DMU Lions endure mixed start to American Football season

The De Montfort University Lions American football team has had a tough start to the season with one win and one loss.

The loss came against Nottingham Greens who are the Lions' playoff rivals and the best team on paper in their division.

The Lions team has been weakened over the summer with most of the team graduating and leaving DMU, which has made the job much harder as the Lions have a completely different team to last season.

The offence has taken a huge hit with over half of the players playing American football for the first time.

This has led to fewer returns and more mistakes on the field. These changes have caused the Lions to make more errors and struggle when trying to get the ball forward against tough opposition.

These stats show that the defence is still performing at a decent level but is struggling more than last season.

Coach Josh Seybert said: “Through two games this season, we’ve hit many of our goals on defence, especially in terms of creating turnovers and not conceding points. Offensively we have work to do but I’m confident we will be able to turn it around.”

The drop off defensively has not been nearly as steep as the offence with the defence conceding 7 points which is the same amount conceded in the previous game.

The big change however is the previous defence managed to score 14 points whereas this year the team were unable to do anything with the turnover in possession.

Last year's offence was also more ruthless with possession as they carried more of a threat running and throwing the ball. This is shown in the difference in the points scored with last year's team scoring 46 points with 6 touchdowns compared to the zero scored by this year's team.

Overall the team is not on the same level as it was last year and this is down to the huge changes in personnel as the new team is still learning and have fewer experienced heads in the team.