May 14, 2026
By Charlie Hoppes
Through three weeks, the UFA season has taught us something most of us already knew: when it comes to the start of each pro season, we simply do not know ball. With a bit of unpredictable weather, new line-ups and coaches, and a dearth of college players, there is something to surprise pundits and fans alike every week. Each of the last two weeks, we talked about upset bids: a successful overtime win for Austin against the reigning division champ Atlanta Hustle in week one, followed by the heavily favored Sol surviving the Houston Havoc in overtime a week later.
The DC Breeze don’t exactly profile as a classic underdog. They have made it to the East Division Championship Game in every season since returning from the pandemic in 2021, including a Championship Weekend appearance only two seasons ago. At the same time, they finished a decidedly meh 7-5 last year and, following significant roster turnover and a change at head coach, opened the season by being unceremoniously dispatched by the defending-champion Boston Glory, then had to hold off a real challenge from Montreal at home.
While the New York Empire did not have a strong 2025 by their standards, they put together one of the greatest off-seasons in the league’s history, bringing in elite talent to fill every hole on their roster. They mashed Toronto to start the season in a game that couldn’t have gone much better for their new-look O-line: 16 of 17 on holds, plus-seven each for Ben Jagt, Matt LaBar, and Alex Atkins in his Empire debut, 9 for 11 on hucks, and only eight turnovers for the game.
Coming into the Week 3 match-up, both teams were missing significant firepower. We have not yet seen Daan De Marrée or Elliott Moore in Empire green, and Braden Eberhard wasn’t available for New York. But the Breeze were arguably in much tougher shape, as Jasper Tom, Cole Jurek and Aidan Downey still out of the DC lineup to start 2026, the latter two players critical pieces of an O-line that hopes to stretch the field more this year than in the past.
And so even will all the history of the Breeze-Empire rivalry, and the seemingly countless classics between the two teams, this seemed to be a matchup of a team returning to title contender status, and a team looking to rebuild for the first time in more than a decade.
How wrong we were.
In a game where both teams moved quickly–there wasn’t a single point that lasted three minutes or longer all game, and only one that lasted as long as two minutes after the first quarter–DC more than kept up the pace. The Breeze clawed back from a 16-13 deficit with a bit more than 5 minutes left in the third quarter to tie the game at 17-17 by the end of the period. The contest would never be more than a one-point game again. In a bit of foreshadowing, New York struggled to move the disc into position for a buzzer-beater at the end of regulation before turning it over to give the Breeze a chance in the final seconds. In overtime, the Empire started on defense and promptly broke. The teams traded out until New York–slated to receive the pull in a sudden-death double overtime, should the game reach that point–fielded the pull with a shot to win with 14 seconds remaining. The Empire struggled to create movement again, and a shocking turnover in the reset space with four seconds left gave Breeze rookie Wiebe van den Brink just enough time to float it to Luke Rehfuss at the horn for the stunning walk-off win.
How did DC pull this off? They played a really strong game, but a major factor was the major playing time new head coach Xavier Maxstadt provided to the top of his roster. The top six in points played between both teams were all Breeze players, as Miles Grovic, Andrew Roy, Jacques Nissen, Sean Mott, Christian Boxley, and AJ Merriman each outpaced the playing time of anyone on the Empire roster. In fact, across the whole league, there have only been 17 instances of a player playing 30 or more points in a game this season, with Nissen, Mott, Boxley and Merriman all reaching that mark against New York. Merriman’s 32 points, split exactly evenly between O and D points, are tied for the second-most played in a game this season.
Of course, it is easier to play a lot of points in high-scoring games; all but two of the seventeen 30-point-played games came in the three highest-scoring games of the season, with the two exceptions belonging to members of the Oregon O-line during a walloping at the hands of the Oakland Spiders that led to the Steel playing 36 offensive points. But this trend has been season-long, particularly for Merriman. Against Montreal, Merriman played in 29 points of a 20-18 win, a whopping 76 percent of the points in that game. In fact, Merriman is averaging 28.3 points played per game so far; for contrast, Thomas Edmonds led the Breeze with 20.5 last season. Should he keep up the pace, he would finish third in franchise history in that statistic, behind the averages put up in 2014 by Brett Matzuka (31.8 points played per game) and Tyler DeGirolamo (28.9), in a very different era that featured a clock that did not start on pulls, leading to more points played per game league-wide.
Giving the top of the roster this large a workload is a risk for Maxstadt. This much play can wear down a player, leading to inefficient play and, in some cases, increased risk of injury. At his current pace, if the Breeze play in at least one playoff game, Merriman would be no worse than the fourth-most-played player in a season during the post-pandemic era. Two of the players that would be ahead of him, Jack Williams and Ben Jagt in 2021, were coached by myself and Anthony Nuñez. We made the choice to play them both so much because we believed that, considering the inexperience at the bottom of our roster, playing some of our best players as often as they could play was the best path forward for our team. Our star-spamming technique helped save us from big deficit in the playoffs against Atlanta–Williams played in 39 of the 43 points in that game, and Jagt played in 37–and was a contributing factor to our run to the title game. For Maxstadt, Merriman, and other DC stars, it may well be worth the mileage. The four stars who played 30 or more points against New York combined for 18 assists, seven goals, two blocks…and 11 turnovers. It’s a gamble, but one that seemed to pay off against the Empire.
The Breeze of recent vintage would have had no reasonable chance at attempting this strategy. Their staple small-ball offense was one of the best offenses in the sport, but it was very throw–and legs–intensive. The Breeze ranked first in the league in completions per game in 2021, 2023 and 2025, finished 2nd in 2022, and fifth in 2024. This year? All the way down to 16th in the league. The DC offense this year has shorter possessions than they have had in a long time, with more traditional isolation cutting creating points with the capacity to end quickly and suddenly. And they are doing this without one of their top deep throwers in Downey, and an elite downfield target in Jurek. The potential for the Breeze to stretch the field is only going to get more sustainable. And with shorter possessions comes the opportunity to play the stars in more points, pushing their impact to a greater portion of a given game.
For the Empire, the stagnation they suffered when receiving the pull at the end of both regulation and overtime was emblematic of a recurring issue that would crop up at various moments throughout the game. The handlers and cutters would end up disconnected as the offense patiently waited for an opening to attack and flow into. This is a common issue for teams at all levels. There are two major differences between the Empire and most teams in this area. First, it seemed that big cushion between handlers and cutters seemed to be there by design, the way it might be set up for a handler weave or a German offense. They just rarely then used that space with clear purpose. But for New York, that is less a problem and more of a great opportunity. The Empire has waves of elite initiators capable of getting open in isolation, be that in the backfield or downfield. If they can consistently use the space between the handlers and cutters as high-aggression isolation space for Atkins, Williams, De Marrée, Labar, Eberhard, Oliver Chartock, John Randolph and others, it’s going to be an extreme challenge for opposing defenses to do much in the way of stopping them.
This was a thrilling game, another gripping chapter in the greatest rivalry in the UFA. And more than that, it felt like a game both teams will build from. If the Empire can make the most of their enormously talented roster, and the Breeze can successfully put their fate in the hands of their stars, the race to chase down the Boston Glory is going to be richly compelling all summer long.
ABOUT CHARLIE HOPPES
Charlie Hoppes has coached ultimate for 20 years, including several stints in the UFA. He was co-head coach of the New York Empire–helping to lead them to undefeated championship seasons in 2022 and 2023–and is currently a coaching consultant for the Indianapolis Alleycats. Hoppes provides individualized coaching services to players, coaches, and teams at all levels through Charlie Hoppes Ultimate Coaching & Consulting (CHUCC). Learn more at charliehoppes.com
