That’s why I always liked to see Michelle Tafoya. She would ask real, pertinent questions, and then press the coaches to get substantive answers.
In the interest of fairness, here’s the first ever kickoff returned for a touchdown. Even if he hadn’t made it, it would’ve still qualified as the first kickoff return that anyone had any reason to be the least bit excited about. I’m sorry, but I’m still not sold on this. My problem is that it’s so drearily predictable, and whenever something exciting happens, it’s this bizarre fluke mostly the result of a big breakdown on the other end.
You could say it’s like…the old extra point kick. :eek:
If returns, returns, returns are so damn important, it’s an easy fix: If the kickoff goes out of bounds or into the end zone, the kick is redone from 5 yards back. What the hey, being super draconian about touchbacks is one of the “fixes” I regularly hear about punts, so why not go the whole 35 yards, as it were?
One thing I’ve noticed (and I’m not going to judge whether this is a “good” thing or not) is that not only are we getting a lot more low-scoring games, it seems really hard for most of the offenses to get going. There isn’t anyone you can really call a “deep threat” or “playmaker”, which shrinks the field and makes it easier for the defense. More than that, however, is that the offensive execution just isn’t as crisp as in the NFL. Quarterbacks are a bit too early, or too late, or too long, or too short, receivers can’t quite pull in the tough ones, running backs can’t quite turn the corner or zig when they should’ve zagged. Pretty much every time I’ve seen a shot down the field or to the back of the end zone, it’s been an incompletion. In the last game, a receiver caught the ball about two feet out of bounds, something no NFL quarterback would ever get away with. I think the most telling sign is all the scores that are multiples of 3, which means that a lot of conversion attempts are failing. Stopping these offenses for one down just isn’t much of a challenge.
For three weeks something’s been nagging at me about this league, and I’m finally able to articulate it. This is one of those phenomena where I’d rather watch a documentary series about it. It’s interesting. It’s compelling. It’s noteworthy. It has lots of facts and figures and calculations and angles and jargon to delve into. But as a sport, as an event, it’s wanting. There’s no big hook, nothing to get excited about, nothing grand or colorful or fun or crazy. If you don’t live in one of those eight cities, what’s your reason to watch?
Oh, uh, there was another double pass…first pass batted back to the QB, he threw it again. Whichever.
The QBs aren’t good. Even mediocre QBs get jobs in the NFL. There aren’t enough to go around, so the ones in the XFL are bad. To me that’s the biggest problem.
I still enjoy the games. I find myself cheering for them, almost as much as the NFL. You still see great plays, mostly offense and running. Good passing plays are rare.
PJ Walker is an exception. He’s the QB for the Houston Roughnecks. In the last game he had 304 yards passing, including 3 passing TDs and one he ran in himself after snatching up the ball on a bad snap and improvising. He had 34 yards total rushing and had a QB rating of 120.8. In 3 games, he has 748 passing yards, a 64-percent completion rate, 7.1 yards per attempt, 10 touchdown passes, one interception, and a rating of 112.7.
If you want to watch the XFL and have no team to root for, watch Houston. He is entertaining.
I’ve been pondering which teams are likely to develop a rivalry in this league. So far I think it’ll be Dallas-Houston and D.C.-New York, due to geographical proximity and intra-state/regional pride.
After taking Week 2 off, I decided to look in on Week 3 to see if the level of play had improved.
I’ll confess I was expecting the XFL to be full of teams playing sloppy but fast, leading to shootouts with scores like 42-38, where the winner is the team that scores last. And the 1-2-3 extra point idea doesn’t seem to be working well at all.
I’ve never seen a full game, but the parts I’ve watched have screamed out to me to be watching two ok college teams.
It totally reminds of my late night Saturdays in the 1990s and coming home at 2 am and there’d be replays of college football on, not the top teams but say something like Oregon State vs Utah, it’s fine for what it is but you can clearly tell you’re watching a bunch of guys who’s football careers aren’t going any further.
The NFL would be stupid not to adopt this.
And because the NFL is stupid they won’t adopt this.
After one sellout and one near sellout, the St. Louis Battlehawks (Ca-CAW!) will officially open the upper level of The Dome for ticket sales.
So I’m curious:
We often entertain the question: “if the best college team played the worst NFL team, who would win?” and the consensus was almost always, the NFL team wins.
So what if the best college team plays the worst (or even best) XFL team?
My son is home for spring break this week, so we went to the Defenders-Battlehawks game. It was definitely worth the twenty something dollars we paid for each ticket. The defense looked pretty good for both teams. As someone mentioned above, the quarterbacks were not very good. The DC quarterback had 13 passing yards at halftime, and didn’t seem capable of completing a pass of more than 10 yards.
I don’t know how many fans they need to draw to make a go of it. They drew around 16K fans to Audi Field. It didn’t look empty, but the stadium wasn’t exactly rocking. The score was 15-6 Defenders, and the Battlehawks had a drive going late that could have tied the game. They stalled in Defenders territory, and had a 4th and 1 run stuffed.
I went to University of Tennessee for grad school, so I’ve seen good Division 1 football. I don’t know that either team we saw today could beat a top 10 college team. I haven’t watched a huge amount of college football for the last 20 or so years, though, so I could be wrong about that.