Category: Alternative Football

The distance between Birmingham and Memphis is 245 miles.

The distance between those cities’ United Football League teams seems much greater – five games into the circuit’s inaugural season, anyway.

Entering Saturday’s rivalry rematch at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, the Birmingham Stallions are 5-0 (3-0, USFL Conference) while the Memphis Showboats are 1-4 (1-2). The Stallions defeated the ‘Boats 33-14 on April 13 at Protective Stadium.

A Birmingham win – coupled with a St. Louis victory over Houston later in the day – would secure a postseason berth for Skip Holtz’s crew.

“Memphis is a team we’ve already played, and it always gets a little bit tricky playing the same team twice,” Holtz said. “I think they’re a team that’s evolving. They are schematically really starting to figure out who they are. They’re scoring a lot so far.

“They’re creating a lot of yards, and what they’re doing offensively creates a number of big plays. I think they pose a different challenge this week than they did three weeks ago when we played them, and so we’ve just got to focus on us.”

The Showboats basically need to run the table to have any chance of playing past Week 10.

Memphis coach John DeFilippo isn’t looking at it that way, though.

“We take ‘em one at a time,” DeFillipo said. “It’s a game at home in the division … that’s the way we look at it. I’m never a fan of looking too far ahead because pro football has a way of knocking you on your butt.”

The Showboats are coming off a 35-18 loss to Michigan, the team’s fourth setback in a row.

With starting quarterback Case Cookus injured, Troy Williams got the call in Week 5 and threw for 248 yards and three touchdowns.

Daewood Davis was his main target, snagging six receptions for 101 yards and a score.

Cookus will be back in the No. 1 spot on Saturday but regardless of who is behind center, they’ll need time to throw against a Birmingham team that can often make that task rather difficult.

“We have to protect the passer … that’s the No. 1 thing we have to do,” DeFillipo said. “They won the battle of the line of scrimmage on both sides (in the first meeting), and that’s gonna be the key to the game. That’s the key to any game, usually, but it’s especially the key to this one.”

The Stallions continue to set the standard in the UFL, leading the way in several statistical categories.

They average a league-best 367.4 yards per game in total offense, and are No. 1 in all-purpose yards (512.2 per game), rushing yards per game (157), rushing yards per attempt (4.9), yards per catch (14.6), first downs (105), field goals (14), punt return average (12.5) sacks (18) and time of possession (165:40).

Both Adrian Martinez and Matt Corral have put up numbers impressive enough to show why they’ve split time as QB1. But from a purely statistical standpoint, Martinez – who’ll start on Saturday – has an edge. Martinez has amassed 302 rushing yards (best in the UFL) and a touchdown and 603 passing yards and three aerial TDs.

Corral counters with 494 passing yards and two touchdowns and 99 yards on the ground.

“Adrian and Matt both are doing an excellent job,” Holtz said. “In coaching the quarterbacks, all I’m trying to do is get them to play in the system in a way to be efficient.”

Ricky Person Jr. is second to Martinez in rushing with 180 yards and five touchdowns and C.J. Marable has racked up 175 yards and reached the end zone once.

Deon Cain and Jace Sternberger have both eclipsed the 200-yard mark in receiving yards. Cain has 297 and a touchdown and Sternberger is good for 201 and two TDs.

Kyahva Tezino has been a force on defense, managing 21 solo tackles and 35 in all.

“He was one of the leading tacklers in the league a year ago (playing for the Pittsburgh Maulers in the USFL),” Holtz said. “We played against him. He’s a great player, he’s a competitor, he’s a leader, he’s physical, he’s tough. He can run and he’s got a great nose for the ball. I can’t say enough positive things about him.

“And I think the old adage that you don’t want to play against them, so you’ve got to try and find a way to play with them, applies to Kyahva.”

Lorenzo Burns has been in on 24 tackles, Mark Gilbert, 21, and Demarquis Gates, 20.

Carlos Davis leads the league in sacks with six for 38 yards on losses.

JoJo Tillery will miss the game due to a left hamstring injury suffered in last weekend’s 32-9 victory over Houston.

Saturday’s showdown is set for 11 a.m. with ABC providing TV coverage.

“We’ve got to make sure that we keep tightening things up and keep getting better as a football team as far as execution,” Holtz said. “We’re really excited about getting into another division game this week after having the opportunity to win last week against Houston.”

Deon Cain has a national championship on his resume, a United States Football League title (as well as 2023 USFL Championship Game MVP honors), and is one of the main reasons the Birmingham Stallions are unbeaten in the inaugural season of the United Football League.

Yet for all the wide receiver has done, there’s still plenty left to do.

Certainly, Cain hopes to make it back to the NFL, but midway through the 2024 UFL season his focus is strictly on the business at hand. And for 5-0 Birmingham, that business is winning.

“The mentality for us is what (Stallions coach Skip Holtz) has been preaching, which is to go 1-0 every week,” Cain said on Wednesday. “We’ve got goals we’ve got to chase throughout the season. It’s a great spot to be in – to be undefeated and keep stacking up wins – but it’s something we have to keep on doing.”

This season Cain has snagged 19 catches for 297 yards and a touchdown, and averages 20.4 yards per kick return.

He got 144 of those yards in Birmingham’s 33-14 victory over Memphis in Week 3. The rematch with the Showboats (1-4) takes place this Saturday at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

“They have NFL guys and experienced guys on their roster, and they’re deep,” Cain said. “The first time we played we had a great day execution-wise on offense, and the play calls were hitting.”

Cain says prepping for the second game against their rivals involves what he saw in the first contest as well as what has happened since.

“You have to study recent games and the game that you’ve played,” he said. “You’ve got to pick up on old tendencies as well as new tendencies, because they can show one thing but then do another.

“We have to study everything because they’ve played two more games since we played them the first time, so we have a lot more film to study, seeing some of the new stuff they’re trying.”

Cain helped the Clemson Tigers claim the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship, and finished that season – his junior year – with 724 yards and nine touchdowns on 38 receptions.

He decided to forgo his final year of eligibility and enter the 2018 NFL Draft, where he was a sixth-round pick of the Indianapolis Colts.

But his big-league dreams were dealt a blow when he suffered an ACL tear during training camp.

He did finally see action in 2019, but was ultimately waived by the Colts in November.

Since then, he has been in camp with the Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles (twice), but the Stallions have been his best showcase to prove he can play on Sundays in the fall.

Cain has shown game-breaking ability during his entire tenure with Birmingham, with one of his best efforts coming in the 2023 USFL Championship Game.

In a 28-12 victory over the Pittsburgh Maulers, Cain had three touchdowns on four catches for 70 yards, and returned five kickoffs for a total of 101 yards.

He finished the season with 182 receiving yards and two touchdowns, and piled up 668 return yards.

“Really, I’m just a playmaker and a team guy,” Cain said. “If you want me to block, I’ll block. If you want me to run a  vertical route, I’ll do that. When it comes to football, I just want to be part of a winning team.

“I’ll let the film speak for itself, but I put in a lot of work day in and day out to show I’m a great football player.”

When the United States Football League and XFL merged to form the United Football League, part of the deal was blending rules from each.

When it came to kickoffs, the UFL opted to borrow from the USFL and tee the ball up at the kicking team’s 20-yard line.

The XFL’s tiered conversion system – one that eliminates the PAT kick altogether – was adopted.

A team can score a single point by successfully reaching the end zone from the 2-yard line (via run or pass); two points for a scoring play from the 5-yard line; and three points for a successful try from the 10-yard line.

To say this rule has taken away the automatic aspect of “extra points” would be an understatement.

With half the season complete, only two teams are above the 50 percent mark in successful 1-point and 2-point attempts, while all three 3-point attempts have come up empty.

The Michigan Panthers have been largely successful on getting bonus points following TDs. After five games, they’re scoring 1-point conversions at a 57 percent clip and making 50 percent of their 2-point attempts.

“Let me tell you about analytics,” Michigan coach Mike Nolan said. “If I’m gonna do analytics, I want to know what my football team is capable of doing based on my people. I don’t like analytics when you take all eight teams in the UFL and put them together and say, ‘OK, the leaguewide stats said you go for it here’ and you don’t – that doesn’t do me any good. If I’m the eighth offense or the first offense, those are different analytics.”

Michigan is fifth in the league in total offense and fourth in scoring.

Interestingly, while the Panthers are 3-2, the team that is making 57 percent of their 2-pointers and half of their 1-point conversions is Arlington – the UFL’s only winless team at 0-5.

The Renegades are fourth in total offense and fifth in scoring.

“I’ll say this … from a simple standpoint, I’m always looking to keep a touchdown with an extra point above,” Nolan said. “In other words, if we score first, typically, I’m thinking of going for one. Why? Because that other team not only has to score a touchdown, but they have to score again.

“It’s not like the old kick (an extra point) and it’s automatic. There’s nothing automatic about going for it at the 2-yard line. There’s a little bit different thought process than in the NFL.”

While the 1-point conversion is the default mode for Michigan, the Birmingham Stallions are thinking two points when they score first.

Skip Holtz’s team has rolled to a 5-0 record but are oh-for-three on 1-point conversions and five-of-10 when scrimmaging from the five.

“We’re pretty much in the 2-point race right now,” Holtz said. “By rule, we’re gonna go for two unless we get into a game where one point means it’s an even game, or the one point is going to make the difference. You’d like to think that we were better on one than two, but that hasn’t been the case so far this year. We came into this year and said if we can be 50 percent on 2-point plays, it’s just like creating an extra point.”

The USFL also had tiered conversions, but the single point kick option was the most used during that league’s two years of competition.

In the UFL, the only way a kicker can score is by making a field goal.

“Going for two was a decision that we talked a lot about during camp,” Holtz said. “Even if you were 50 percent on one-point plays, you’re better off to go for two and then get 40 percent of them. And so that was a decision we made, but I’m still learning about this as well. Because I’m only five games into it, and the XFL teams had the opportunity to do this in the XFL a year ago.”

As for Nolan, any decision he makes following a Michigan touchdown will be dictated by circumstances – and how well his team deals with those circumstances.

“Obviously when you get into the fourth quarter, sometimes it becomes a little bit more serious than (a 1-point conversion),” he said. “You might have to go for three because you’re trying to catch up. But again, when it comes to analytics, I like to know what we’re capable of … I really don’t care about those other seven teams.”

Conversion stats

USFL Conference

Birmingham

1-point: 0-3 (0 %)

2-point: 5-10 (50 %)

3-point: 0-0 (0%)

Houston

1-point: 0-1 (0%)

2-point: 2-6 (33%)

3-point: 0-1 (0%)

Memphis

1-point: 1-6 (17%)

2-point: 1-3 (33%)

3-point: 0-0 (0%)

Michigan

1-point: 4-7 (57%)

2-point: 3-6 (50%)

3-point: 0-0 (0%)

XFL Conference

Arlington

1-point: 1-2 (50%)

2-point: 4-7 (57%)

3-point: 0-0 (0%)

DC

1-point: 0-0 (0%)

2-point: 2-10 (20%)

3-point: 0-0 (0%)

San Antonio

1-point: 5-9 (56%)

2-point: 1-5 (20%)

3-point: 0-1 (0%)

St. Louis

1-point: 3-6 (50%)

2-point: 5-11 (45%)

3-point: 0-1 (0%)