Three up, three down from UFL week five

My “Three up, three down” column appears weekly on UFL Board during the season, taking note of positives or things that are happening often (“up”) as well as negatives or rarities (“down”). 

Up: Regional game switches

Once again, viewers were saved by regional coverage games. Last week, it was a weather delay that caused the change-over for a portion of the audience. This week, rather than subject most of the country to a noncompetitive fourth quarter between Birmingham and Houston, FOX switched over to the end of the closer Arlington vs. San Antonio game. Maximizing eyeballs on the product should be paramount for the UFL this season, and abandoning games that get out of hand likely kept some percentage of viewers around. They’ve lucked into regional games bailing them out twice now, but the next one won’t be until week nine.

Down: League-wide field goal percentage

Through the first four weeks of the UFL season, kickers were king. They were perhaps the strongest, if not most consistent, position group on the field. Not only were they making kicks at an NFL-comparable rate, they were booming them from beyond 50 yards and into the 60-yard range. Kickers hit a wall in week five. Six field goals were missed by four kickers. League-wide, kickers were 13-of-19, putting them under a 70% conversion rate for the first time this season. Weather was a contributing factor in a few of the games: The two Saturday night clashes were marked by winds blowing across the state of Texas. And a downpour affected the Michigan vs. Memphis game Sunday afternoon. As playoff races tighten down the stretch, kicking performances will take on added importance.

Up: Touchbacks on kickoffs

Sticking with the kicker theme, touchbacks have been hard to come by this year on kickoffs. Returners have often fielded the ball somewhere between the 10 and 20-yard lines, gifting their teams strong field position to start their drives. Week five saw kickers get their revenge a bit: There were four touchbacks, which is more than there had been in the entire season up to that point. Even more kicks went deeper than usual, with many being fielded inside the 10. Three of the four touchbacks could’ve been the result of the aforementioned Texas winds on Saturday, but that doesn’t account for one by Andre Szmyt of St. Louis against D.C. on Sunday, or the other, seemingly longer kickoffs throughout the league. A trend? Perhaps. There’s a big difference between forcing an offense to start at their own 25-yard line with a touchback versus the 40 or 50 as many have been doing after returns.

Down: St. Louis O-Line health

The Battlehawks were the only UFL team to return all five of its starting offensive linemen from a year ago. They lost just two starts last year from that group due to injury. And through four games this year, only 27 snaps were taken by a non-starter on the line. For the last year-and-a-half, they’ve been a model of consistency and health. That all changed in the team’s 45-12 romp over the D.C. Defenders. Right guard Vadal Alexander was the first to fall, leaving the game in the first half. Then, just before halftime, right tackle Juwann Bushell-Beatty was hurt. He did not dress for the second half.

Early in the fourth quarter, left guard Steven Gonzalez went down on Wayne Gallman’s TD run, forcing Alexander back into the game. He was clearly not right, giving up a sack on the follow-up conversion play. Gonzalez did eventually return. Head coach Anthony Becht on the game broadcast remarked that their emergency plan was to put a tight end on the line to block. The Battlehawks have two other backup offensive linemen, but because game day rosters are limited to 42 players, both were inactive. Here’s hoping the league increases the active roster number in 2025 to supply teams with adequate depth on game days.

Up: San Antonio hubris

A routine week five game turned into much more when Brahmas offensive coordinator A.J. Smith met with the media in the lead-up to the game against the Renegades. Smith expressed displeasure with the way the Renegades played the Houston Roughnecks in the XFL playoffs last season, when Smith and others in San Antonio were on the Houston staff. In the playoffs, the Renegades eliminated the Roughnecks on their way to the league championship. That emotion may have gotten the better of Smith late in this year’s game. Up 25-15 with 3:47 to go, the Brahmas needed only to run out the clock on Arlington to secure the victory. San Antonio ran the ball the first four plays of the drive before facing a 2nd-and-9 at the Arlington 48-yard line with 2:03 remaining. Arlington had exhausted all of its timeouts.

Instead of continuing to run the ball, Smith called a pass play. It ended up getting picked off by Myles Dorn, leading to ridicule from the announcers who were flabbergasted by the call. With the league’s 4th-and-12 play, Arlington certainly had enough time to come back and win. In the end, they weren’t able to do so. The announcers openly wondered whether Smith’s desire to bury Arlington played a part in that pass call, perhaps looking for another score to run things up as opposed to just continuing to run the ball down Arlington’s throat as they had all game (the Brahmas ran for 161 yards on the day).

Down: Home-field advantage

Last week, I wrote about the home field advantage St. Louis was able to attain due to their large and lively crowds. Other teams in the league haven’t benefited as much from playing in front of their own fans. Home teams were 0-4 this past weekend and are just .500 on the year. Every team but one has to travel out of Arlington for its home games, making absent one of the traditional aspects of home-field advantage. The other, crowd involvement, has also been lacking in many stadiums around the league. So far, playing on a team’s home field hasn’t proven to be much of an advantage at all.