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The New Orleans Breakers and the United States Football League’s (USFL) debut season kicks off in 2022 with a 10-week regular season. The USFL begins its season with eight total teams: these teams are the Birmingham Stallions, the Houston Gamblers, the Michigan Panthers, the New Jersey Generals, the New Orleans Breakers, the Philadelphia Stars, the Pittsburgh Maulers, and the Tampa Bay Bandits.
The New Orleans Breakers are one of the four preseason favorites heading into the USFL’s regular-season games (Michigan Panthers, Tampa Bay Bandits, and the Philadelphia Stars make up the other favorites). Led by former North Carolina and Southern Miss head coach Larry Fedora, the Breakers will incorporate Fedora’s love of high-flying spread offenses quickly.
Kyle Sloter projects to be the starting quarterback. Sloter has made his rounds as a practice squad quarterback since going undrafted in 2017 out of Northern Colorado. With extensive NFL experience, Sloter could be a dark horse candidate to take the Breakers’ offense to the top of the league. Sloter will have some competition at the quarterback position in former Tulsa quarterback Zach Smith, but fans should expect Sloter’s experience to win out.
On offense, the Breaker’s calling card will feature wide receivers such as Taywan Taylor, Chad Williams, Johnnie Dixon, and Shaw Poindexter. The mix of speed and size for the wide receiver corps will serve Fedora’s spread offense well. Fedora takes that aggressive mentality over to the defense as they project to be a blitz-heavy unit.
New Orleans Breakers 2022 schedule
The schedule is as follows:
The Breakers will play all different teams in the league for the first seven weeks. The team will play its division rivals, the Stallions, Gamblers, and Bandits, in the latter three weeks. While the regular season is only 10 weeks, the postseason will start with a four-team format that begins on Saturday, June 25, 2022. All playoff games will occur in Canton, Ohio, with the championship game scheduled for Sunday, July 3, 2022.
The NFL’s massive presence in all aspects of American football is difficult to compete with, so the USFL hopes to be able to complete an entire season. The USFL can offer alternative fan experiences like cheaper tickets and a wide variety of experimentations to stand out from the NFL. The league provides different rules, including 3-point attempts, a college-style overtime shootout, a shorter play clock to allow more offensive plays, and two forward passes permitted in the same space (as long as the first pass attempt is behind the line of scrimmage).
For Week 1, the Breakers are a 2.5-point favorite vs. the Philadelphia Stars, and the over/under is set at 43.5. Diehard football fans yearning for football in the spring and early summer or fans looking for a pure and cheaper football experience without the more expensive packages of the NFL might find the USFL a viable alternative.
