ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

You’ve got to respect their duet because it came in the context of not wanting to rest on the team’s overpowering performance in last weekend’s United Football League season opener. The message was clear. Dominate one day and it’s forgotten the next. A new task awaits and there’s no time to bask in past success.

Surely, there’s a larger metaphor for life and goals in there, but that will have to come later. Becht and the Battlehawks have to tend to a home opener against the team that ended their season in 2024, the San Antonio Brahmas and longtime NFL coach and defensive mastermind Wade Phillips.

The Battlehawks offense piled up 460 yards of total offense, including 273 rushing yards — both franchise records — against Houston in the opener. They tallied 31 first downs along the way to match their 31 points in a season-opening win. The offensive production earned the offensively line, as a unit, the UFL Offensive Player of the Week honors.

Left tackled Jaryd Jones-Smith, left guard Steven Gonzales, center Mike Panasiuk, right guard Abdul Beecham and right tackle Juwann Bushell-Beatty powered the record-setting offensive day, but that didn’t save them from the eye in the sky and the subsequent film review by Becht and McGeoghan.

Those with the broadest shoulders and biggest backs carry the heaviest burden on the Battlehawks.

The way the staff scrutinized arguably the team’s most dominant all-around unit after a record-setting performance tells us a great deal about the aspirations and expectations for this season.

It’s that whole thing about how heralded San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich famously used to read the riot act to his best player and future Hall of Famer Tim Duncan as a means of setting a tone for the entire team.

“I did challenge them in a team meeting the night before,� Becht said of the offensive line. “Really, we’re not going to win a championship unless they go out and dominate.�

Becht described the “best thing� about the offensive line’s performance as being able to harp on the plays that weren’t made.

“When we go back on the tape, there’s a lot of cleanup,� Becht said. “You think, oh wow, you rush for 270-plus yards. But you really kind of think, okay well, if you would’ve done this, this and this, you may have had another 100. That’s how the mindset has got to be.

“We’ve just go to perfect our job a little bit better, and I have a high expectation level for our offensive line because we do have four guys that have started now in their third season.�

Beecham, a former Kansas State player, moved into the lineup this season after just two starts last season in his first year with the team.

By the way, Becht also included tight ends Jake Sutherland and Chase Allen in the discussion about the offensive line and controlling the line of scrimmage.

Becht didn’t go full curmudgeon. He called it “a great start� and lauded the production as well as the fact that they were recognized as a group.

Again, the larger point remains the mindset that unit must have. That’s something that must resonate through the rest of the team.

McGeoghan, a self-proclaimed “process-oriented guy,� looked at the Battlehawks’ record-setting day in a similar fashion.

One day’s result isn’t more important as the way they went about it.

“Everybody has a lot of things to cleanup,� McGeoghan said. “I have very high standards. I’m very demanding. It’s probably not going to be good enough for quite some time. If you’re an outcome-driven human being, then yeah we had a great outcome. We won 31-6. But I told you, I’m process oriented.

“We were 1 for 4 on two-point plays. That’s not good enough. We were for 0 for 2 on fourth down. Not good enough. There’s a number of things. We had penalties that caused us to be in some really really long yardage — third-and-17 and third-and-19. We got bailed out by a great effort by Jacob Saylors and then Jahcour Person made somebody miss on the screen plays because I called conservative plays in that particular situation.�

McGeoghan also didn’t balk when it came to pointing out the players who committed the penalties — all-league wide receiver and UFL Offensive Player of the Year Hakeem Butler and all-league left tackle Jones-Smith — because “they’ve been in NFL locker rooms before, they know what the standards are.�

“My standards are going to be high,� McGeoghan explained. “They don’t dip because I’m in the UFL. It is what it is. I’m not going to lower my standards for any human being. It could be in college, the UFL, it doesn’t matter. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. It does not matter.�

It’s incredibly early in the season, but the Battlehawks certainly seem set on establishing their own bar for performance and their own barometer for the team’s level of play.

We’ll get our latest indication of whether that approach helps get them over the hump on Sunday at the Dome at America’s Center. In this case, the hump is the very team that tripped them up from reaching their goal last season.

“I’m really excited about the potential of this football team, but ultimately we’ve got to continue to prove it week-in and week-out versus a very tough opponent in San Antonio,� Becht said.