Former XFL director of player personnel Eric Galko is confident about the level of talent assembled by the league.
Especially the undefeated Houston Roughnecks who were led by former CFL head coach June Jones.
“If you stack up Houston against any other team, in any other league, I think only an NFL team would beat them. That includes the CFL,” Galko told ESPN reporter Kevin Seifert.
Jones quickly taught his high-scoring offence (31.6 point per game) to quarterback P.J. Walker and it led to Houston winning all five of their games before the league stopped playing halfway through the season.
Walker threw for an XFL-leading 1,338 yards with 15 touchdowns against four interceptions while completing 65 percent of his passes. The Carolina Panthers took notice and signed the 25-year-old Walker in March.
Veteran CFL executive and coach Jim Barker has unique firsthand experience from being an offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Xtreme during XFL 1.0 in 2001. Tommy Maddox was his quarterback in LA and led the Xtreme to the first and only XFL Championship in history. Maddox won XFL Player of the Year, which reignited his NFL career. But Barker wasn’t buying any of the XFL’s ‘hamburgers’ the second time around.
If the Roughnecks were put back together with Walker slinging passes to the XFL’s most prolific receiver Cam Phillips, it would be intriguing to see a match up against the 2019 Grey Cup champion Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Especially with the lock down defensive secondary led by Winston Rose and Marcus Sayles, who both earned NFL contracts in January.
XFL versus CFL showdown.
(Let’s at the very least create a COVID-19 simulation to determine a winner.)
