“It was a huge learning experience,” said the Defenders’ Reggie Barlow, the 2023 XFL coach of the year. “I think our team obviously learned from it and hopefully has grown from it. … No matter how many games you win during the regular season, when it’s tournament time, it’s down to the tournament, and you’ve got to be able to compete and get stops, get turnovers and not turn it over, and we just didn’t have it that day.”
Quarterback Jordan Ta’amu, the XFL’s offensive player of the year last season, said though it hurt to enter the offseason having come up short, it’s time to turn the page and focus on the opportunities ahead — starting Sunday at the San Antonio Brahmas in the season opener at the Alamodome in the newly formed United Football League.
“The past is the past,” Ta’amu said. “We kind of made that known, that, ‘Hey, everything we did last year, that’s a wash.’ It doesn’t mean anything now going into the new league with the UFL. There’s new teams, new players, new coaches everywhere, so we’re just going to have a fresh start and see where it goes.”
Safety D.J. Swearinger agreed, saying the loss left a bad taste in the players’ mouths but hasn’t caused the Defenders to dwell all offseason.
“We haven’t been harping on it,” he said. “We’ve got a brand new slate, a brand new team. But we still have even more hunger to just get back where we left off and finish the unfinished business.”
The path back to a championship game will look different. The UFL is a merger of the XFL and the USFL, which led to the contraction of eight teams and a dispersal draft of players from those clubs. While many prominent players returned to the Defenders, that draft and NFL opportunities significantly altered the roster.
D.C.’s offense will once again heavily feature Ta’amu, who has new backups Deondre Francois and Jalan McClendon, but the running back and wide receiver rooms have undergone dramatic changes.
This month, 2023 XFL rushing champion Abram Smith tore an ACL in practice. Now, the running game will rely on a combination of Cam’Ron Harris, Pooka Williams Jr. and Darius Hagans. The Defenders also lost their top three receivers — Lucky Jackson and Chris Blair to the NFL and Josh Hammond to retirement — but added three newcomers with NFL experience: Kelvin Harmon, Keke Coutee and Vyncint Smith.
“We’re like a proud uncle or dad to see those guys get an opportunity to go and actually stick with NFL teams,” Barlow said of losing Jackson and Blair. “They were solid players for us last year. That’s the part of this process that I really like, to go and bring new guys into the fold, coach them up and develop them and put them in your system.”
D.C., which returns four of its seven all-XFL honorees, took advantage of the UFL’s dispersal draft to load up on defensive talent, adding two more all-XFL recipients: linebacker Trent Harris, who led the league in sacks in 2023, and safety Deontay Anderson.
The secondary is stacked with familiar names such as Swearinger and fellow safeties Montae Nicholson and Santos Ramirez, along with cornerbacks Michael Joseph, Anthoula Kelly, Deandre Baker and Gareon Conley. Joseph had four interceptions — including two pick-sixes to lead the XFL — last season. Baker and Conley were first-round picks in the NFL draft.
“Our defense … is a whole lot better talent-wise on paper, so we’ve got to do what we need to do as a unit to make sure what we see on paper lines up at the end of the year in the championship game,” Swearinger said.
“I think having the 16 teams [between the XFL and USFL] turn to eight teams [in the UFL], I feel like competition level is turned up a notch,” Ta’amu said. “I believe that this year will be the best spring league competition we’ll ever see.”
Since their debut in 2020, the Defenders are 9-0 at Audi Field and they aim to keep their spotless record intact this spring. The team will make its UFL home debut April 7 against the Houston Roughnecks.
“We know Audi’s going to bring it every time we step on that field,” Ta’amu said. “I feel like it’s such a huge advantage for us. We feed off the crowd and off that beer snake. If we’re playing good, they’re going to react, and when we need the crowd, they’re going to react the same. It definitely helps us, especially last year. Knowing that we’re undefeated there is unbelievable, [and] to create more fans we’ve just got to keep giving them a show.”
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