Rattlers’ Guy familiar with rebuilding roster

Kevin Guy has had to rebuild the roster three times since he came to the Rattlers in 2008 as head coach and general manager.

But here he is, on the brink of breaking Danny White’s record for most franchise coaching wins, putting together four championship teams, including one in Arizona’s first season in the Indoor Football League last year.

His current team has the league’s best record (9-1) and with a win at home Sunday against the second-place Iowa Barnstormers (7-2), Guy will enter the franchise record book with the most alltime wins (142).

“You always hear there are all kinds of football players out there,” Guy said. “There is. But can they play?”

The Rattlers’ roster was rebuilt in 2008 with the end of the Sherdrick Bonner era at quarterback. It was rebuilt again in 2010, the Arena Football League reboot year after it went bankrupt and didn’t play in ‘09, with the start of the Nick Davila era at QB. And again, the Rattlers rebuilt the roster last year when they left the pass-oriented AFL, said goodbye to Davila as a player, and joined the IFL.

“In 2011, it was the first year that we had a chance to build on what we did the year before,” Guy said.

The Rattlers came one play away from winning the ArenaBowl in 2011. They then went on a run of three consecutive ArenaBowl championships, came a play away from reaching the ArenaBowl in 2015, then got to the ArenaBowl again in 2016, when they lost to the Philadelphia Soul, before breaking into the IFL.

The key, obviously, is recruiting. And Guy’s ability to hire people who know how to evaluate talent.

Assistant coach/assistant general manager Jeff Jarnigan helped find linebacker Justin Shirk out of Pennsylvania, where he played in an indoor-offshoot league and tore it up. Shirk was a 6-foot, 240-pound middle linebacker at Bloomsburg University. He was working as a trainer at a health club when Jarnigan called during the middle of last season.

The next thing, Shirk was driving non-stop from Pennsylvania to Arizona and became the run-stopping, quarterback-sacking,