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Houston Roughnecks
Dallas Renegades
DC Defenders
New York Guardians

The Dallas game is the only one on FOX that will be viewable this week. Two are being held hostage by subscription service channels FS! and ESPN and the others on th e broadcasting in low power so it doesn't reach this far for the next 4 weeks ABC.

Houston Roughnecks
Seattle Dragons
DC Defenders
St. Louis Battlehawks

I can't believe I'm pulling for Dallas but there's that 6'8" rookie tight end the Redskins drafted last year I wanted them to keep on the team scoring the TD and tiing the game up!!!! I still can't believe the Redsklins let him go and now less than a year later two of the one's they kept have retired or been cut due to concussion problems!!!!! So glad the Redskins have new coaches. Still feels weird watching the old Redskin coach Jim Zorn calling plays live for Seattle.

AND HE SCORES AGAIN!!!!! 65 yards!!!

Why didn't the Redskins read the NFL threads here last year? Keeping him was a NO BRAINER!!!!! The only question is why they didn't include at least one simple jump ball play from inside the 1 on the LAST DRIVE for him? Who's going to outjump him in a short yardage situation like that?


Quoting myself from last year!!!

A week later, still true.

And yet I'm still watching this semi-professional nonsense.

I'm not a gambler. I find the constant referencing of the over/under throughout games incredibly obnoxious. Any gamblers in the crowd have thoughts on it.

Also, they have to get the rhythm of having commentators, coaches, sideline reporters, and referees not talking over each other regularly.

At one point in today's NY/StL game both coaches were onscreen talking, the referee was talking over the loudspeaker, and both both commentators were talking at the same time.

Apologies for watching my first DC game. It seems to have caused their QB to revert to league standard suckage.

So I'm not at a point where I can sit down and spend three hours watching a game, but I am willing to DVR the Roughnecks game and then watch in about 60-90 minutes by using the skip button on my DVR to jump by 15 second increments between plays. And it's working to a certain extent. I'm much more invested than I ever was in the AAF (of course their week 2 debacle went a long way to killing my interest there).

I went ahead and watched the highlights to the other three games and it was enjoyable. I think an underrated rule difference is the double forward pass as long as the first pass was completed behind the line of scrimmage. It was hilarious to see in the Renegades/Dragons game where a pass was batted at the line of scrimmage back to the QB so he just threw it again to a completely different receiver.

The former Redskin quarterback really messed up the DC team it seems.

https://redskinswire.usatoday.com/2020/02/24/redskins-qb-josh-johnson-lit-it-up-xfl/

The commentating is different but the biggest thing to me is it's just simply sooooooo much better than the 1st version having wrestling announcers that tried to overhype very single thing they saw. I'm sure over time they'll figure out the best balance and tweek some of the rough edges.

I wasn't expecting NFL level play since it's more of a developmental league filling a niche that's been left void by the NFL itself. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of college players that go undrafted that never get a spotlight to shine or even a real chance to develop and maybe up their game to NFL levels. This weeks games alone had two former Redskin players having starring performances in games they wouldn't have even been able to play in without the XFL which means there's a chance they get someone in the NFL's attention soon just having time to grow and develop more than they were the last time they were seen by an NFL team. There's no real substitute for playing to develope certain skills much like the Redskins rookie QB looked better every time out the gate last year apparently not really learning anything sitting on the bench earlier in the year not getting snaps. It appears to be a developmental league and even a "second chance league" for others.

I'm not even expecting college level play for the 1st 4 years simply because every college team out there has a core that's been together growing that long and usually a coaching staff that's had time to develop them.

The few games I'll apparently get to see I'm treating just like what they are, FREE FOOTBALL at a time when there's nothing else really going on. Maybe we look back in 10 years and have a good laugh at how rough the product was out the gate but at least we can say we were there. A few of the tweeks they put in I hope the NFL adopts immediately like the kick off rule. I've never liked the extra point kick. Coaches should be able to talk to ALL the skill players by headset.

I would have loved seeing more than the one game this week. I've never seen DC play or even Josh Johnson for LA. The other Sunday game for me was a coin flip taking NY's defense over the other teams dreary offense from what little I'd seen of both. Obviously I should have used a real coin and actually flipped. I'm torn between wanting to pull for Seattle because of Jim Zorn, Dallas for Donald Parham, LA for Josh Johnson or DC's team I've never seen play. That's half the league until they expand and add more teams.


You get a stack of comics and a scanner and start feeding it listening to the commentary between plays, not so much for the glorious insights as much as to see what slips through that the person didn't realize was being broadcast to millions around the world thru the mic they forgot was always on. When the ball snaps you look up for 8 seconds at the tv screen. Repeat, repeat, repeat, etc, etc........ next thing you know you've accomplished something useful while maybe hearing something memorable and catching all the plays as they happen. A play usually lasts about the same time it takes the scanner to scan and return to the start position.

That's pretty much what I do 7 days a week between packing orders and helping customers from 6AM to 7PM, sometimes later. The only difference is now I get to substitute some football for a few months for those low budget movies and old reruns on the antennae tv's extra stations.

XFL WEEK 3

Results and Standings

Houston Roughnecks @ Tampa Bay Vipers
Dallas Renegades @ Seattle Dragons
DC Defenders @ Los Angeles Wildcats
New York Guardians @ St. Louis Battlehawks

monidaw1 - 8-4
lckfrick - 8-4
MoonKnight1 - 7-5
jbeeman85 - 7-5

Looks like the Browns of this league is the Tampa Bay Vipers

Roughnecks look really good so far. The Defenders looked good for a while until...


Oh, so that was you. I was wondering what had happened.

There was a kickoff return for a TD! Joe Powell Kickoff TD Return - St Louis Battlehawks - XFL
When I first saw how they were doing kickoffs this was exactly the type of play I thought would work for a big gain or a house call. I would absolutely draw up plays to maximize return yardage like using offensive, or defensive linemen, to create traps or stunts to create a hole for the returner and then all you have to be is the fastest guy on the field to take it all the way.

What I really want to see is an overtime game so we can see how this works:

XFL WEEK 4

Houston Roughnecks @ Dallas Renegades
Seattle Dragons @ St. Louis Battlehawks
DC Defenders @ Tampa Bay Vipers
Los Angeles Wildcats @ New York Guardians

XFL WEEK 4

Houston Roughnecks
St. Louis Battlehawks
DC Defenders
Los Angeles Wildcats

Houston Roughnecks
St. Louis Battlehawks
DC Defenders
New York Guardians

Dallas Renegades
Seattle Dragons
DC Defenders
Los Angeles Wildcats

This week was easy, my 4 Redskin connection teams are all playing other teams.

Wow, I get to watch Seattle for the 3rd week in a row as it's the only game on FOX this week.

I have no idea what happened due to lack of tv coverage but it does appear I've picked New York wrong 3 out of 4 weeks now whether it's picked to win or lose!!!!

Crap, forgot about making XFL picks this week.

Roughnecks
Defenders

That's actually better than I did making yesterdays picks. Every report and instinct said not to take Seattle but I keep thinking Jim Zorn should be able to put a respectible running game on the field. Instead I'm two weeks in a row watching him stumble and bumble calls on camera, this week going for 3 when even 1 point would have been enough to have a 3 point differential, 2 points would have given you a lead with a field goal and 3 would do nothing to change that reality.

Wasted outstanding defensive effort by the offense doing nothing and the special teams shooting the D's 3 and out's in the foot with stupid roughing penalties. At least their punter looked good.

Second half was actually rather exciting to watch until Zorn's stupid go for 3 predetermined call. If they'd started that running QB in the 1st half I doubt the game would have ever been close. They basically couldn't stop him as long as he wasn't trying to throw since apparently Seattle doesn't have anyone who's decent at catching and the QB really didn't look that good throwing unless he'd faked out the coverage and had a wide open target.

The first game I didn't see but apparently came down to one team kicking a field goal and the one I picked missing theirs to tie it up. Take field goal kicking out entirely like they did extra points and that games still going............. until there's a team effort choosing the winner not who's toe's less twitchy. Can we get some Desenex please!!!!!!!!!

Only saw bits of 3 of the games. Still not sure if I've seen a QB throw a completion where the ball is in the air more than 10 yards. Not saying it hasn't, just seems exceptionally rare because the QBs all suck. Everything is a five yard check down or quick screen.

This should solve that problem for you.
https://www.xfl.com/en-US/videos/highlights-new-york-guardians-17-los-angeles-wildcats-14

Josh Johnson throwing some long distance darts in a game they managed to lose on the toe of a kicker.

There's also one of the stupidest looking throw the ball around to someone else plays I've ever seen go on for the longest time I've ever seen one take. Probably over 100 yards of back and forth running and I think all the referee's used all the flags they had at different times for different forward tosses.

Any idea what happened to the DC team? How do they lose to Tampa? I did need that lose to pull off a perfect o and 4 for the weeks picks though but I wouldn't have thought it possible to see Tampa win much less win in a blowout???????

Last night while I was watching the Roughnecks game and thinking about how really good all of the XFL rules changes have been, I thought of the defunct AAF and what their rule changes had been.

I looked it up and my response was basically, "That was it? No wonder they failed."

No kick-offs, all teams start at their own 25 instead.

Strict limits on who and how many players can pass-rush on a given play.

Forced 2 point conversion attempts after TDs.

Onside kick replaced with a 4th down attempt (but this was so restricted as far as valid situations that it was worthless).

The only really good change was more transparency for replays, something which even the XFL managed to do better with having coaches and players wired for sound as well, plus in-game interviews.

In hindsight it seems like the AAF was just there to serve as a veteran combine for the NFL, rather than trying to be their own successful and separate league. Though after their week 2 debacle with their production quality dropping to the level of a high school football game, it was no surprise that it was going to fail.