The Battlehawk Brief: Week 4
Resilience, the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
The St. Louis Battlehawks head into tomorrow’s Week 4 match up at the Arlington Renegades (11:30 a.m. CT/ABC) looking to bounce back after suffering their first loss of the season.
“I think the only way you understand how to push through adversity is unfortunately you’re going to have to have a bump in the road,” said Anthony Becht of the Battlehawks loss in Week 3 to the D.C. Defenders. “We went over the mistakes and we’re going to be a better team for it.”
As such, other than where injury required it, the depth chart remains largely unchanged this week.
“I like to see how guys respond,” explained Becht. “You get to learn a lot about players–and coaches, in how they respond to some of these things. This will be a nice test for us. This team really shalacked us last year at their place at the end of the season when the game didn’t really mean much in the big picture of our record.”
St. Louis lost 36-22 in Week 9 of last season in Arlington.
“I felt like that’s not how we should play,” continued Becht. “We needed to play a little bit different to prepare ourselves for the playoffs and I really felt like we took a step back against them at the end of the season. So all antennas are up against this team and we know it’s going to be good competition.”
Dating back to 2020 and the first game in franchise history, the Battlehawks boast an overall record of 4-1 against the Renegades.
–Things continue to trend in a positive direction with his involvement in practice, but wide receiver Hakeem Butler (hamstring) will be out of action again this week. However, the Battlehawks do get a boost as reigning UFL Special Teams Player of the Year Chris Garrett returns at linebacker. While there’s no doubt Garrett has to be accounted for on special teams, his ability to get to the quarterback is often overlooked and adds to the outside depth Travis Feeney, Pita Taumoepenu, and Carson Wells provide from the edge.
Also inactive this week: Abdul Beecham, Kyler Baugh, Ryan Coll, Kevon Latulas, Isaiah Mack, and Avery Young.
–Tough to see Brandon Sebastian deal with a hand injury for the second consecutive season. Placed on Injured Reserve this week, Sebastian has an interception and two pass breakups to go with 7 tackles in the first three games. “Sea-Bas” has proven to be resilient more than once in his journey and confident he will prove to be so once again.
–Game captains this week are Rodrigo Blankenship, Willie Harvey, Kam Kelly, Jahcour Pearson, and Jacob Saylors.
–Congrats to “Hot Rod”, who booted a new career-best 56-yard field goal last week. Blankenship also showed off his Lego prowess at The Magic House, as he joined Archie, Sterling Hofrichter and Alex Matheson to help celebrate “Battlehawks Day” at the museum this past Friday.
–If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out Chris Payton-Jones’ social channel FlashFlix. Besides leading the UFL with 7 passes defended, CPJ has been providing an inside glimpse to his life as a Battlehawk.
–The rumors are true. Travis Feeney issued a challenge on both KMOX and WGEM radio, declaring he will dye his hair blue if the Battlehawks break their own attendance record of 40,317 this season. Lots of various promotions are available to help in reaching that goal, visit UFLBattlehawks.com for more information individual, group, and suite tickets.