tennessee Titans in 2012 and caught 85 passes for 15 scores with the Utah Blaze in 2013. He then joined the New Orleans Voodoo for a 2014 season in which he played just four games.
For the Rattlers’ newest starter, Saturday night in Phoenix was the time of his life.
“It was amazing. I’ve never had five touchdowns in a game and I was just on cloud nine,” Deadder said. “I was so happy, and the team performed amazingly. Nick came out there and just made my job easy and I just did what I did.”
Five touchdowns was the most in a single game for a Rattler since Rod Windsor caught six on April 18 against the Portland Thunder. The five touchdown receptions tied White’s April 4 performance at the Las Vegas Outlaws for second-most all year.
“I’ve been the guy that kind of fills in,” Deadder said of his role prior to this week. “There’s an injury, someone goes down, I try to come in and pick them up. I see it developing a lot more now, now that I’m playing wing and learning from these guys. We have so many talented receivers. It’s just amazing the knowledge they have, and I’m just trying to make my name known here.”
Davila was pleased with the strides Deadder had made to this point.
“He’s a team-first guy,” Davila said. “You know he’s going to put the team before himself, and he’s working his tail off and doing all the things coach Guy is asking him to do both on and off the field to be the best receiver he can be for the Rattlers.”
Always prepared to maximize whatever weapons he’s given, Davila is doing what he can to get on the same page with Deadder.
“(Davila) pulls us out on Sundays after workouts, and we’ll come out on the field and run some routes, and he’ll tell me what he’s looking at,” Deadder said. “We’ll watch film together, and he’ll tell me what he sees in the defense, what I should’ve done, what I did right, what I did wrong. So I’m learning more and more what he’s looking at and what he’s looking for.”