Following The Long Weekend We Are Back With The A7FL Playoffs starting in the East and the West Playung To Determine Their Playoff Positioning. All, On The Road To The A7FL Championship, July 21st.
Get ready for these key matchups coming live from Baltimore this Sunday with a start time of 12:00 PM ET. Look for a lot of surprises this week the action travels southbound to Baltimore instead of Asbury Park this Sunday. For the Tampa NightCrawlers, it’s a road trip up north for their first out of division game as they face the Shnow Tribe squad looking to hand them their first defeat of the season.
Games this Sunday in Baltimore will run consecutively, starting at 12-Noon ET with each team waiting in the wings to begin as soon as the prior game ends. We will be joining the Las Vegas game as soon as we wrap up in NJ.
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THE UNKNOWN
Matt Ryan, A7FL Announcer
It’s something we all face, whether we don’t know what will come tomorrow, what we will do at a given moment, or what can be written on a blank page when you have a deadline and have to deliver a playoff column.
While this device is apt for my situation, it’s the same for players and teams across the A7FL as this Sunday marks the beginning of our 10th A7FL playoff tournament in the East.
Across the nation, teams will be playing for their chance at $25,000 in the A7FL Championship game on July 21st, when we return home to the cradle of A7FL civilization, Asbury Park Stadium, as one representative from the West and one from the East will battle to be the 10th A7FL titleholder.
For the teams in the Northeast and the defending Eastern Conference Champions, the Tampa Nightcrawlers, action begins in Charm City, as three opening-round games will take place this Sunday in Baltimore.
Opening up our day at High Noon will be the third seed, Paterson U, battling the sixth seed, DC Buzz.
Paterson looks to have its core returning to action following 2023 MVP Quatrelle Huffin, who suffered a leg injury when the U battled the BIC earlier this season.
Huffin, who lamented his move to the Silk City Animals in 2023, cost him and Paterson a chance at another A7FL title. But now healthy and focused on the mission at hand, Huffin may make it difficult for the DC Buzz’ defense, which has been a key reason for the Buzz’s victories in the regular season.
Yet, some league sources have told me that they wonder if Paterson’s core will be ready to go against a Buzz team that is playing with house money and has a quarterback in Ryan Burroughs that has insiders buzzing because it answers a question many A7FL fans and critics have dropped in social media and live stream comments for the past decade.
What happens when an elite rugby player takes an A7 field?
Burroughs hails from Manassas, VA, a popular Washington DC suburb, played football in high school before not only playing rugby in Australia and the United Kingdom but also playing in North America before returning to football this season with the Buzz.
The US Rugby National Team representative brings not only his on-field resume as a player and a leader but also has experience as a coach for teams in DC and international club coaching.
Will Burroughs’ experience outside of the A7FL be enough to give the Buzz what’s needed to move on in round one? We find out when coverage begins at 12/9 am PT across all A7FL platforms.
Immediately following that matchup, we will see the return of Mark Bagway, Logo Davis, and Dominique Rodgers Cromartie, among others, on the Tampa Nightcrawlers as they travel north to play the ShnowTribe.
While the ShnowTribe looks to have the Nightcrawlers slipping out there while donning their “Black Ice” jerseys, the team’s inconsistency at Quarterback will hamper a defensive unit that has seen Trey Baskerville shine despite critics claiming he’d be less emphatic without former teammate and Renegades’ captain Deondre Haynes, as Baskerville made his way to Rahway in a very contentious off-season.
The one chance some league analysts see the ShnowTribe have in shocking the world and pulling an upset is built on the back of Baskerville and locking Mike Liberti as a fellow edge rusher.
While Liberti is not a traditional DE, his speed and intensity have acted as a huge help in allowing Baskerville to create calamity for opposing Quarterbacks, especially with Tampa only having two to three players on the offensive line on a given play, to allow for skill players such as Mark Bagway, Logo Davis, and others to play what can only be considered the football version of Miles Davis or an NBA team playing a fast break.
There’s an artistry to the mayhem and confusion of what happens from snap to whistle, on offense for the Nightcrawlers.
The ability for Bagway and Davis to see the whole board and create opportunity for their teammates or have the pure guile to say “F**K IT” and try the risky thing because for the most part, the risky plays work.
We’ll just see if the Nightcrawlers’ ability to create can have the ability to destroy Rahway’s chances at a deep playoff run in 2024.
And in our final game out East to begin the opening round of the A7FL Playoffs, a first-time matchup goes down as the Silk City Animals and Baltimore Watchmen finally cross paths, with everything on the line for Baltimore as the Animals may feel like they’re playing with house money.
Yet with the “Camera-ready” presence of David Tender behind center, and athletes like Bebo Rios and Anthony “CEO” Diaz, who look to jump the line and grab center stage on Baltimore’s home field.
The team cultivated by Silk City’s founding captains, the Santistaban brothers, features a flashy but rugged offense and an aggressive and pressure-based defense. Given the shared geography of both teams, it feels like the Animals have cultivated a Paterson U 2.0, which is quite funny.
For Baltimore, this is the third straight year where expectations have been high for the Quarterback tandem of Jon Gause and Rokeim Chaney following Baltimore’s trip to the Eastern Conference Finals against the Watchmen in 2023.
But with the loss of Nick Mays among other Baltimore natives to the Paterson U, Trenton BIC, and Buzz, the Watchmen would fall to both the Trenton BIC and Paterson U to fall to 3-2 in the regular season.
The action isn’t done this Sunday as both the Midwest and Nevada will have action as they attempt to finalize their bracket for the 2024 Bracket.
In the Midwest, the top four teams in the division will square off as the top-seeded Chaos will battle the QC Crush, and the Covington Heist will battle a Columbus Explorers team riding a three-game winning streak following some rescheduled games from earlier in the season going down during our bye week.
The Midwest winners will have a different route to a potential A7FL Championship. They will move on into a combined bracket with the Eastern Conference, and Nevada’s final five will decide the Western Conference’s fate.
In round two, we will see the winner of the Paterson U and DC Buzz host either the Heist or Explorers, and the winner of the Watchmen and Animals game will face off against the winner of the Chaos and Crush.
The top-seeded team in the East, the Trenton BIC will return to action on June 9th in Asbury Park when they battle the East Orange Renegades, as the winner of that game will receive a bye to the third round of the playoffs, alongside the winner of the Nightcrawlers and ShnowTribe on June 2nd.
In Nevada, we throw things off with our final regular season games in the West, as the Gold and Pit Bosses will battle with the Pit Bosses looking to lock in a top-four seed and the Gold eyeing their sole win of the 2024 campaign at 7PM/ 4 PT. Then at 10PM/ 7 PT, SickWidIt looks to lock the top seed for the first time in their history out west as they battle the Over The Top in our final game of the evening.
If the playoffs were to happen today, the second-seeded Insomniacs would play the third-seed FORCE, as the Pit Bosses would battle the Over The Top, and the undefeated SickWidIt would be granted an automatic bye into the Conference Semi-Finals.
Let us know your predictions as playoff football is BACK and we want you to join us starting at Noon EST on YouTube and A7FL TV!
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