Bandits Broken: Breakers cruise 34-3

  Remember last week when I wrote that opening week wins in brand new leagues can often be deceiving?

Well, after an opening week victory over Pittsburgh, the Tampa Bay Bandits now have questions on which is their true team- the winners from week one or the team that was trounced by the New Orleans Breakers 34-3 at the USFL Hub in Birmingham.

Tampa Bay allowed four sacks and rarely challenged the Breakers in moving the football in a game that I severely question if anyone watched the game at all after halftime.

Tampa Bay will next play Houston next Saturday night.

Bandit Ball

1) This game could have been worse as New Orleans missed a field goal, an extra point, and turned the ball over on downs once.

2) The weather showed one difference between spring football and the fall and this is going to be something to watch as the season moves on- the humidity and heat.

Birmingham Alabama isn't noted for its cool weather or low humidity and you could see on the sideline just how draining the humidity was and how much worse it's going to be as the next eight weeks play out.

At least it will be fair for all eight teams at the same home site but it's going to be interesting to see how the lack of depth with the league's smaller rosters and who profits most late in games as the conditions grow worse.

3) Tampa Bay completed only eleven of twenty-eight passes between Jordan Ta'amu (eight of eighteen) and Brady White (three of ten) for only ninety-six yards between them and each throwing an interception.

Not winning many games with passing games like that!

4)  To be fair to Ta'amu and White, New Orleans sacked them four times and spent as much time in the Bandit backfield as the Tampa Bay running backs.

I'll have to see more games to note if the Breakers pass rush is that dominant or the Bandits offensive line is that terrible but on this afternoon, it was a clear mismatch between the lines of the two teams.

5) And the Breakers' passing game was strong with Kyle Sloter throwing two touchdown passes and Jonathan Adams making a leaping one-handed grab that ranks with anything you will see at higher levels.

Adams was the star with the spectacular catch, finishing with five catches for ninety-three yards but former Ohio State wideout Johnnie Dixon caught a touchdown pass as well.

6) I'm about done with this because it was as big a mismatch as you could imagine from a game with two teams that had played only one previous game.

I still stand by my statement that we still need to see more before getting too decisive on the top teams in a new league this early.

However, after two weeks, only New Orleans and Birmingham have won both of their games and they play each other on Saturday.

Two teams are 2-0, four teams are 1-1, and two are 0-2 so there is plenty to sift through but next week is going to be very important in a ten-game season for potential playoff berths.

Bandits beat up Maulers 17-3

    Jordan Ta'amu led the Tampa Bay Bandits sixty-eight yards down the field after taking the opening kickoff and when B.J. Emmons crashed into the end zone after covering the final three of those yards, the Bandits had all the points that they would need to defeat the Pittsburgh Maulers in a 17-3 win at the USFL hub in Birmingham.

Ta'amu would throw a touchdown to Jordan Lasley just before halftime and would finish with 185 passing yards and two interceptions.

Tight End Cheyenne O'Grady was the offensive star with eight catches for eighty-nine yards.

The now 1-0 Bandits will next face the New Orleans Breakers on Sunday, who won their first game 23-17 over the Philadelphia Stars.

Bandit Ball

1) So... Why the Bandits?

I've written about the original USFL here before and if you read those posts, I've discussed the various reasons that I rooted for a different team in each of the three seasons of the league.

None of those three (Chicago Blitz, Arizona Wranglers, and Memphis Showboats) were selected for the eight teams to start the new league, so I had to pick a new one.

2) I didn't have a connection to any of the coaching hires so I picked the Bandits for the uniforms which were pretty normal looking and for the old theme song, which I hope someone has the idea of playing all the time if the league ever starts playing games in the city that the teams are named for.

3) Onto the game, which really wasn't all that exciting.

Each new football league lives and dies with the quality of its quarterback play and Jordan Ta'amu looked to be one of the better ones in the league after Ta'amu's impressive five games in the XFL with the St.Louis Battlehawks.

Ta'amu did throw two interceptions but neither were awful throws and the first was a good throw that the Mauler defensive back Arnold Tarpley simply made a better play to get to the football.

4) The Maulers allowed that opening touchdown and yet on their first seven offensive plays, Pittsburgh called running plays.

Those possessions would result in two punts and a failed fourth-down conversion.

5) It seems like the Bandit offense is going to run through tight end Cheyenne O'Grady, who was targeted eleven times.

It's early but there is some chemistry between O'Grady and Jordan Ta'amu.

6) Any time a defense can hold someone to only three points, they've done a good job but Pittsburgh barely threatened other than the field goal and a late-game drive inside the red zone when the Bandits would stop a completion short of the first down.

Pepper Johnson had his team prepared to play and the Bandit defense was dominant.

7) BUT before we get too excited when you look at new leagues, it is very easy to overhype one victory, no matter how strong that win is.

You won't know for a few weeks which team is the best and it could be that team A just happened to draw the weakest team in the league and you just didn't know it at the time.

8) Forgive the late takes on this as I wasn't able to watch the games live and had to wait until the FS1 replay with the caveat of then needing the time to watch!

That's why some of the names are missing from this report, I'll try to do better for the next game against the Breakers!.

John Reaves

John Reaves passed away Tuesday at the age of 67.
Reaves, a former first-round pick of the Philadelphia Eagles and star of the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits was well known for that and his record-setting career at Florida, where at one time, Reaves held the NCAA's record for passing yards, but in recent years might have been almost just as well known to college football fans as the father of Layla Kiffin, the beautiful ex-wife of controversial football coach-Lane Kiffin.

Reaves might have been an NFL failure as a starter, although he was shoved into a starting role as a rookie on a bad team in Philadelphia in a time that rookie quarterbacks rarely found success, but he was a star in the USFL as he was the triggerman for Steve Spurrier's Tampa Bay Bandits for "Bandit Ball", which was a wide-open and fun offense even for a league noted for such offense.

Reaves was not very mobile, so he was pretty easy to sack even behind the Bandits offensive line, which was one of the better lines in the league, so I can imagine how he was a sitting duck behind the line of the 2-11-1 1972 Eagles, which was his main starting stint in the NFL.
However, in the USFL, he was able to get the ball out quickly and avoid rushes far better than his mobility would suggest. which allowed him to throw for over 4,000 yards twice with the Bandits.
Reaves also was one of the replacement players during the three-game 1987 lockout as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used the popularity of the Bandits (the lockout was barely two years after the final game of the USFL) to gain a little bit of familiarity with the non-union players for the fans.
Reaves went 1-1 for the replacement men in Tangerine and never played afterward.

Reaves spent some time coaching high school and on the Steve Spurrier staff at Florida along with a non-Spurrier stint at South Carolina, but battled drug addiction in the 1980s before getting clean for decades before a 2008 arrest for drugs and gun possession that sent Reaves back to drug counseling.
Reaves is currently part of the lawsuit of former players against the NFL for symptoms of CTE and the surviving family plans on offering Reaves' brain for examination for the suit.

I've written a lot about the USFL and I'm still planning forgotten superstars on the 1983 Chicago Blitz after the earlier post on the 1984 Arizona Wranglers. but the story that so many of you might want to hear (from conversations anyway) is the connection with Donald Trump and why I dislike him so-someday soon perhaps...