The New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday. That means that football season is over until August right? Wrong. In case you haven’t heard, the Alliance of American Football (AAF) inaugural season kicks off this Saturday, and its eight teams will play four games each weekend for the next ten weeks. Two of those teams, the Memphis Express and the Birmingham Iron, will face off for the first time on Sunday at 4 P.M. on CBS Sports Network.
AAF Week 1 Preview: Memphis Express vs. Birmingham Iron
Since this game will be the first ever for both of these teams, we do not have a lot to judge these teams on so far, but let’s take a look at some of the notable players and coaches and the potential that they bring into their first game.
Memphis Express
The Express have arguably the most well-known coach in the alliance in Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary. Singletary played for the Chicago Bears from 1981 to 1992 and was a fixture on some of those unbelievable defenses of the mid-80s. The most notable of these defenses was the one that won Super Bowl XX after the 1985 season, a season in which Singletary won the first of his two Defensive Player of the Year awards.
A decade after his retirement, Singletary pursued a coaching career, which culminated in two and a half seasons as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers from 2008-2010, in which he went just 18-22 and was ultimately fired. He last coached in the NFL in 2016 with the Rams.
The Express have two quarterbacks with NFL experience. Christian Hackenberg is a former second-round draft pick who had a good college career at Penn State and was on the New York Jets active roster for two seasons without ever playing a down. Zach Mettenberger was a sixth-round pick by the Tennessee Titans in the 2014 NFL Draft after having a good college career at LSU. He started 10 games for the Titans in two seasons and threw for 2,347 yards and 12 touchdowns to go with 14 interceptions.
The two quarterbacks have been battling for the starting spot all training camp, but recent reports say that Hackenberg has won the job and will more than likely start on Sunday.
Other notable Memphis players to look out for include running back Zac Stacy, tight end Adrien Robinson, and cornerback Charles James. Stacy played three seasons for the Rams and Jets and racked up over 1,300 rushing yards and nine touchdowns. Robinson played parts of three seasons for the New York Giants and he made five catches for 50 yards and a touchdown. James played parts of four seasons in the NFL with three different teams, where he recorded 43 tackles and two pass deflections.
Birmingham Iron
The Iron don’t have a Hall of Famer as their head coach, but Tim Lewis was a first-round draft pick in 1983 who played for the Green Bay Packers for four seasons before his career was cut short by a neck injury. Lewis has been coaching since he retired, and he was most recently with the 49ers back in 2015 as a defensive backs coach. Sunday will mark his first game ever as a head coach.
Unlike the Express, the Iron do not have any quarterbacks that have been on NFL active rosters. In fact, their likely starter Luis Perez didn’t even play at a Division I college. Perez’s story is really great and you can read more about him here. To summarize: he walked on at junior college, set Division II records and now is looking to use the AAF as a springboard to make his NFL dreams come true.
If Perez doesn’t get the nod in Week 1, it will almost certainly be former Alabama starter Blake Sims. Sims put up good numbers in his one season as a starter at Bama (almost 3,500 yards and 28 touchdowns), but he wasn’t drafted and he never got past the practice squad of his NFL teams. As of right now, it seems to be 50/50 on who starts on Sunday, but regardless, both Perez and Sims have a lot of upside.
The most notable player on Birmingham is another former Crimson Tide player: running back Trent Richardson. Richardson was one of the most highly ranked players coming out of college, drawing comparisons to Adrian Peterson, and he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns with the third overall pick in the 2012 Draft. After a good rookie season of over 1,300 scrimmage yards and 12 touchdowns, he fell off and was never able to regain his success. He was waived by the Indianapolis Colts at the end of the 2015 season ,and he never made another NFL roster again. It will be interesting to see if he can try to revive his once-promising career with the AAF.
The rest of Birmingham’s team also has some former NFL talent. Wide receivers Quan Bray and Quinton Patton have both spent significant time in the NFL with the Colts and 49ers, respectively. On the defensive side, defensive end Devin Taylor spent four seasons with the Detroit Lions and one with the Giants, and he recorded 69 tackles and 15 sacks in his NFL tenure. Finally, the Iron’s kicker is 13-year NFL veteran Nick Novak.
The Matchup
So who will make an impact on Sunday? The beautiful part of a new league is that we really don’t know. Definitely pay attention to the players mentioned in this article, but also look for plenty of the hungry young players with no experience to go and ball out as well.
We could be watching a couple of potential future NFL quarterbacks on Sunday in Hackenberg and Perez. We will be seeing probably the two best running backs the alliance has to offer in Richardson and Stacy. Most of all though, we will be watching a lot of talented, unproven players finally getting their opportunity to play in a competitive, professional game. That’s what the AAF is all about.
I’m looking forward to what the season holds for these two teams, and you should be too.
Main photo:
Embed from Getty Images
