Have you ever purposefully made someone have a bad day?
When I was in high school, my family got a new printer that could make colored copies. So I started making colored copies of $20 bills. I would crumble them up so they were really soft and felt like real cash and then drop them in the hallway at school. I’d stand on the side of the hallway and watch people pick them up. They thought it was real money, but I knew... I knew the truth. The best one was when a gal who told on me for cheating on a test picked one up and had a huge grin on her face. I knew that later on, she would open that bill up and realize that it was just copy paper and it’d bum her out.
I purposefully made her have a bad day, and it gave me a whole lot of satisfaction.
That’s what the Orlando Guardians are going to try to do on Saturday. They are 1-8 and have been eliminated from playoff contention for what seems like the last month. They’re bad and have nothing to lose. They’re just going to be there to make the Battlehawks have a bad day and knock them out of the postseason. I know from experience that the satisfaction that they will get from doing that is going to feel very very very sweet.
Hell, we just saw it a couple of months ago when the Detroit Lions beat the Green Bay Packers in week 18 to knock them out of playoff contention. They went into that game knowing they could ruin a team’s day and they played really really well knowing that they had nothing to lose.
Orlando has nothing to play for. Never pick a fight with a man who has nothing to lose.
But golly. This Orlando Guardians team sure does stink.
Orlando Guardians @ St. Louis Battlehawks
Saturday 4/22, 11 am Central
There has been a lot of different information and speculation about what needs to happen between the Seattle game and the St. Louis game for the postseason to get to its final form, and I want to clear everything up.
This was posted by u/Anchillor22 on the Battlehawks’ Subreddit:
“STL Playoff Scenarios
STL wins/SEA loses…STL in the playoffs
STL loses/SEA wins… SEA in the playoffs
STL loses/SEA loses… STL in the playoffs as our fourth loss is a non-divisional matchup (ORL), while SEA would have four divisional losses (DC-2, STL, VGS)
Fourth tiebreaker-- STL wins/SEA wins… STL needs to score 19 more points vs ORL than SEA scores against Vegas AND STL must still rank first in total points against to win Tiebreaker 4, which is the best-combined ranking among divisional teams in points scored and points allowed in all games.
(Total points and points allowed are not just divisional games. It’s the totals you have on the season but only ranked against your divisional opponents.)
Points For as of 4/16
STL 196
SEA 215 (+19)
Point against as of 4/16
SEA 168 (+6)
STL 174”
Then you have @MattyFreshTV on Twitter saying,
“It’s all in the math.
If Vegas scores at least 7 more than Orlando this week, STL has the better Points Against Combined Rank.
This deadlocks Tiebreaker 4, opening up Tiebreaker 5. Giving STL a much better chance to get in WITHOUT having to drop 40, by just playing good defense.”
Then you have Josh Lewin for XFL.com writing,
“If Orlando beats St. Louis to open the weekend, Seattle has to lose – and lose fairly decidedly – the following day against Vegas to miss the playoffs.
If St. Louis wins as expected, the pressure is squarely on the Sea Dragons.”
If you don’t understand any of this and if all those words make your brain hurt because they all don’t make a whole lot of sense in different ways, just know that you’re right. None of this makes sense.
We’re trying to find out what needs to happen in the 10th week of a Spring Football season, and apparently in order to do that we have to have taken a Masters Level Finite math course.
Here’s what needs to happen in my book.
“Beat Orlando like you did Vegas in week 6 when it was 29-6, and you’re good.”
Bada Bing, Bada Boom.
Sounds easy right? Like, it’s the Guardians…
The Guardians have had one of the weirdest and worst seasons of any team in the XFL. Yeah, they’re 1-8, so that sucks for them, but their one win was against the Defenders so that’s a hell of a hook to hang your hat on. The weirdest thing for them was the situation with their starting quarterback, Quinten Dormandy.
It was really early in the season, maybe week 1 or 2, and news came out that Dormany was giving the Guardians’ playbook to their opponents. The XFL suspended him from the league while they investigated the whole thing. Well, 3 or 4 weeks later, they finished their investigation, and turns out, nope. Dormandy didn’t do that and it was just someone saying it to try to tarnish his reputation.
Now, as a creative guy, I can’t help but commend the creativity it takes to come up with such an out-of-the-box way to slander someone’s name. Yeah, it’s a terrible, awful, mean, and dastardly thing to do, but creative as all get out. Hats off to you, you jerk.
Battlehawks’ Offense v. Guardians’ Defense
The offense can win this game in 20 minutes if they do everything right. Orlando is in a spot where thay can be convinced to get into a, “Let’s just end this goddamned season” mindset, and it’s going to be best for everybody if they get put into that headspace early in the game.
The Battlehawks like to fart around on their first drive and waste a handful of plays. Remember in week 6, when Coach Becht said, “The game plan is for us to really get going on the second drive” because they can’t be doing that. The sooner this Orlando defense gives up the better.
I don’t think it’ll be too hard to get them there because they are not just physically dinged up, but they are straight up BANGed up and it doesn’t help that are really lacking in depth. Last week they ran a play where they had a tight end come in as a defensive end and he immediately got pancaked. It was very very funny. Put pressure on their D. Make them have a Sad Boi Spring. Then expose them. Seems like a pretty solid game plan, right? But how do the Battlehawks do that?
I mentioned this when I was reccapping the week 9 game, but AJ only hit 4 different receivers in their 30-12 loss to the Sea Dragons. He needs to get back to the 7-8 different receivers that he’s normally at. I know that Marcell Ateman can clearly handle double digit targets and he can be successful with that volume, but Hakeem Butler doesn’t get tackled. We need both of the big receivers to show off their size on yet another team with undersized cornerbacks. They’ll have success if they’re given the chance. Have your big guys get the ball and be big.
Last week the Guardians’ defense got thrown on for 302 yards. If AJ McCarron is as healthy as he says he is, then he should be able to feast on these guys.
If he’s healthy.
If he’s not healthy and that shoulder is still a little beat up, he’s gonna have a bad time.
Going into last week, I was trusting this offensive line. Fool me once. Orlando likes to send the house when they blitz, and it has been successful. I imagine that it’ll be successful this week, given that AJ McCarron is the most sacked QB in the XFL. But when that blitz doesn’t work? That’s where AJ should be able to use Jennings, Hill, and Shepherd to cut up the middle of the field. If the Guardians sell out with their linebackers, the only guys those receivers will have to beat is some bum safeties. Have your fast guys get the ball and be fast.
As far as deep shots go, I would like to see 8-12 of them. The Guardians only have 3 interceptions this entire season, so they’re not much of a threat. If AJ is able to launch the ball, he should be pretty safe hitting Ateman or Butler when they have guys draped on them, and Shepherd should be open by at least 5 yards on every deep route. As long as AJ doesn’t underthrow it like he did last week, there’s not a great chance of that ball getting picked, and it might even turn into a DPI that Dean Blandino won’t call.
If the Battlehawks want to run the ball, they’re going to have to do it to the outside. Orlando has a bunch of fat meat on the interior of their D-Line and those guys will swallow up runs. I would use the runs VERY sparingly in the first half of the game. Let the defense lose confidence before you start trying to run the ball down their throat or else they’re just going to be a bunch of wasted plays. Also, keep doing the “Gary Jennings as a running back” thing. That was the only run part of the game last week.
We’ve seen this offense. We know this offense. We know their strengths and their weaknesses. Get the right players in the right spots. Hit Shepherd on a corner route. Don’t hit Butler on a screen. We know this offense can be successful, and a week 10 matchup against the worst team in the XFL should be a great spot to showcase what everyone can do. Let’s get Darrius Shepherd a spot on an NFL roster.
Battlehawks’ Defense v. Guardians’ Offense
Man, oh man, this Guardians’ offense is really something.
Quinten Dormandy is the starting quarterback… maybe. In the last 2 games, he has turned over the ball 6 times. Then the week before that, in week 7, he threw 6 touchdowns against the Defenders. I don’t completely know which Dormandy we’re going to get, but I’m sure hoping we get the bad one. Again, that’s if he is the starter, which is a maybe.
They took him out at the end of the week 9 game because he was playing like trash, and they put in their other guy, Deondre Francois. He’s much more of a dual-threat quarterback, kinda like my boy Cole McDonald with the Houston Roughnecks.
Welp, wouldn’t ya know it, Francois gets rocked on a touchdown throw and gets taken out of the game with what looks like beat-up ribs. He said that he’d be able to go back in, but who knows if there’s any truth to that.
I don’t know who the Battlehawks are going to get, but neither is very scary.
The 3 guys that are scary are the tight ends Cody Latimer and Jordan Thomas, and running back Devin Darrington.
Cody Latimer sat out last week with an injury, but he’s supposed to be back this week. He’s got the second-most receptions and yards in the XFL behind Jachour Pearson and the most 20+ yard receptions. Latimer is a scary dude with a big body and big hands. With him being out last week, I imagine we’re going to be seeing a lot of balls going his way.
Jordan Thomas is another huge dude. He’s got thighs the size of linemen. Not thighs the size of an offensive linemen’s thighs, but they are the size of actual very large human beings. He plays bully ball and he abuses DBs who don’t tackle. That’s not good for the Battlehawks coming off of last week.
Devin Darrington is pretty much Orlando’s only running back. By the end of the week 9 game, he was in on every play because there was no one else. Yeah, that kind of volumes going to drain his gas tank pretty quickly, but when he’s got energy, he’s quick on the sidelines and he’s dangerous in space.
The defensive key to this game is going to be tackling. The Battlehawks were absolutely horrible at tackling. They need to be at least 75% better at tackling than they were last week, especially if they’re going to see a lot of balls going the way of some mondo-sized tight ends with bodies that are comparable to The Mountain.
It’s a tough assignment, but one thing that helps the defense is that Dormandy is very inaccurate and reckless. The D line is going to have to do their thing and keep pressure on the QBs, ESPECIALLY on 3rd downs. They can’t allow Orlando to have a +40% 3rd down conversion rate.
Prediction:
Dude.
I don’t know man.
Last week we saw the Battlehawks play as poorly as they have all season. If they bounce back this week, they’re going to have to bounce back big time in order to do whatever the hell it is that they have to do in order to make it to the post season.
Is my prediction for this game 32-12 Battlehawks?
Yes.
Do I think that will happen?
Not a chance.