XFL Orlando Guardians Quarterback Quinten Dormady, Saturday April 8, 2023.
Since the official announcement of the formation of the United Football League at the beginning of the month, President and CEO Russ Brandon as well as team head coaches have done several interviews with local media, both on radio and in print. Some newsworthy nuggets have been dropped – or at least hinted at – in the cavalcade of communiques. After sifting through many of them, I was able to find a few that revealed new info not previously known or confirmed by the league.
If you were wondering whether the XFL vs. USFL competition would survive the merger, this article seems to confirm that. When the UFL announced separate XFL and USFL conferences rather than the traditional geographical set-up, that was our first clue that ownership saw value in playing the two leagues – and fanbases – against each other.
In the article above, Stallions head coach Skip Holtz talked about a lot of the boiler-plate stuff, like why the UFL can be successful as a merged league, as well as the process of protecting 42 players in the dispersal draft. He also played up the XFL vs. USFL rivalry in plugging the first game of the season, XFL champion Arlington Renegades hosting his USFL champion Stallions. Holtz framed it as a discussion fans have about which is the better league, suggesting we may find out after that game. For fans who believed a merger would create a Kumbaya-like atmosphere, that may be true among the higher-ups, but the teams may not be ready to let go of that rivalry.
The biggest mystery surrounding the Battlehawks is that of QB AJ McCarron’s status. McCarron, currently on the roster of the Cincinnati Bengals, is slated to become a free agent on March 15, about two weeks before the first regular season UFL game. Becht said he hoped to have a solution to the issue in the next two weeks; that doesn’t mean fans will know which way McCarron and the team will go, just that St. Louis will have an idea of what they’ll need – or not need – for camp in the QB department.
In terms of league rules, the much-ballyhooed XFL kickoff will not carry over to the UFL; instead, the league will use the USFL’s kickoff from the 20-yard line. And in a change near and dear to the hearts of Battlehawks fans everywhere, the playoffs will include division winners and the next two teams with the best records, regardless of division. That would prevent the mess the XFL – and the Battlehawks – found themselves in last year.
This story focused more on Dormady as the local kid coming home to play as a pro, but there are a few, small items revealed in Greg Luca’s column. It hasn’t been acknowledged publicly yet, but Marc Lillibridge was referred to as San Antonio’s “general manager” (notice the terminology, apparently inheriting the USFL verbiage for the position known in the XFL as director of player personnel), confirming that he indeed made the move to San Antonio along with others on the XFL Roughnecks staff. Lillibridge mentioned he wished he could’ve gone back and drafted Dormady in the first dispersal draft, calling it a “mistake” that he let the QB fall to the super dispersal draft (where the Brahmas drafted him #1 overall).
Also, head coach Wade Phillips noted that “every position is open” once training camp begins. Often just coach-speak, this may be one of the few times where that phrase rings true. The Brahmas are a mishmash of San Antonio holdovers, Houston Roughneck imports, and new players altogether. It’s more of an expansion team-like situation than any other roster in the league. So trash those pre-camp depth charts: Everyone appears to be starting on even footing for the Brahmas.
The story didn’t exactly answer the question posed in the headline, but the Journal’s interview with Russ Brandon did reveal a few bites of new info, as noted in a United Football Media post on X: New uniforms and the March kickoff. “New uniforms” is pretty vague – are they new because they’re being redesigned? Or because the two leagues had different suppliers, they’re literally going to be new uniforms, with the same designs, for at least four of the teams? It’s hard to believe there was enough time to redesign any team’s uniforms, but time will tell.
I had long wondered if the March 30th opening date was something the league decided on as the norm moving forward, sort of a compromise between the XFL’s February start and the USFL’s mid-April kickoff. Or, if the calendar for this year was necessitated by the timing of the merger and would move back to a February start next year. The end of the season coinciding with the beginning of Phase II of the NFL off-season, including rookie minicamps where many players earned tryouts last year, was something XFL players, coaches, and management often used as a bragging point over the USFL. Based on the wording in the article, it would seem that the late March start may not be written in stone beyond 2024.
Becht is keeping an eye on how NFL staffs shape up before finalizing his remaining hires
No head coach has gotten closer to his community than Anthony Becht in St. Louis. This column by Ben Frederickson (who has given a tremendous amount of ink to the Battlehawks since their inception in 2019) is ostensibly about Becht’s son, Rocco, and his successes this year as the starting quarterback at Iowa State. However, we do learn a little bit about the St. Louis assistant coaching situation. Battlehawks receivers coach Ricky Proehl will not return, and the others remain in flux: “Becht is keeping an eye on how NFL staffs shape up before finalizing his remaining hires.”
It’s not an ideal situation to draft players and then hire the assistants who will coach them; you’d prefer to have the position coaches do some of the leg work in scouting the players that are being drafted and signed, just as an NFL team would do. One of the positives of the timing of the UFL season appears to be the ability to lure coaches who recently completed NFL seasons. There’s a lot of staff turnover going on right now, especially on teams in which head coaches have been let go. It may be a pipe dream to imagine Becht, or anyone, truly bringing in someone fresh off a stint in the NFL (especially with “seasonal” contracts for UFL assistants in effect), but it appears as if Becht has his eye toward that very scenario.
Brahmas taking shape under new coach Wade Phillips
Phillips and Lillibridge were both quoted for this story as well, and we learned a little bit more about what the coaching staff will look like. As with Becht and the Battlehawks, San Antonio’s coaches are still in flux, not a surprise given the late notice that Brahmas head coach Hines Ward would no longer lead the team. Offensive line coach Andre Gurode and receivers coach Payton Pardee reunite with Phillips and offensive coordinator AJ Smith in San Antonio. The defensive side is a little more uncertain, with 2023 Roughnecks defensive coordinator Brian Stewart leaving for a job in the college ranks. At the time this was written, Phillips was “in the process” of hiring a DC.
Lillibridge admitted whiffing on the first couple draft picks for the Roughnecks in 2022 (RB Adrian Killins and TE Garrett Owens), but said he feels more comfortable this year. Upon selecting TE Cody Latimer in the dispersal draft, Phillips was blunt, saying, “…we’ll be able to utilize him a lot more than the kid we had last year, because he wasn’t as talented.” That would likely be a reference to Owens, who played a minimal role on offense despite some preseason hype.
Head coaches have been hitting the local airwaves in addition to speaking with print journalists. This 10-minute segment with Panthers head coach Mike Nolan gave some informed speculation on the timeline of schedule and rules releases. Nolan puts both of them at “another week or two.” Notably, Nolan plays coy (the XFL never liked coaches to reveal info before they had a chance to) by saying he’s not sure what rules the UFL will go with; either that, or coaches haven’t been kept in the loop on those decisions.
Nolan said there were about a half-dozen unique USFL rules that he liked and admitted he hadn’t paid close enough attention to the XFL to comment on theirs. As always, tinkering with the kickoff was brought up. “One of the ideas to replace the kickoff that I heard,” said Nolan, was to replace the kickoff with a punt. He argued that it would accomplish two of the most important goals of this play: Making it safer and allowing for more returns. Nolan didn’t specify where he “heard” that suggestion, whether it was something the league was considering or if it was just something being generally discussed by others outside the league walls.
