Seattle Sea Dragons shut down San Antonio Brahmas 15-6 for second straight win

The Seattle Sea Dragons (2-2) played yet another close game, as is their trademark by virtue of being a Seattle football team, and just like last week the defense stepped up to secure a W.

In a game that was largely mistake free (more on that later), the defenses (and bad quarterback play, to be honest) kept the scores low and Seattle held the San Antonio Brahmas (2-2) out of the end zone in a 15-6 win at Lumen Field. Over 15,000 spectators made plenty of noise and were treated to Seattle’s best defensive showing of the XFL season.

Brahmas quarterback Jack Coan was sacked four times, hurried and pressured several more times, and they only rushed for 21 yards on 11 attempts due to the porous offensive line. It did come to my attention though that San Antonio has former Seahawks preseason roster spot guys Darece Roberson and Travis Toivonen on their wide receiver depth chart, and Toivonen had 3 catches for 54 yards.

Seattle took its first lead on a Ben DiNucci touchdown pass on a rollout to Juwan Green for his second score of the season. San Antonio leveled the score at halftime with a 57-yard field goal.

Leading 9-6 in the 4th quarter, DiNucci hit Josh Gordon for a big play to the 1-yard line, and running back Morgan Ellison plunged in from a yard out. At 15-6, Seattle finally opted for a 1-point conversion and Ellison got stuffed, keeping the game within reach of Hines Ward’s team.

The Sea Dragons defense held firm on 4th and 1 and forced a turnover on downs out of the two-minute warning. All the Sea Dragons needed to do was run the ball a few times, maybe take a quick throw that’s a staple of the run-and-shoot offense, and get enough first downs to kneel the clock out. Instead, Ben DiNucci just fired a pass into coverage and got picked off.

I cannot fathom what compelled DiNucci to make that throw, other than his insatiable urge to turn the ball over. Luckily, the Brahmas offensive line is very bad and the Sea Dragons front looked like the 2013 Seahawks all the way down to the wildly obvious offside penalties. They got another turnover on downs just inside Sea Dragons territory and that was that.

Jim Haslett maybe forgot he was mic’ed up after the game.

Boxscore

It was a deserved win for the Sea Dragons and as far as I’m concerned, some measure of revenge against Hines Ward and linebackers coach Joey Porter for Super Bowl XL. Ward even had the nerve to challenge offensive pass interference on a Sea Dragons reception... which was successful. Pain.

The Sea Dragons have a home game on Thursday night against the undefeated Houston Roughnecks (4-0) at 7:30 PM PT on ESPN and ESPN+.