The surging Marburg Mercenaries (5-3), Europe #17,, winners of five in a row, will pay a visit to the GFL South’s last place, 1-7 Ingolstadt Dukes with the return of the German Football League to a full weekend of games.
The GFL had been a four week hiatus for most teams.
Marburg has beaten the Dukes already once this year, 43-14, while Ingolstadt is coming off its first win of the season, a 31-21 decision over the Allgäu Comets.
Ingolstadt were soundly beaten by the Schwabisch Hall Unicorns 51-0 just before the break and the week before 63-13 by the Frankfurt Universe. They dropped the tough 28-26 decision to the Comets just prior to that. They had lost 43-13 the week before that to the surging Mercenaries after losing 37-13 to the Universe the week prior to that. They had dropped 24-0 decision to the the Unicorns to open their 2019 season. But they then suffered a disappointing 37-30 loss to the Stuttgart Scorpions.
The Dukes have had a revolving quarterback carousel with Anthony Gardner, Cedric Townsend and for the last four games, Cory Benedetto. He had a solid outing in the win over the Comets throwing for 206 yards and two touchdowns whle rushing for 82 and another. This gives him 679 yards and six touchdowns in four games. His chief target Normen Schumm who has 361 yards receiving on 213catches while Anthony Mella caught five touchdown passes from Benedetto. The running game has begun to improve the Dukes are averaging 86.9 yards a game with Moritz Albrecht the leading rusher with 208 yards.
The Mercenaries are on a roll after winning five straight as they have unleashed their passing game. They downed the Kirchdorf Wildcats for win #5 beating them 41-28 a week ago. They put a walloping on the Stuttgart Scorpions right before the break, beating them 52-14 behind a 377 yards and 5 TD passing game from QB Jake Sullivan. They defeated the Munich Cowboys the week before 41-29 and before that downed the Ingolstadt Dukes 43-14 after notching their first win of the season the week before. It was a big one as they outdueled the Wildcats 55-49. They had dropped their first three games of the year in 2019, losing 52-9 to the defending champion Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns, then 30-21 to the Stuttgart Scorpions and finally 20-14 to the Frankfurt Universe.
Sullivan is on fire and now leads the league in passing yardage and average yards per game having thrown for 2,572 yards in eight games, an average of 321.5 yards a game,. Hendrik Schwarz is his leading receiver with 698 yards receiving on 41 receptions. He is averaging 17 yards a catch and 87.9 yards a game. Luke Wildung has 36 receptions for 417 yards while Marvin Rutsch has caught 58 passes for 441 yards following a 122 yard receiving day against Kirchdorf. Running back Triston McCathem has 525 yards rushing (4th in average with 65.6/game) for the year but he also has 348 yards receiving.
Marburg’s offense is averaging 440.8 yards a game, good for second in the GFL, while the Dukes have been giving up an average of 402 yards per game, 13th in the league.
