The Dark Horse – Week 8

By: Connor Lenahan

Last week was insane. We had teams and players explode for crazy amounts of points. The Minnesota Buzzsaws managed to put up a historically great game scoring 2335 points. Ben Roethlisberger put up 910 points, the best performance by a player in league history. It was a game of offensive explosion that will probably not be matched again this year. But one win was a signifier of something bigger. With their 1470-905 win over the Pittsburgh Spikes the Washington Senators are now at 3-5 on a two game win streak. This puts Cary one game back of the current playoff picture. Better yet for the Senators is that they have been scoring more than all but 6 teams in the league. This is all the more impressive when you consider that they had a backfield of Pierre Thomas and Dexter McCluster/Danny Woodhead for most of the year before Ben Tate returned from injury. Now at full health the Senators could, in theory, make a run towards the postseason behind Andrew Luck. I’ve said it time and time again that Luck will end up winning League MVP this year because he is simply the best player in the game right now. The sudden emergence of Randall Cobb and Roddy White past struggling wideouts into a lethal one two is easy to see. Past their bye weeks this week and Luck’s in week 10 the team looks solid going forward for Cary.

It’s going to be tough for anyone to take down Minnesota at this point but one bad game late is all it would take. We have seen time and time again in the XFL a team get hot down the stretch, make the playoffs, and shake up everything. The Washington Senators appear to be that dark horse this year. This is the official time to watch out for them. They have a winnable schedule down this last stretch of games and only need a few wins now to end up in the playoffs. Then? Anything happens. This might get interesting folks.