The 2020 football season kicked off — weirdly — Saturday.
And the back of the jersey for one player — a guy named Rahim Moore, who may sound familiar to Coloradans — should have been inscribed:
“They Hate Me’’
The XFL returned after a 19-year, well-deserved hiatus. This time it looks more like a professional football league than the ex-XFL traveling snake oil medicine show.
The DC Defenders-Seattle Dragons inaugural game was superior to the Broncos’ final exhibition with the Cardinals.
Perhaps Colorado should strive for an XFL expansion franchise next year.
The Colorado Springs Sky Cleats? The Colorado PikesPeaks? Bighorn Sheep? Lark Buntings? Bald Eagles? Gray Wolves? Orange Crushers? Snowcats? SpaceForcers? The FrontRangers?
The team could divide home games among Falcon Stadium, Mile High Stadium, Folsom Field and Canvas Stadium.
Just a thought.
The first-half MVP in the DC-Seattle game at a soccer stadium in Washington was Defenders defender Moore, who recorded the league’s first interception. The Defenders went on to beat the XFL team with the best helmet logo — a dragon straight out of the Game of Thrones. This was a Game of Innovations — live audio of play calls by coaches to quarterbacks, a 25-second clock between plays and one-foot inbounds receptions (both borrowed from college football), a one-, two- or three-point play after touchdowns, sideline in-game interviews (including one with a kicker who had just missed a field goal and another with a former Broncos’ center who uttered an unacceptable word), and unique kickoffs (from 30-yard line, while the rest of the players were stationed at the receiving team’s 30- and 35-yard-line).
The Defenders’ players received $2,222 bonuses for winning.
The contest was quicker-paced, with fewer penalties and less controversy, than the typical NFL version of football. And nobody was struck by one of the two ABC cameras roaming the field between plays. The introductory crowd of about 10,000 wasn’t impressive, but the NFL Washington franchise is Ungrateful Dread. The XFL team’s nickname doesn’t offend anyone except archers who protected medieval castles from sieges.
The XFL certainly has a stronger possibility of surviving than the defunct Alliance of American Football, which had the worst name and the shortest existence from Feb. 9 to April 2 last year. The XFL has broadcast arrangements with ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports/Fox Sports1 to televise most games during the 10-game regular season and the two-weekend postseason. And the league is backed financially by WWE’s Vince McMahon, a P.T. Barnum who was responsible for the original clustermuck XFL, but is staying out of the way in the reincarnation allowing football people (i.e. Andrew Luck’s father Oliver) to operate.
The league also hired coach Bob Stoops, who retired from the University of Oklahoma. His Dallas Renegades are favored to win the title (with Landry Jones as QB), which would be hilarious because of the Dallas Cowboys’ failures. Houston Roughnecks coach June Jones once was the offensive coordinator of the old USFL Denver Gold and became the Falcons’ coach with his run-and-shoot offense. Mike Riley, late of the University of Nebraska, has become offensive coordinator of the bad-breath Dragons, and Jerry Glanville — who, as an NFL coach, always left tickets for Elvis — has come back to the building as a defensive coordinator.
Yet, a majority of the XFL players are NFL rejects, castoffs and former practice squad types. The league is littered with ex-Broncos, including center Dillon Day, who dropped a live obscene bomb in the first game (see video below), and the infamous Moore.
Moore, a safety out of UCLA, was drafted in the second round (45th) by the Broncos in 2011 after Von Miller was chosen with team’s No. 1 pick. Moore seemed to have a promising future in Denver, especially when he recorded an interception in the fourth game of his rookie season and was elevated to starter in his second year.
However, in the Broncos’ 2012 playoff game with the Ravens, Moore totally miscalculated a last-minute Joe Flacco Hail Mary and fell on the job.
Baltimore scored on Blunder Moore, tied the game, won in overtime and became Super Bowl champions, which the Broncos should have been.
Moore immediately became persona non grata in Colorado, was gone after the 2014 season and turned into an NFL drifter. He finally got a pick, eight seasons too late for the Broncos, Saturday.
And the XFL Xcelled in a grand opening.
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- Johnny Manziel takes shot at upstart XFL
