Not to sound cocky and arrogant, but really the best way is for the quarterback, Maximus Boudreaux, to play better. Right now Max is not playing very well. The Seawolves have a great defense and a solid run game. They have a good receiving corps as well. Max is getting sacked a lot, throwing a lot of picks, and also fumbling. That's pretty bad. To add to that, his rating is one of the worst in the league, and he's not completing many of his passes. The passes he does complete are not going for a lot of yards, and certainly not for touchdowns. The whole passing part of the the Seawolves offense is just not clicking together, and if the team wants to improve, that has to change. Sounds simple but yet is not an easy task. If Max and the receivers can improve and the rest of the team keeps on with what they are doing, the Seawolves have a real chance to repeat their glory from 2 seasons ago when they won the Ultimini.
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Through what is now 8 weeks, the Hawks are arguably the 3rd best team in the league. At the very least, their record would mark them as such. However, there is one major problem they have, a huge lack of dominance. Right now, the Hawks only have multi-possession wins over teams bad enough to lose to the Second Line, while their only game against fierce competition was a blowout home loss to the Crash. The second half of the season for the Hawks will see them visit both conference leaders in back to back weeks, and if that pattern holds, the 1st seed hopefuls will have 4 losses going into the final third of the season. The team has played 3 OT games already, and won 2 of them, but the identity of those teams is the problem, minus the Silverbacks. Needing until the dying embers of OT to take down the Copperheads and allowing them to score over a 5th of their total points for the season in one game is bad, letting the 3-5 Sailfish hang around and then losing to them in OT is worse.
Both sides of this question are important to address for the Norfolk sea wolves. Our defense has been doing an exceptional job of limiting points and creating turnovers. They are the reason we have been in these games as much as we have. While there are mistakes made and big plays given up, the team is young and growing into their positions. To improve as a squad our offense needs to find a rhythm. Too often drives stall out or go nowhere, not giving the defense a breather. This puts extra stress on the D to make plays. If the offense can find more ways to score, or at least sustain drives to help provide better field position then the Sea wolves will be in prime position to make a deep playoff run. The team has the pieces in place. it really just comes down to the execution to make things work.
Just a little more than a third of the way through the DSFL season, Tijuana sits on top of their conference with a 4-1 record and an impressive league leading +90 point differential. Taking into account their 5 point loss to the Pythons (the other 4-1 team / conference leader, who took down Tijuana in last year’s Ultimini) in week 4, the Luchadores have won by an average of nearly 24 points per game in their four wins. With the highest scoring offense in the league, and a defense that has given up fewer than 15 PPG, Tijuana has proven they’re a dominant team on both sides of the football. However, that doesn’t mean they’re done working on improvements.With 10 returning players from last season, the Ultimini loss is still fresh in the team’s mind and losing to Portland again in week 4 hasn’t helped get that monkey off our back. We know we are a strong team but anything other than winning the championship this season will be a disappointment, so anywhere we can get better we are working to do so. As a member of the defense, the main thing I think we can still improve on is our splash plays. Our defense ranks in the bottom half for TFLs, FF/FR, and Sacks. As a cornerback, I’ll be mostly working to up our pass defense and interception numbers, not to mention trying to run one of those interceptions for a TD.While I’ve done my best to contribute that, with 3 interceptions and 10 PD in my first 5 games playing cornerback, the rookie corner Wevis over in Kansas City is beating me with 4 INT, 12 PD, and a TD as a cherry on top. While the focus is always team first, I know if I can be the top turnover creating corner in the league that it can make a huge difference towards our defense boosting our offense to more blowout wins.
Through 7 weeks of the ISFL season 44 the Baltimore Hawks are looking to repeat as champions and are currently rocking a 6-2 overall record. For the most part the season has been successful up to this point but there have been more close games than the Hawks would like. The defense has been humming along this season ranking 3rd overall in points allowed while the offense is doing slightly better ranking 2nd overall in the league in points scored. However the offense could make one major adjustment to be more explosive and that is get more out of rookie phenom Sam Mercury. Currently Mercury leads all rookies in receptions with 44 but the Hawks are using him like a plodding full back as he is only averaging 6.5 yards per reception. Coming out of the DSFL Mercury was known for his home run speed and acumen to bring down the long ball. If the Hawks want to get more explosive on offense they could and should do a better job of using Mercury on longer routes in the route tree especially as he mostly gets to line up against third string corners, safeties, or line backers. If the Hawks can do a better job of using Mercury more to his skill set there is no telling how high the ceiling on this offense could be and a repeat Ultimus would surely be within their grasp.
So far the Crash have been crushing it. Our secondary is great, our run game has always been strong, our pass rush has stepped up, and this is the best our passing offense has looked in a long time. I think in order to stay on top we have to mix up our strategies so teams don't know what to expect. Since our offense isn't as one-dimensional as it has been in previous seasons, we can use that to our advantage. I think teams have been going in heavy to stop our rushing attack which has left Jerrith to have one of his best seasons ever. On defense, we can sometimes give up a lot of yards through the air, but we also have some of the most forced turnovers in the league at this point which can make up for it. We go for the big plays! We've just got to keep it up.
This season has not been kind to the San Jose SaberCats. After 7, they were sitting at 2-5 (2-6 after week 8, a game they definitely should have won against the Chicago Butchers), including 3 (now 4) games in a row giving up at least 37 points. This would suggest the team really need to tighten things up on D.
This San Jose team wasn’t expected to challenge this year, but they definitely expected to be a bit closer than this. A fairly young core to this team was expected to be competitive in a couple of seasons, as a few important pieces hit their peak. This includes rookie quarterback Josh Patterson. He has been linking up well with young receiver Keanu Calhoun, who was second in the league in yardage among receivers thru 7 games. This definitely gives some hope for where this team is going. Just trust the process, let the players hit their stride and start competing for cups!