2026 Divisional Round Discussion

[Aston]

Aw man, these guys again!

Last year, the Bees rolled through the playoffs with back-to-back wins against Phoenix as a launchpad. This year, it's WEEK 17 - DEN 30, UTA 0, and now a rematch in Utah Stadium.

For each of the past three years, Utah has had to deal with the mega-talented Grizzlies on their way to the bowl. The last two OSFL playoffs had UTA/DEN matchups in the conference championships.

With 1.1 WR Grant Liening maturing, it's getting to be harder and harder to fend these guys off. And this is by far the worst Utah team of the past four years, especially on offense.

But weapons or not, the show goes on. Randy Boone goes to the Casey Baumgartner School of Game Managery, dammit, and Utah doesn't even have the worst-rated WR corps in these playoffs (Camden does). (Third worst is Columbus. Who comes up with these things, anyways?)

If we pull it out, we'll get to square off against a very fine team in the Conference Finals. There's the insanely talented offense of Lake County, or the newly-dominant 13-3 Waco Warhawks.

[Aston]

gg marvelous!

Wild game, full of mishaps and big plays on both sides [suck it, refs]. It looked like Utah was on the ropes early, but a few big plays tilted it back our way and the defense came up huge after allowing the opening score. They stiffened so fast....

Denver's D really did a number on us, though. We had maybe one real offensive play the entire game - rookie TE Edwin Blades took a short pass and broke it loose for an 80-yard touchdown. Rest of the way, we just hung on to our slowly-accumulating lead.

I guess in retrospect, that was a total snoozer. Unlike the fireworks supplied by the other AC game.