No one among the Dallas Renegades fan base could have imagined the team coming out of Toyota Stadium and put up the beating they did to take down the Houston Gamblers 36-17 in Week 1 action.
The Renegades came out firing with 427 total yards of offense and over 37 minutes of time of possession. Of course, the talk of the league with Dallas' quarterback Austin Reed making his first start and made UFL history with 376 yards passing, the most in a regular season game, and three touchdowns to zero interceptions.
Even the defense got in on the action with two turnovers created and just 284 yards of offense allowed. Members of the Renegades spoke with the media after the game to share what was the key to the dominant performance.
Dallas Renegades on historic win over Houston Gamblers
Renegades head coach Rick Neuheisel stood on the sidelines for the first time since 2019 as he did the same thing he did with the Arizona Hotshots of the AAF then: secure a blowout win. UFL News Hub asked Neuheisel how it felt for him to break his seven-year absence and get back into coach. While he joked about headset issues, he was excited to be back in a familiar job he has had for decades.
"I've been asked 100 times as to why I came back to coach, because coach is coach. It's like putting the band back together again. And I couldn't be happier with the guys and the character of the guys that we get to coach. It makes it so enjoyable and so rewarding. Now, this is one win. Let's not put too many exclamation points behind it. We've got a lot of work to do, but that's what coaches do. They coach, right? And so now we go back, we fine-tune, and we see if we can get a notch better before we play the next game. And, you know, you can win the Indy 500, and certainly then— not to say this was the Indy 500— but then the car mechanic will see how we can get a few more miles. That's what coaches do. So that's what we're going to try to do. Fortunately, we've got great guys who will listen. At least they act like they listen."
While the spotlight was on the offense, the defense didn't nearly get enough credit for the performance they had. One of the top defenders who helped out was Bobby Price, who had three tackles, one sack, one tackle for loss, and one forced fumble. Price talked about what the Renegades' defense did to keep their foot on the pedal to not let Houston completely back in the game.
"I'll just say just communicating out there. We made a lot of plays early off. We came in halftime and we communicated with each other, just trying to tell us like, just keep your foot on the gas, don't let up. Obviously we let up a little bit, you know what I'm saying? It's our first game. But I think together as a defense, we had the mindset of just putting our foot on their neck and not stopping."
Reed had a ton of pressure on him as he replaced "The Spring King" Luis Perez, and just put up one of the best performances by a quarterback in league history. The young signal caller talked about what made it all work in his favor in Frisco, Texas.
"Yeah, I mean, everybody was really just aligned with what we were trying to do out there. Offensive line played really well, obviously the pockets were great, and receivers were running really good routes, getting open. A lot of guys probably could have just been out there playing there today and did what I did. It was really a team effort more than anything. Guys were playing well. We had a really good game plan. We felt good about what we had going into this game and what we were going to do. And this came down to whether we were going to execute it or not. But, you know, piggyback off what Coach said, I feel like we could have played a lot better. And that's a great thing to see when your Week 1 outcome looks like this, but you feel like there's still so much more you can improve. So obviously that's going to be the goal here with these next 10 days getting ready for St. Louis. Is find out those spots that we could have improved a little bit more and get ready to do that in game two."
Week 1 is in the books, but Week 2 presents a very interesting scenario as they have a long week and won't play until April 7 as they take on the St. Louis Battlehawks at home again.