· Running back Bo Scarbrough (Northridge, Alabama) has been placed on injured reserve with a right knee injury.
· Wide receiver Austin Watkins (UAB) is probable to play with a left knee injury.
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· Wide receiver Marlon Williams (McGill-Toolen) has been placed on injured reserve with a left Achilles injury.
Elsewhere on the roster, quarterback J’Mar Smith is out for the season because of a finger injury, fullback Bobby Holly also has gone on injured reserve with a pectoral issue and defensive lineman Joe Jackson, cornerback JoJo Tillery and linebacker Scooby Wright won’t play on Saturday night either.
“It’s hard from the standpoint that you’ve got a Bobby Holly and a J’Mar that have been in this offense a long time and have given me an awful lot of comfort,” Stallions coach Skip Holtz said on Wednesday. “You’ve got a guy like Marlon who was in it all year last year, played a major role and really was going to pick up that (All-USFL receiver) Victor (Bolden) role. You know, he was going to pick up that kind of marquee guy that we were going to try to highlight. And so you take the stability out, some guys that have been the offense a long time, and you take some talent out with a guy like Marlon, I mean, it’s a blow.”
Despite experiencing the wave of injuries, Birmingham opened the season on Saturday night with a 27-10 victory over the New Jersey Generals.
Alex McGough stepped in for Smith at quarterback, threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Jace Sternberger with four seconds left in the first half to break a tie and ran 29 yards for the first points of the second half.
The Stallions play the Memphis Showboats at 6 p.m. CDT Saturday in the nightcap of a USFL doubleheader at Protective Stadium in Birmingham. The Houston Gamblers and New Orleans Breakers will square off there at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. The first game will be televised by USA, with the Showboats-Stallions contest on FOX.
Among the players signed by Birmingham this week is Kyle Sloter, who was the All-USFL quarterback last season with the Breakers. He went to training camp last year with the Jacksonville Jaguars and played for the XFL’s Arlington Renegades earlier this year before being released on March 27. Sloter will be a game-day inactive on Saturday night.
Jalen Morton will be Birmingham’s backup QB against the Showboats.
“We have what we have,” Holtz said. “We can’t change it. We can’t go get somebody else at this point that would come in and know the system well enough, so we’ll take what we have and we’ll go try to find a way to go 1-0 this week. That’s been the goal every week, and there’s probably a couple of challenges this week we haven’t had since I’ve been here with a lot of new faces in there.
“But we just got to make sure we do a great job as coaches, getting with those players and teaching them and making sure they’re comfortable with what they’re doing and not put them in a position where they’re out there and don’t know what to do.”
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