Houston and Arlington scrimmaged on Tuesday march 5, 2024. (Roughnecks Instagram)
Houston Roughnecks head coach Curtis Johnson feels there is a benefit to scrimmaging against other teams, especially teams in the XFL, which he is relatively unfamiliar with.
“Yesterday we practiced against Arlington, and it was really good practice,” Johnson said. “There’s some places, some positions, that they are a little bit better than us. So, we just got to find some players in there some positions that I felt that we were good at… We got a good feel for Birmingham. I got a good feel for Memphis… The Memphis coach was in New Orleans last year and got a good feel for Michigan. We just kind of looked at the old XFL teams and tried to prepare for them. Going against Arlington yesterday was the best thing we could have ever done. Now we have a gauge on how we need to get what we need.”
Johnson speaks highly of his squad, taking a positive outlook on the Roughnecks’ progress in training camp. However, he is especially high on the defense.
“I like my like the team, I really liked the team,” Johnson said. “I like the defensive line. There are a bunch of guys that look like they’re hungry… this competitiveness is really standing out. Defensively, I think we on course.”
Soon, the Roughnecks will face a roster cutdown, and Coach Johnson feels the decisions will be difficult.
“There are some cuts that we got to cut down, I know a year ago would have made the team and would have been really good players for us,” Johnson explained. “I thought it would be easy getting from 75 to 58. But every day I looked and special teams is becoming more important with how we make these decisions.”
Despite having cuts ahead, Coach Johnson and his staff are ready to sign cuts from other teams to fill some holes.
“We got a board we call our backboard,” Johnson said. “We have a backboard of players that that we would you know once we get these cuts that we may change some guys out, or guys that we’re looking at. And we’ve looked at we’ve looked at some guys on other rosters in the UFL that we have a list of those guys. That could be potential cuts.”
As usual, we should expect additional roster changes as the UFL training camp progresses.
