Other The XFL

[exe ex machina]

XFL considering possibility of allowing multiple forward passes per play

Posted by Mike Florio on April 12, 2019, 6:32 AM EDT




The XFL isn’t revolutionizing football as much as it is reimagining it. And part of that reimagination may include a redefinition of a forward pass.
Appearing earlier this week on the #PFTPM podcast, XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said the league is currently “toying with the idea” of allowing multiple forward passes on a given play. The new line of demarcation would be not whether the ball goes forward or backward but whether it passes the line of scrimmage.
So, for example, the quarterback could throw a forward bubble screen to a receiver who catches the ball behind the line of scrimmage. The receiver could then throw a forward pass beyond the line of scrimmage — if the XFL adopts that rule.
Luck pointed out that this would make it easier for the officials, who would simply have to determine whether the initial throw passes the line of scrimmage, not whether it moves forward or backward.
This rule presumably also would allow a quarterback who has a ball batted back to him to throw the ball again. (In the NFL, the quarterback’s only allowable option at that point is to run with the ball.) In theory, it also would allow three or more total throws on a given play, as long as the ball remains behind the line of scrimmage until the final throw.
Standing alone, that won’t be enough to make the XFL appointment viewing. But with enough changes like that, maybe the XFL will draw more interest than the AAF did.

 

[exe ex machina]

Leadership for New York’s next incarnation of XFL football will be unveiled on Tuesday afternoon in an event in Times Square.

Less than two weeks after the New York Jets made a big unveiling in Midtown, the city’s newest football group is planning its own in Times Square.

The incoming reincarnation of XFL football has announced a Tuesday afternoon event at the AC Hotel Times Square. There, the head coach, general manager, and president of the city’s new XFL squad will be revealed.

New York is one of two cities retained from the original version of the XFL, the other being Los Angeles. Their team will be the fifth to name a new leadership group, as clubs in Dallas, Seattle, Tampa Bay, and Washington, D.C. have previously done so.

While rumors around the new coach have been slim, its possible they could have a local connection based on prior hires. Dallas, for example, brought in Bob Stoops to be both head coach and general manager. The former Oklahoma head coach went 11-7 against Texas in the Red River Shootout, a famous Dallas-based college football rivalry. Meanwhile, Jim Zorn, a former Seattle Seahawks quarterback, was named to the same positions in Seattle.

In another local connection in the new league, former Jets offensive assistant Pep Hamilton (2003-05) is the head coach and general manager in Washington.

New York’s original XFL team was the New York/New Jersey Hitmen. Longtime NFL assistant Rusty Tillman served as the head coach, while New Jersey native and former Dallas Cowboys receiver Drew Pearson was the general manager. The Hitmen went 4-6 in their lone season of existence. Cornerback Damen Wheeler, defensive end James Cotten, and kicker/punter Leo Araguz each spent time in the NFL after the XFL’s dissolving.

Tillman was a noted critic of the XFL’s gimmicks. He later found himself the target of actor, former wrestler, and XFL analyst Jesse Ventura, who began a conflict when bashing Tillman for kicking a field goal deep in opponent territory in a Hitmen win. Despite Ventura’s goading, and NBC making their supposed rivalry the focal point of the ensuing game’s coverage, Tillman mostly ignored the commotion.

Despite missing the lone XFL postseason, the Hitmen ranked second in attendance. Their home games were played at Giants Stadium, averaging 28,309 per game. The new squad is not expected to retain the Hitmen nickname and will play their home slate at Giants Stadium’s replacement, MetLife Stadium.

The XFL will make a second attempt at sustainable spring football next season. Back in charge is Vince McMahon, Chairman and CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon is also the chairman of Alpha Entertainment, the new league’s holding company. While McMahon is not expected to be in attendance on Tuesday, XFL commissioner and CEO Oliver Luck and President and COO Jeffrey Pollack are.

The original league lasted a single year, done in by criticism of wrestling-inspired gimmicks and kayfabe. Seeking to create a lasting new product, this new incarnation is expected to be light on the stunts, but has been working with developmental and showcase organization The Spring League to test out new innovations, including a kickoff format and overtime system. Another point of emphasis has been creating a faster game, one that aims for a time closer to two hours rather than the current football standard three.

The new XFL is expected to begin on Feb. 8, 2020, one week after Super Bowl 54.

 

[fumbler]

New York Knights on the radar?

My guess at the rest is.
Dallas Steers
Houston Oilers / Drillers
LA Express
St Louis Stallions
Seattle Cascades
Tampa Bay Bandits
DC Federals

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

New York Knights on the radar?

My guess at the rest is.
Dallas Steers
Houston Oilers / Drillers
LA Express
St Louis Stallions
Seattle Cascades
Tampa Bay Bandits
DC Federals

Surely one of, if not all of San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando get a look in after getting the decent crowd numbers in the AAF. Cities that are hungry for football. Mad if they don't try tapping into those markets from year one.

 

[fumbler]

Surely one of, if not all of San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando get a look in after getting the decent crowd numbers in the AAF. Cities that are hungry for football. Mad if they don't try tapping into those markets from year one.

Those cities are taken from the XFL site mate.

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

Those cities are taken from the XFL site mate.

Yea, I meant as in adding any to the league, or is year ones teams already set in stone/there will be no other additions?

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

St.Louis will be it's biggest cash cow going off cities scorned by NFL owners viewpoint

 

[Broken]

New York Knights on the radar?

My guess at the rest is.
Dallas Steers
Houston Oilers / Drillers
LA Express
St Louis Stallions
Seattle Cascades
Tampa Bay Bandits
DC Federals

Vinny Mac going the Trump USFL route on his way to the White House?

 

[exe ex machina]

In hindsight, if V.McM had his time again, the 2020 XFL teams should've been...

Oakland (raiders gone to LV)
San Diego
St Louis
San Antonio (already dallas/houston in nfl)
Orlando
Birmingham/Alabama
6 of the 8

 

[fumbler]

In hindsight, if V.McM had his time again, the 2020 XFL teams should've been...

Oakland (raiders gone to LV)
San Diego
St Louis
San Antonio (already dallas/houston in nfl)
Orlando
Birmingham/Alabama
6 of the 8

What no Boise?

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

In hindsight, if V.McM had his time again, the 2020 XFL teams should've been...

Oakland (raiders gone to LV)
San Diego
St Louis
San Antonio (already dallas/houston in nfl)
Orlando
Birmingham/Alabama
6 of the 8

Agree on all of them, it was nice (and expensive) of the AAF to provide Vince with some free market research, now he just has to use it.

Big city doesn't necessarily = successful place for a franchise, especially when they are so many other sports/teams already established there.

LA will be his biggest regret, massive bandwagon city, the Rams and Chargers couldn't even fill a soccer stadium last year until around the time both were confirmed playoff starters.

 

[exe ex machina]

XFL lands on FOX and ABC

Posted by Mike Florio on May 6, 2019, 10:03 AM EDT

Getty Images


The XFL is the latest spring football phoenix, rising from the ashes of the AAF. The ascension (or not) of Vince McMahon’s mulligan will be televised on a pair of networks.
FOX, ABC, FS1, and ESPN will televise the games of the reconstituted XFL, the league announced on Monday.
According to John Ourand of SportsBusiness Daily, the deals will result in no rights fee to the XFL, which is still better than paying for air time (which the AAF did, or at least was supposed to do). The networks will pay for the production costs of the XFL’s games, which per Ourand can amount to roughly $400,000 per game.
Of the 43 games to be played next year (40 regular season, three postseason), 24 will be televised on three-letter broadcast networks. The regular-season games will be played on Saturday and Sunday, with the exception of two late-season Thursday night games on FOX, which also televises Thursday night games for the NFL.
The playoffs will be televised by FOX and ESPN on the weekend of April 19, and ESPN will televise the championship on Sunday, April 26 — one day after the NFL draft concludes.
“Spring football is going to work,” ESPN Executive VP/Programming & Scheduling Burke Magnus told Ourand. It’s unclear whether the intended punctuation mark would be a period or an exclamation point. In all fairness, the best way to end that sentence would be with a question mark.
Spring football has never worked. People simply aren’t naturally interested in spring football. Until they are, it’s going to be a challenge to make it survive until it can thrive.
At some point, maybe someone with a billion or so to burn will drop an alternate pro league on Tuesday and Wednesday night during football season, giving the people what they want during the time of the year that they want it — and with college-age players not yet eligible to enter the NFL draft. Until then, spring football leagues may come and go.
The XFL is coming back in less than a year. Whether it goes away after only one season (like it did in 2001) remains to be seen.

 

[exe ex machina]

Report: Winston Moss to coach XFL team in Los Angeles

Posted by Michael David Smith on May 7, 2019, 8:38 AM EDT

Getty Images


Winston Moss had an unceremonious exit from his last coaching job, getting fired as associate head coach of the Packers during the season and then taking some shots at Aaron Rodgers on his way out the door. Maybe the XFL likes having coaches that brash.
Moss has been hired as the head coach of the XFL’s Los Angeles franchise, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The 53-year-old Moss is a Miami native who played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, and most of his coaching experience was in Green Bay. But he does have a connection to Los Angeles, having played for the Raiders from 1991 to 1994, when they were in Los Angeles.
Moss’s only head coaching experience was at the 2016 Pro Bowl, when he coached the team that was originally supposed to be coached by Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, who pulled out with an illness.

 

[exe ex machina]

Moose Johnston joins Dallas XFL team as director of player personnel
Posted by Michael David Smith on May 15, 2019, 1:55 PM EDT

A beloved former Cowboy will take a job with the Dallas XFL team.
Daryl “Moose” Johnston, the former Cowboys fullback and current FOX commentator, will join the XFL as the director of player personnel in Dallas. Johnston will work alongside Bob Stoops, who will be the head coach in Dallas.
Johnston spent the early part of this year working as the General Manager of the San Antonio franchise in the Alliance of American Football. That did not end well, as Johnston said he and other employees were “misled” about the AAF’s financial backing, and he felt personally embarrassed that the league collapsed without even finishing its first season.
The good news in the XFL is that Vince McMahon has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of WWE stock to finance the league, meaning it is highly likely to make it through its first season. McMahon has said he’s willing to lose money in his first three seasons in an effort to lay the foundation for the league’s success.
Johnston’s tenure with the AAF gives him an idea of the player personnel available to upstart leagues. And it will hopefully give him some ideas for what an upstart league should not do.

 

[exe ex machina]

XFL organizing series of Combine-style workouts for prospective players
Posted by Michael David Smith on May 20, 2019, 3:39 PM EDT

Getty Images
As the XFL continues to move toward its inaugural season in 2020, the league has planned a series of “summer showcase” workouts that will help them identify prospective players.
XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck told PFT that each of the eight XFL cities will host a summer showcase where the league will invite about 100 players — mostly former NFL, CFL or AAF players — to work out. A handful of current college players will be there as well, and Luck said those players will be allowed to show the XFL what they can do this summer, and then potentially sign with the XFL after their college seasons end.
“We’re targeting about 100 players per showcase,” Luck said. “We think about 90, maybe even 95 of those are going to be guys with prior experience, and the remainder, a relatively small group, would be current college football players. . . . A college kid could come to our showcase, get all the testing, and not in any way put his eligibility in jeopardy.”
Luck said the XFL will begin signing players after the last summer showcase, which is on July 13. He said the XFL should have a good idea of which players are in its player pool by the time the NFL trims its rosters to 53 players at the end of the preseason, and those players will be distributed among the XFL’s eight teams at a draft that will take place in late September or early October. The XFL showcases are by invitation only and the league is not planning any open tryouts.
Although the XFL is willing to let the players who sign this summer leave for the NFL, once they’re drafted they’ll be expected to commit to the XFL. Last year the AAF allowed its top quarterback draft pick, Josh Johnson, to leave for the NFL, but Luck said the XFL wouldn’t do that.
“If a guy signs with us and then three weeks later, prior to our draft, has an opportunity to go to an NFL team, we’ll say, Take the opportunity,” Luck said. “After the draft, we’ll expect those players to stay. If they think they have an opportunity in the NFL they have to do that before the draft.”
Luck knows from his experience as the president of NFL Europe that there’s talent in professional football beyond the players on NFL 53-man rosters.
“No. 54 on down is going to be the heart of our draft,” Luck said. “I do think there are guys who have been in NFL camps, maybe are unlucky, maybe got hurt, maybe went to the wrong system, maybe they just were playing behind a couple All-Pro guys.”
The XFL’s summer showcases will include both Combine-style workouts and 7-on-7 work, and Luck said the XFL will be more interested in players who can play the fast-paced style the XFL wants than in players whose college experience makes them well known to local fan bases.
“We’re going to focus on the best players we believe are suitable for the kind of league we want to play, which is up-tempo, fast-paced,” he said. “I’m not sure we’re going to sign guys just because they have a big name. . . . We are not having any sort of geographical allocation.”
The first XFL game takes place the Saturday after the Super Bowl, February 8.

 

[exe ex machina]

Ex-Steelers QB Landry Jones has become the first player to sign a contract with Vince McMahon's revived XFL league.
"We’re excited to welcome Landry to the XFL as our first player and first quarterback," commissioner — and Andrew's father — Oliver Luck said. The league did not announce where Jones will be playing, but it stands to reason it will be Dallas, whose franchise is led by Jones' ex-college coach Bob Stoops. A shaky backup for many years in Pittsburgh, 30-year-old Jones' NFL candle appears to have burned out.
SOURCE: Field Yates on Twitter
Aug 15, 2019, 2:16 PM ET

 

[Broken]

And we have our teams

XFL reveals names, logos for its eight teams

The names, along with logos, of the XFL's eight teams were revealed Wednesday: the Dallas Renegades, Houston Roughnecks, Los Angeles Wildcats, New York Guardians, St. Louis BattleHawks, Seattle Dragons, Tampa Bay Vipers and Washington Defenders.

www.espn.com

Renegades looks like one of the default logos in Madden create a team and the Houston logo is on the verge of Oilers infringement.

 

[exe ex machina]

And we have our teams

XFL reveals names, logos for its eight teams

The names, along with logos, of the XFL's eight teams were revealed Wednesday: the Dallas Renegades, Houston Roughnecks, Los Angeles Wildcats, New York Guardians, St. Louis BattleHawks, Seattle Dragons, Tampa Bay Vipers and Washington Defenders.

www.espn.com

Renegades looks like one of the default logos in Madden create a team and the Houston logo is on the verge of Oilers infringement.

Guardians, dragons, or battle hawks....for me, based on logo, the team I'll choose to support from at this stage

 

[exe ex machina]

 

[exe ex machina]

Based on the video promos for each of the eight teams, the ones I like....

New York Guardians, St Louis BattleHawks, Seattle Dragons, Dallas Renegades

I'll be picking from one of those.

Just the uniforms reveal in the future to further whittle the choice down.

 

[exe ex machina]

 

[nobbyiscool]

View attachment 732544

I don't know what a "BattleHawk" is - but I'm crazy for the name and logo.

I'll wait for the XFL to last a season before I invest in it, but I think I found my team.

 

[exe ex machina]

I don't know what a "BattleHawk" is - but I'm crazy for the name and logo.

I'll wait for the XFL to last a season before I invest in it, but I think I found my team.

Yeah, wise move to wait and see if the league survives beyond year 1 before investing.
a number of recent new leagues have all died in that first year.

 

[nobbyiscool]

Yeah, wise move to wait and see if the league survives beyond year 1 before investing.
a number of recent new leagues have all died in that first year.

**** mate, the XFL itself has shown us that we should wait beyond the first year before getting too excited!

 

[aussiedude]

the Houston one looks like a lawsuit coming for infringement on the Oilers one.

All the others look like they were taken from Madden make a franchise templates. Im sure i have seen Dragons, Vipers and renegades in madden before.