For all the excitement the first two weeks of the inaugural XFL season provided the DC Defenders, Sunday night was the polar opposite.
The Defenders were brought back to reality by the Los Angeles Wildcats, who dominated at every level as DC took a disheartening 39-9 loss in its first road game in Carson, Calif.
Quarterback Cardale Jones had his worst performance so far for the Defenders (2-1), completing 13 of 26 passes for 103 yards, no touchdowns and four interceptions. Jones also took three sacks before he was replaced by backup Tyree Jackson in the fourth quarter.
The game was Jones’s first loss as a starter since high school. The Ohio State product had been unbeaten in his previous 13 starts in college and in the XFL.
“I can’t put our team in tough positions like the one out there,” Jones said after the game. “I have to give credit to L.A. and what they did on both sides of the ball. They took away everything that we wanted to get, took away everything we thought were weaknesses that we wanted to exploit.”
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The Defenders allowed 19 points total in their first two games, so allowing 39 to the previously winless Wildcats (1-2) served as a bit of a surprise.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, had given up a league-high eight touchdowns entering Week 3 but managed to shut down one of the XFL’s top offenses, holding the Defenders to one late score, which came on a 38-yard run by Nick Brossette in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats, who fired defensive coordinator Pepper Johnson after their season opener, had five takeaways and allowed DC only two third-down conversions. The Defenders didn’t cross midfield until the final two minutes of the first half.
“We’ll do a good job of just self-scouting, looking at ourselves in the mirror, and just self-evaluating," Defenders Coach Pep Hamilton said. “We’ll look at what happened in this game. Even so, we have a process that we believe in and we’re going to go back and get ourselves ready to play our next opponent. There’s nothing that we can do about the end result of this game, with the exception of just making the corrections and getting ready for our next opponent.”
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Wildcats wide receiver Tre McBride, who was traded by DC to Los Angeles for wideout Rashad Ross during training camp last month, torched his former team for 109 yards and two touchdowns on five receptions. Most of McBride’s production came in the first half. The William & Mary product exited the game in the third quarter with an apparent injury after being sandwiched between DC defensive backs Shamarko Thomas and Desmond Lawrence.
Defenders defensive end Anthony Johnson, the former Wildcats captain who was traded to DC on the eve of its shutout win against the New York Guardians last week, played but did not record any stats Sunday.
Wildcats quarterback Josh Johnson, who started four games for the Washington Redskins in 2018, had his best performance of the season, completing 18 of 25 passes for 278 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.
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Los Angeles running back Martez Carter had two rushing touchdowns, one receiving touchdown and a two-point conversion.
The Defenders are scheduled to play on the road again next Sunday against the 0-3 Tampa Bay Vipers. The game is set to air on ESPN2 at 7 p.m.
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