B.J. Daniels and the Seattle Dragons come up short vs. St. Louis

In football, the idea of being a second-half team is a coveted concept for many coaches. After all, they’d much less prefer a team that starts strong and fades away, versus a team that starts off a bit slower and finishes at its best.

Of course, the caveat in the latter idea is ensuring that your first half start isn’t so slow that your second-half effort isn’t enough to overcome your deficit.

And that’s exactly the predicament the Seattle Dragons found themselves in, against the St. Louis BattleHawks in Week 4 of the inaugural 2020 XFL season. While the Dragons outscored the BattleHawks by a 13-6 margin in the second half, that wasn’t nearly enough to overcome their 17-3 halftime deficit, leading to Seattle losing the game by a final score of 23-16.

In a familiar refrain for the Dragons, the offense simply couldn’t sustain any rhythm to make the team competitive on the scoreboard. In their first six possessions, Seattle managed only 70 yards of total offense and only three first downs. Even their lone score of the first half – a 41-yard field goal by kicker Ernesto Lacayo – came on a drive when the Dragons went only 22 yards.

Desperate for something that could jump start the offense, the Dragons replaced starting quarterback Brandon Silvers with backup B.J. Daniels on Seattle’s second possession of the second half. The switch certainly worked, at least from the perspective of jump-starting Seattle’s offense. The former University of South Florida quarterback helped the Dragons find the endzone on back-to-back drives, bringing the Dragons to within a seven-point deficit.

Daniels’ mobility opened up a lot of zone-read elements for Seattle’s offense, allowing the Dragons to plunge deep into St. Louis territory, and score on a Kenneth Farrow touchdown run from one yard out; Daniels kept the ball on the two-point conversion attempt, cutting the score to 17-11.

After the BattleHawks kicked a field goal, Daniels again got the Dragons to march down the field, and threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Evan Rodriguez to make the score 20-16. Seattle would once again kick a field goal to extend their lead to seven points, and on Daniels’ final attempt to be the hero of the game, his deep pass to a streaking Austin Proehl was intercepted by Battlehawks’ defensive back Will Hill, as Proehl didn’t even realize the ball was heading in his direction.

The BattleHawks were able to run out the last 3:56 in the game, on an 11-play drive that went 47 yards. It just seemed to be the type of game where, every time it looked like Seattle had a chance to finally pull ahead, they kept facing a setback – and thus, simply couldn’t dig themselves out of the hole they started out with.

While admittedly in a losing effort, Daniels’ spark was easily Seattle’s silver lining on the afternoon. He finished with 5 completions on 10 attempts, going for 100 yards passing, along with another 84 yards rushing on 7 attempts.

His level of play leaves Seattle Head Coach Jim Zorn with a major decision to make this week, as the Dragons get set to take on the Houston Roughnecks – the latter of whom have yet to lose a game this season, and have scored an XFL-high 16 touchdowns.