UFL Update: Week 10, Regular Season's Over Already

As fun as it is to make predictions and rank pre-maturely, at the end of the season, all that matters are the teams at the top in the end. The Nighthawks may have come out strong early on, but if a team can't maintain for 10 weeks, it doesn't really matter. It would be easy to blame their downfall on Garcia's injury, but the Locos and Tuskers managed to improve their play following a quarterback injury.

Until Daunte Culpepper sat out the end of the Mountain Lions blow out against Omaha, he was the only quarterback to take every snap for the entire season. The consistency paid off, and the team who was almost always at the bottom of the ranking and 2-4 going into Week 7 went into the final week a heart-beat away from the Championship. The other side of the coin is Hartford. I criticized Chris Palmer's decision to maintain an artificial offensive rotation between QBs Josh McCown and Ryan Perrilloux, but it turns out his focus isn't on winning games. Makes sense for the last place team. Palmer's goal is to give his players play time and enough film to wow an NFL scout. That's noble, but which team is going to get more NFL attention, the first place or last place team?


Which brings us to the top 2 teams. The only 2 surviving teams from last season and the 2 teams that played in last year's Championship, the Locos and Tuskers have everything to prove next weekend. The Locos are a team on the decline. Following Tim Rattay's injury, Drew Willy led his team to 2 straight wins, but he could not maintain that dominance. Week 8, Coach Jim Fassel took him out and replaced him with Chase Clement, who turned a 21-3 half time score into a 27-24 near win. Week 10, Fassel started Clement but had to pull him for Willy, resulting in a 27-14 embarrassment against the last place Colonials. In the post-game interview, Fassel was unapologetically pissed at his squad at their sub-standard play. Going 2-2 since their starter's injury, the Locos are not looking nearly as good as the Tuskers, who since Brooks Bollinger's injury have gone 3-0.

Winning by no less than 17 points, Tuskers' Chris Griesen has proven he has been wasted sitting in the bench. Finding sometimes in the ballpark of 9 different receivers, Griesen knows what his offense can do and uses every single part of it. Last year, the Tuskers went 6-0 before losing the Championship to the Locos in overtime. If the momentum keeps up, the Tuskers are poised to drop a whole lot of payback on Las Vegas.

Real quick, the games:

Game 1: Tuskers Destroy Nighthawks 27-10

Game 2: Hartford Actually Beats Vegas 27-14


Can Fassel's boys figure out how to pick apart Griesen's unstoppable offense? Will Fassel choose Drew Willy or Chase Clement? Will that decision pay off? Will the Tuskers embarrass the #1 Locomotives by 20, 30 points? Try to push past your Thanksgiving coma and check out the Championship game this Saturday at noon EST. That's right, the big game is noon on a Saturday. Even worse, it's on at 9:00 AM here.