The XFL's Texas Teams Rustle Up a Pair of Wins

The XFL wasn't kidding itself in their inaugural season:

• They were counting on providing an acceptable level of relief for fans suffering from their annual post-Super Bowl football withdrawal, and
• They wanted to do this by featuring game-related entertainment as opposed to WWE and strip-bar sideshows.

After two weeks, it appears the league's strategy has a chance at succeding.

 

No one expected NFL-caliber play on the field -- and to be sure they're not getting it -- so it could be argued the star of the show has been the XFL's rules innovations.

Maybe hard-wired Shield devotees will disagree, but most of those changes are pretty cool:

• the pace of play is faster,
• the entire field's in play during those illogically special final two minutes of each half,
• kickoff and punt returns are happening more often than they do in the NFL, and
• teams trailing by nine points are still within one TD drive of striking distance.

 

Most of those other rules have come into play early and often. Now, we've finally seen how one of the more dynamic ideas has fared.

The Los Angeles Wildcats got back into their game with those Renegades from Dallas by converting a three-point PAT:

 

Heavy, right on, and solid, dudes!

The Renegades still won, 25-18, and the Wildcats sill didn't cover, but the play surely kept some fans around longer than they might have. The result remained in doubt for a while longer:

 

LA couldn't get out of its own way in this one, but it's notable that they filled the Galaxy's home stadium in Carson with their own fans more than the departing Chargers ever did.

The XFL's other Texan entrant joined DC as being undefeated through the first two weeks as the Houston Roughnecks topped St Louis, 28-24 behind another sterling performance from an impressively versatile QB PJ Walker. The BattleHawks were the day's dog that came through, though:

 

The XFL's creating its own personalities with the likes of Walker and LA's Josh Johnson. The irony, of course, will be when any player becomes a springtime standout, it's odds-on he'll be snapped up by an NFL team.

However, the XFL's rules will obviously stay, and so far, they are the real attraction here. All The Shield can ever do is adopt some or most of them, which wouldn't be a bad idea at all.