Arena Crown Preview

Arena Crown Championship: Albany Firebirds at Nashville Kats

Saturday August 8th - Kickoff 4:00pm

The Albany Firebirds (9-3) will battle it out with the Nashville Kats (11-1) to see who will be the Arena Crown champion.  The teams have met two times this season with Nashville taking the win in both games.

Arena Crown Rematch

    There are high expectations for this matchup this Saturday as it is a rematch of the Arena Crown championship from last year.  Albany will look to be able to repeat as champions and prove they are still the team to beat in the AF1.  Nashville will look to top off their impressive season with beating Albany for a third time in Tennessee.

Firebirds Soaring High

    The Firebirds are coming off an incredible win against the Minnesota Monsters with a 69-56.  This was a close game with it going back and forth until Albany was able to score a long touchdown at the end to ice it.  Duane Brown and Darien Townsend were both spectacular in the game both having over 100 yards and four touchdowns.  Quarterback Sam Castronova played out of his mind having 304 yards and nine passing touchdowns.  

Something else of note was the kicking for the Firebirds in this semifinal matchup.  Kicker Bailey Hale was very impressive in his debut for the team making seven of nine extra points as well as knocking in three deuces in the game.  On defense, Jyaire Stevens had a huge sack and defensive back Travion Moseby was locking down players all game long.  This will be a tough test this week again for the defense as Nashville leads the league in scoring,

Out for Revenge

Nashville will look to put the cherry one top of their season with a big Arena Crown championship win.  To be able to do this, quarterback Tyler Kulka will have to continue to play how he has all season long.  In the semifinal matchup against Michigan, Kulka passed for 371 yards and had nine touchdowns. Receivers Bk Smith Jr, Kendyl Williams, and Malik Honeycutt all had over 100 yards in the game and combined for eight of the nine touchdowns together.

The Kats were also able to rack up three sacks overall in the game with Jaquan Artis having two of them.  They also were able to get an interception from Derrick Maxwell Jr.  Kicking is always something to watch out for with Nashville as Kyle Kaplan has knocked in a ton of deuces this season and added another few this past weekend.  The two kickers will both play pivotal roles in this championship matchup.

The Final Game

    This is it for the AF1 season.  It has been very successful for both teams, and this will be a must watch championship game.  Albany will look to remain champions and be able to get one over on Nashville for the first time this year.  Nashville will look to finish the season with a season sweep of the Firebirds and to take the Arena Crown championship with them into the offseason.  The game will start at 4:00pm eastern, 3:00pm central and will be on Vice Tv and YouTube.