Birmingham Lions

The Lions went on the road for the first time this year with high hopes of moving to 3-0 following things starting to click offensively. Birmingham received the ball with the opening kick off, but the Lions offence didn’t even see it, Dan Conroy took the ball back to the house again, shrugging off multiple tacklers in the process. The Knights’ opening drive produced a couple of first downs, with some well disguised running passes and short completions helping to move the chains. Eventually the ball was punted back to Birmingham, who failed to adjust to Readings defence, turning the ball over on downs after coming up just short on fourth down. Birmingham’s defence held strong on the next drive, but the resulting punt left the Lions offence backed right up with a long field ahead of them. But this wasn’t enough to stop Birmingham, who went the length of the field through a well-constructed drive – with some patient running from Sarunas Babonas and some short completions from Tristan Varney. The Lions punched it in through a nice grab from Lions rookie Ben Brown, to take the score to 14-0.

Just as it looked like the floodgates may break open, Reading fought back, when a high ball over the middle was caught by a Knights receiver in heavy traffic, which he then ran into the end zone with. (PAT was unsuccessful). Furthermore, the next Lions drive ended in disaster, as a botched screenplay, ended up with Tristan allegedly back pedalling into his own end zone – where he was tackled for a safety, taking the scores to 14-8. This proved the catalyst for the Lions O to really start firing. The remainder of the first half consisted of quick drives from the Lions, with Reading unable to live with the tempo, resulting in big plays. Notably multiple large outside runs from Sarunas and a couple of nice fade’s completed to Ben Brown; both players finished with 2 touchdowns on the day.

The second half saw much more of the same. Chika Kalu scored two touchdowns on the day, and Andy Watson got on the score sheet for the third week in a row. The Birmingham defence was holding Reading to mostly three and outs, with another great performance from the D-line, shutting down most runs up the middle and putting the Reading QB under constant pressure to get the ball off quickly. What was most notable and good to see is that Birmingham got all rookie’s on for game experience – which will be really important in the long run. Birmingham has a bye-week next week, followed by a game against a first year team Worcester, where Birmingham will again be looking to get rookies on for more game experience.