COLUMN: AJ McCarron's return gives Battlehawks golden opportunity entering UFL

During his introductory press conference via Zoom on Friday, Feb. 16, veteran quarterback AJ McCarron summed up his return to the St. Louis Battlehawks as, "unfinished business.”

McCarron threw for 2,150 passing yards and 24 touchdowns while leading the Battlehawks to a 7-3 record in the first year of XFL 3.0. Their 7-3 record wasn't enough to make the playoffs because of the fifth tiebreaker between St. Louis and the Seattle Sea Dragons. During the game where the tiebreaker played its role, McCarron threw for 420 yards and six touchdown passes to help the Battlehawks set the single-game XFL scoring record during a 53-26 regular season concluding win over the Orlando Guardians.

It's hard to explain why that season ended to anyone, much less your own children.

"As soon as the season ended last year, daddy got home, the first question was, 'Why are you home? Are you not playing football anymore?' So that was a hard thing to explain to a six-year-old at the time was how messed up the tiebreaker situation was," McCarron said.

In a season where the league champion had a sub-.500 record and were swept by St. Louis, it was hard not to be motivated to run it back.

While McCarron sees it as unfinished business, it is really a golden opportunity. McCarron's return makes the Battlehawks one of the top contenders in the United Football League, which was formed by the merger between the XFL and USFL.

On top of that, St. Louis emerged as the flagship market for spring football. The only XFL games last year that saw attendance numbers above 30,000 people were all five Battlehawks home games. Now, even in the new league, there may be even more fans packing The Dome because more sections of the upper deck are being open to ticket sales.

The faithfulness from the fans was rewarded when the UFL announced the location of the championship game on June 16 will be in St. Louis.

McCarron's return has the Battlehawks set up to host that championship game. The longtime NFL veteran is the ideal figure to push both the team and the new league forward. He's won national championships at Alabama and once started a playoff game for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2015.

With all those accomplishments, we come to find that what motivates the 33-year-old to play in this league is to play the hero to his kids and to reward the embrace he feels from St. Louis, a city that twice lost an NFL team and has supported the Battlehawks through all of the spring football iterations.

"The fact that they showed me that much support and love, not only to myself but to my teammates and the organization and family, friends, it just meant a ton to me," McCarron said. "I want nothing more than to come back and win for the city and have a freaking championship parade going through downtown."