London Falls; Devils Dogged
WORLD LEAGUE – The Eastern Conference semifinal in the World League featured a pair of Pro Bowl Nominated teams that had faced each other in the season opener, playing to just a 1 point margin, but the Scandinavian Stars were intent on beating the London Falling much more convincingly this time around, and overwhelmed them with a 111-78 victory. The second highest scoring player on London’s squad was their kicker, as they were unable to get anything going offensively, their quarterback barely breaking into double digits with a 2/2 touchdown to interception ratio. The one bright spot for the Falling was the performance of rookie acquisition Cooper Kupp who turned in over a hundred yards receiving and a touchdown in the losing effort, but the lackluster effort for the Falling turned into one of their lowest scoring performances of the 2017 season.
The Stars though, had no problems with generating offense, scoring 4 rushing touchdowns plus another 2 receiving. The real star of the Scandinavian roster, though, was quarterback Carson Wentz who threw for 4 touchdowns in the game, and generated 26 of their points before exiting with an injury. Scandinavia’s signal caller has had a big hand in creating for them such a successful season, ranked #2 in the league in total scoring and #1 in total touchdowns, and so it looms as possibly devastating that his injury was confirmed to be season ending ahead of their upcoming showdown with Old England in the Conference Championship Match.
On the other side of the league, in the Western Conference semifinal, if fans were expecting midling performance in line with the play the Western teams have shown through the regular season, there were rewarded instead with a high scoring shootout that was anything but boring. The Buenos Aires Blue Dogs exploded out of the gate with an early lead and relinqueshed that lead only once and only briefly to the Dacusville Devils who played from behind the rest of the game. The Devils posted one of their highest scores of the season, getting a whopping 52 points from their running backs and another 26 from their Broncos defense that delivered a shutout for them, but their star quarterback threw a pair of picks on Monday night, derailing their comeback attempt, and leaving them short of victory in the 124-113 Buenos Aires win. The loss ends the Defending Champion Devils’ bid to return to the World Bowl – being played in Greenville, South Carolina this year – as home team favorites.
The Blue Dogs scored 6 total touchdowns in the match, on their way to their second highest scoring win of the season. The 124 point performance beat their 2017 per game average by 33% and was just 3 points short of the 127 they scored in their Week 6 upset victory over the league #1 Patriots. Getting double digit performances at almost all of the skill positions, including a 200+ yard day for their star receiver, Brown, the Blue Dogs accumulated over 700 yards of all purpose yardage in the win. Just two weeks removed from their last meeting, they’ve got plenty of momentum headed into the Western Conference Championship Match against a Mexico Aztec team that’s beaten them twice this season, once by just a single point.