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​By: Anthony Miller
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Frisco has had many arena football teams come in and out of the city over the years. This time around, fans hope to see their team stick around for good in the Indoor Football League when it was announced last month that the new team would be called the Fighters.

The major addition to this team was bringing in one of the most successful coaches in arena football right now with Clint Dolezel. Dolezel has a proven track record of winning as he has never recorded a losing record as head coach. So far in his head coaching career, he has compliled a 102-43 record including winning two Arena Bowls with the Philadelphia Soul in 2016 and 2017. Not only that, but twice he has taken teams (San Angelo Stampede Express and Dallas Vigilantes) from losing records to winning records and playoff appearances.

This will be a new challenge for the ball coach as he and President/General Manager Stephen Evans are responsible for building a franchise from scratch. The first thing they did was build out the coaching staff and brought in names that should be familiar to arena football fans. They made additions to their staff by announcing that former AFL quarterback Dan Raudabaugh who will be offensive coordinator, former AFL Defensive back James Romain who will coach Defensive Backs and Special Teams, and coach Dave Ewart joining Dolezel in Frisco.

Raudabaugh had a successful career as quarterback as he was with Dolezel as his quarterback in Dallas and Philadelphia putting up huge numbers passing for 35,872 yards, 788 touchdowns, and 117 interceptions in 10 seasons. This will be his first coaching job which should present a new challenge with him, but since he has a great understanding of what Dolezel wants out of his team, he should be able to adapt easily.
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Romain spent five seasons with Dolezel in Philadelphia as he recorded 28 interceptions and had three special team returns for touchdowns. Ewart will also help out with the coaching staff as he has coached both offense and defense in his career. He was a head coach for nine seasons with three different arena teams producing a 46-65 record in that time.

So far, there have been a few players on Twitter that have confirmed that they will be joining the team this season:

De'Vante Kincade, QB
​Caleb Stennis, RB
Sean Jones, LB/DB
Herbert Moore, DL
Mark Munson, WR (Invite Only)

​Kincade was the first player to announce his signing with the Fighters as he has plenty of success on the field. He played at Ole Miss to start his college career before transferring to Grambling State where he threw for 5,904 yards, 54 touchdowns and eight interceptions in two seasons. He found a home with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CFL a couple of times before hitting free agency. He should be the favorite for the starting job as he has proven to have protected the football and has a great arm.

Moore announced his signing a few days after Kincade did on Twitter as he also played at Ole Miss in his college career. Last year, he played for the New York Streets and was invited to the XFL Showcase in the summer. His experience as a defensive lineman in arena football should help his chances on making the team and starting in the process.

Last weekend, the team held their first tryouts to find new talent to be brought onto the team for their first game of the franchise's existence on March 12th. The full roster has not been announced, but we should be hearing from them in the upcoming weeks.

In December of 2019, the National Arena League released their 2020 schedule. The upcoming fourth season of the NAL will feature seven teams with the Carolina Cobras, Columbus Lions, Jacksonville Sharks, Jersey Flight, Massachusetts Pirates, Orlando Predators, and West Virginia Roughriders.

The 2020 NAL schedule will feature a 16 week regular season schedule. Each team will play a total of 13 games with three bye weeks. At the end of the 16 week season, the four teams with the best records make the playoffs.

During the playoffs, which run July 25th - August 8th, 2020 the #4 seed will play the #1 seed and the #3 seed will go up against the #2 seed. The winning teams will play in the National Arena Bowl August 8th, 2020.

Today the NAL tweeted a photo with the team YouTube channels as well as the NAL's channel. The tweet is below.

By Toph Kopchak Director of AFL Coverage 

Two of the three spreads are within a point of the Draft Kings and my AFL Metric sims. The Columbus Destroyers return home after an 11 year break, so that game is difficult to predict. One part of the metrics is the fan spread from Arena Fan. To see this, just go to arenafan.com and click "Pregame" under the game you want more detail on. Currently, the fans have Columbus winning by 1. For home field advantage I also gave the Destroyers 4 points compared to the standard 3. This is also the only game this week in which the opponents have already seen each other this season (W1 ALB W 35-19). The Destroyers have a new starter at QB since then in Grant Russell, who grew up a half hour from Columbus, so that's hard to factor in as well. 


FB Mykel Benson and WR Malachi Jones are both back from "suspension" and I'm not positive if Draft Kings or the fans know what that wording usually means in "arena speak." It could affect the changing of the spread. Most of the time it just allows players to look for a shot at moving up to the CFL or NFL. Jones had a workout with the Tennessee Titans. He is fully expected to play.


Another interesting note, in the Vegas Power Rankings (statfox.com) the Valor and Soul are tied when you factor in Washington's HFA. Neither team is in the top 2 for metric offense or defense, making the metric projected O/U of 90.5 hard to trust either way. Just 22% of games have seen 100 total points reached this season.

By Toph Kopchak Director of AFL Coverage 

I've been a little busy this week, but still wanted to post something, so using a few databases and a system i've worked on for years, here are my "metric sims" Arena Football style.

BAL -9 80.7% to win
PHI -2 53.5% to win
WAS -6 70.7% to win

Using just Vegas Power Rankings alone, Baltimore is an eight point favorite, but no team has changed more than Columbus, plus they have the top metric defense. Washington gets an extra point in my mind because of their banner for last seasons title going up, plus they are playing solid ball. Vegas likes the 0-2 Valor and so do my sims.

Old habits die hard, especially when you're bringing back a team from the grave. 
Usually those old pitfalls would be why the team went extinct to begin with, but for the Orlando Predators, some things the team absolutely has to bring back for the history and the fans. For example, calling their field "the jungle". 
Problem is another franchise in the National Arena League already calls their home field that.
The Columbus Lions, a stable and consistent organization that has climbed up the ranks of indoor football to one of the more prolific leagues in the country, calls their arena "the jungle" too. The perfect place for a pride of lions, Columbus is the smallest market in the league. That hasn't stopped them from making last year's NAL championship game. 
In a dilemma that would make Guns N Roses fans feel right at home, the opportunity to raise the stakes was taken by ownership, resulting in the Jungle War rivalry.
​"We were in a Lions staff meeting going back and forth about the two jungles," said Joshua Blair, owner of the Lions. "Then we came up with the idea of having a trophy that determined bragging rights for the jungle."
For the Predators, they had to take the chance to defend their namesake.
"We were all for it," said Purvis Adamson, Director of Multimedia and Assistant General Manager. "Everyone in arena football, they know the Orlando Predators have the jungle."
In the first meeting between the two teams, it was the Predators that came out on top in a 42-40 victory in Orlando. It was the closest game in the NAL this season and the first game back since the original Predators folded.
"It was a historical moment. First year back, first year in the NAL and just to play the Columbus Lions made it more historical," Adamson said.
To celebrate the victory, the Predators brought home the Schwarzenegger Knife, a wooden recreation of the large knife used by his character in the movie Predator. It was presented to the team by NAL Commissioner Chris Siegfried after the game.

The idea to use the knife design as the rivalry trophy came from the Lions' front office staff. Social media coordinator Hayley Dukes suggested the design while manager Jared Goertzen hand carved the trophy. 
The rivalry trophy is the only one currently in the NAL, but it does have people on both sides wanting to keep it in their own jungle.
"Now we get a chance to play them in our home, the real jungle," said Lions defensive back Shattle Fenteng. "I'm excited about this matchup. The fans are going to see an exciting game and our defense is going to bring it."
For Orlando though, they have no long term plans of giving up the knife.
"I don't think were going to lose it," Adamson said. "We look forward to keeping it, if we lose it one game no big deal, because we’ll get it back and at the end of the season keep it."
The Predators and Lions will face off Saturday, May 4 at 7 p.m. in Columbus. The game will be broadcasted on the NAL YouTube page.

By James Chambers, Contributing Writer

The Wichita Force suffered a slaughter from the Salina Liberty a week ago Saturday. A game where Wichita would only score three points in the second half. Consequently, Wichita would go on to to lose that game with a score of 50-22. Plagued with defensive and offensive setbacks all season Wichita has lost four and won two games. Saturday Wichita played against the Enid Flying Aces, but this time they played at home. The game started slow with each team answering scores. First with Enid setting their pace, scoring the first TD. Wichita answered with a jet reverse that tied the game. Just when it looked like Wichita would hold Enid on third down, they managed to drop in a touchdown pass. Wichita answered with a drive that concluded with a five yard pass to Tomlinson. Even with that score, the first quarter ended with Wichita down seven with a score of 21-14. In the second quarter Wichita’s defense stepped up to hold Enid to just three points. Consequently by the end of the of the second quarter Wichita held a 31-24 lead. The defense of Wichita has been under question all season. Many fans question why the team did not try to sign Mckendrick Harper instead of allowing the Liberty to sign him. This quarter the defense started to prove they can compete, that they can hold teams without giving up the long ball. In fact the defense would end the half with an interception. Moreover allowing the team one touchdown advantage on Enid going into the locker room for the first half. The second half went on to hold surprises from Wichita. The first score of the second half Lindsay had a 33 yard scamper for pay dirt. The next possession, Hubener threw a nice touch pass right over the shoulder where Gill would make a spectacular catch jumping in the air and catching the pass while tumbling over the boundary for the touchdown. Ending the third quarter with a score of 37-27. Tomlinson caught a two yard toss from Hubener at the start of the fourth quarter after Wichita’s defense holding Enid to no score. Wichita once again held Enid to no first downs. Wichita immediately fumbled away the possession and Enid turned it into six points. Wichita put the game out of reach when they answered that score and left 45 seconds on the clock. Wichita immediately intercepted Enid and put the game away with a pick six. Wichita out played Enid, but Enid is an expansion team and has not won one game this season and holds a winless record. The true test in Wichita will be Saturday when they travel to Sioux City to take on the Bandits. The game will be very important for both teams because the Bandits are after their second win and Wichita looks to improve their record to three wins and four losses.