Blue Devils Will Host a Home Playoff Game

Rolling out against the Bern Grizzlies in our Week 10 game
at home.

Well sorry for missing my post last week after our game with the Bern Grizzlies (a 42-20 victory in our last home game of the regular season). Mike and I have had a couple of friends here from the States, and we have been pretty busy showing them around and I didn't have time last week to write a post.

This Saturday we played the Zurich Renegades on the road in the last game of the regular season. It was an extremely important game for both teams. If we won the game, we would get to host the first round of the playoffs at home against the Basel Gladiators, a team we split our regular season series against. If we lost the game against Zurich, we would have to go on the road against Basel for the first round of the playoffs. If Zurich were to win, they would make the playoffs as the last seed. However, if they lost the game against us, they would miss the playoffs entirely. This fact made the game very important for both teams.

Handing off to Tino, our RB who finished our 10 game league
schedule with over 1,000 rushing yards.

The game began with Zurich getting the opening kickoff and going three and out. We then proceeded to march down the field and take a 7-0 lead. With their next possession, the Renegades would score on a 30 yard pass play to tie the game at 7. After that, both our offense and defense really kicked it into gear and never looked back. The final score: Blue Devils - 46 : Renegades - 7. Zurich had UCLA's 3rd all-time all-purpose yards leader at RB and Syracuse's 5th all-time leading passer at QB. Despite that fact, our defense played magnificently and our offense keyed off of their strong performance to give us a great jump start into the playoffs.

On Sunday we play at home against the Basel Gladiators in a first round playoff matchup. The winner of that game will advance to Swiss Bowl XXVI in Winterthur, Switzerland on July 16. Below are the season stats after our 10 game league schedule and 1 game out of conference. The stats compiled are based upon what we actually captured on film, so anything that didn't make it onto the film is not figured into these stats. Approximately 95% of our games DID make the film, but there is probably about 300-400 total offensive yards and several touchdowns on offense that did not make the film, and therefore are not included on the stats.

Here is a link to a preview of our upcoming playoff game with the Basel Gladiators - http://safv.ch/2011/07/04/speed-vs-smash-revanche/ Keep in mind that everything is in German, and I'm guessing most of you who read this blog will need to translate it in order to read it (try www.translate.google.com for help with translations).  Please check back in next week as I give a report on our home playoff game against the Basel Gladiators.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!
Mitch Niekamp