LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB)Â -- The Louisville Kings had the football for 19 minutes and 58 seconds in Sunday's 29-20 UFL playoff semifinal win over St. Louis.
Most teams would call that a problem. It's barely a decent coffee break.
The Kings call it a trip to the United Bowl.
While St. Louis spent the afternoon collecting first downs, Louisville collected moments. The Battlehawks ran 75 plays. The Kings ran 42. St. Louis possessed the football for more than 40 minutes. Louisville barely possessed it long enough to get comfortable.
And then Louisville won anyway.
At some point this season, it became clear the Kings were not going to be a conventional football team. Conventional teams don't start 0-3 and then win seven of eight. They don't trade quarterbacks in midseason and immediately get better.
And they certainly don't have a kicker who scores eight points with two swings of his leg and a prayer.
And conventional football teams generally prefer possessing the football.
The Kings seem largely indifferent to the concept. Instead, like many good startups these days, they specialize in disruption.
A 53-yard touchdown run. A 60-yard four-point field goal. A 63-yard four-point field goal. A touchdown pass to answer a deficit. A 51-yard touchdown run. An interception in the end zone.
They don't control games so much as hijack them.
That's what happened Sunday in St. Louis.
Every time the Battlehawks appeared ready to settle into the game, Louisville reached over and changed the channel.
The funny thing is that none of this was supposed to happen.
Two years ago, Chris Redman was coaching high school football.
Three months ago, the Louisville Kings were a collection of strangers.
Redman admitted after the game that when the Kings first arrived at Lynn Family Stadium, they had never even seen their locker room.
"We walked in there like, 'Oh, this is nice,'" he said.
That sounds less like a professional football team than a family arriving at a vacation rental.
Yet here they are. One win from a championship. One win from completing one of the strangest success stories Louisville sports has produced in years.
The strangest part may be how it happened.
Most coaches celebrate victories. Redman looked at one and got nervous.
After Louisville earned its first win of the season against Houston, Redman said something Sunday that explains almost everything that followed.
"It just didn't feel like a win to me," he said.
Think about that.
Most expansion teams spend their first season convincing themselves they're close. Most coaches spend a first victory searching for validation. Redman spent his searching for flaws.
Players douse Louisville Kings coach Chris Redman with water in the locker room after the team beat St. Louis to earn a berth in the UFL championship game in its inaugural season.
The Kings were 1-3. They had finally won a game. The easiest thing in the world would've been to celebrate progress.
Instead, Redman trusted the feeling in his gut.
He changed quarterbacks. He shipped Jason Bean to Washington, and will now face him in the championship game. He waived a popular former Kentucky running back, Benny Snell. The two backs who replaced Snell delivered big touchdown runs Sunday.
Redman changed personnel and changed the trajectory of the season.
Looking back now, that may have been the most important victory Louisville earned all year, not the game itself, but the willingness to question it.
Redman has an unusual ability. He can distrust evidence that flatters him.
Everybody else saw a win. Redman saw a warning. Seven victories in the next eight games suggest he was right.
That's why Sunday felt like more than a playoff win.
It felt like confirmation. That the quarterback switch worked. That the roster makeover worked. That the strange collection of players gathered from every corner of professional football somehow became a team.
And an identity all their own. Less conquest than piracy.
For most of Sunday, St. Louis looked like the team in control. By the end, Louisville was the team celebrating. Which, frankly, has become a pretty good summary of this season.
"I'm just so proud of everybody for never giving up," Redman said. "What an incredible example it is for when things are down and life says you can't do it. You can. You can still do it. And that's what that's what this group did. They never gave up, they fought every game just like it's the last one, and I just, I can't thank the players and the coaching staff and the whole administration, from the bottom all the way to the top. I just want to say thank you to everybody. It's been an amazing run. We're not done."
Now comes one final challenge.
The Kings will travel to Washington to face the defending champion D.C. Defenders, a team they have already beaten twice.
Spring football being spring football, that probably guarantees nothing.
The sensible prediction is that eventually Louisville's improbable run will run out of miracles.
Then again, sensible predictions haven't survived contact with the Kings all season.
This is a team that treats football conventions the way Tanner Brown treats a 60-yard field goal. As a suggestion.
One more win and the franchise that barely existed in March will own a championship trophy.
Given everything that has happened since then, that somehow feels like the most normal thing about them.
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