Long field goal stuns Battlehawks in UFL opener

After a back-and-forth affair in which defense dominated the night, a 64-yard field goal from Jake Bates is what it took for the Michigan Panthers to beat the St. Louis Battlehawks 18-16 on Saturday, March 30, in Detroit.

“Give them credit,” Battlehawks head coach Anthony Becht said. “With no timeouts left, they drove the ball down the field. I iced the kid, he made the first one. I felt good about that certain situation. The kid’s got some moxie to him that made that kick. That was impressive. You don’t see that often.”

Bates’ kick came with eight seconds remaining in the game after McCarron led the Battlehawks offense to a clutch drive to take a late lead in the final minute. A drive that started with a 48-yard kick return by Darrius Shepherd, McCarron threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Marcell Ateman on 4th-and-goal to tie the game and then a pass to Jake Sutherland for a 1-yard completion for the extra point for the 16-15 lead.

“They make a 64-yard field goal, hats off to them,” Battlehawks quarterback AJ McCarron said during the team’s postgame press conference as the kick was being shown on television in the room. “I mean, that’s a helluva kick. I felt when we needed it most, the offense put drives together. We made the plays when we had to and we just got to be better next week.”

Michigan quarterback E.J. Perry completed half of his 24 passes for 176 yards but ran for two touchdowns and led the final drive to get his kicker in position to play the hero.

“[Bates] came up to me and said the 45 (yard line) and I went over to the o-line and, I started doing the math in my head, and said ‘we got to get to the 35,” Perry said. “I did not believe that. I got one-yard short and he was like ‘It’s gonna have to do.’ It’s nice to have Jake on our team.”

The Battlehawks entered the fourth quarter down 7-3 but in the first drive of the period took a 9-7 lead on a touchdown pass to Sutherland.

“Whenever we needed plays, we made them,” McCarron said.

Ateman led the Battlehawks with 60 receiving yards and was a trusted target in fourth-down situations. McCarron competed 24-of-37 passes for 216 yards and two touchdowns. The Battlehawks’ first points of the game came on a last-second field goal by Andre Szmyt to take a 3-0 lead entering halftime.

Defense dominated the first half of the game, as Szmyt’s kick was the only scoring play to come out of the first half of the first game of the first season in a newly formed league.

“That’s the toughest thing about Week 1, is that you don’t have any film on them,” McCarron said. “All you can go off of is their previous games, which were last year.”

“Nobody had seen anyone’s defense,” Perry said. “We’re all trying to put our stuff together.”

The Battlehawks will take on the Arlington Renegades for their first home game of the season at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 6 at The Dome at America’s Center, in St. Louis.