Season recap: Cheers to the Reds, dieselz and... Drinkers! (26 March 2014)
QFL Season II kicked off on 30 July 2011 and officially ended on 6 March 2014 with duffeldoffel's Reds successfully defending their QFL World Championship thus becoming the first wild-card team to win the QFL Fever Bowl.
The Ice Bowl ended 19 days later than the Fever Bowl, thus marking the de-facto end of Season II after almost 32 months of intense Football Fever™ action, about 10 months longer than the inaugural season had lasted.
The league underwent substantial changes in the short offseason with the Lübeck Bay Seagulls dropping out, the SimKonville Fraggles becoming the Mighty Beagles of Angedair and the Moderate Drinkers becoming the eleventh QFL franchise. Other than that, the modus from the inaugural season remained intact - and so did the balance of power between the two divisions.
Three out of four playoff teams from the previous season returned to the postseason, all from the Australian Division: zugschefz dieselz (5-1) as new divisional champions, the Dicey Beasts (4-2) and duffeldoffel's Reds (4-2) who, despite becoming the first team in league history to start a season 4-0, only finished third in the division.
The commissioner's franchise, igorz malfunxionistz (3-3), improved their winning output from the previous season as did the Mighty Beagles of Angedair (2-4) who became the first team to be managed by two heads. Both teams eventually joined forces for the Australian Division in the Ice Bowl, the QFL all-star game.
Arguably, the most prolific new face to be seen in Season II was Uwe#8 who had once introduced the game of Football Fever™ to the 49ers FanZone community back in the days of 49ersFanZone.net's preceding project, SanFrancisco49ers.de. He entered the league with his Moderate Drinkers (4-2) and completed a remarkable turnaround winning the Gothic Division after starting the season with back-to-back losses.
MoRe's Moles (3-3) repeated their record from the previous season and returned to the Ice Bowl. They fell one win short of clinching a wild card at the expense of the Reds when they lost their season finale to silentsound's Silentknights. The 'Knights (2-4) kind of repeated by missing the playoffs again while also again spoiling the party for their opponent in the season finale.
Defending divisional champion Prussian Warriors (2-4) and frontmodes Kobras (1-5) had frustrating seasons. The Warriors had a promising 2-0 start but then lost out the rest of the season and had to settle for an Ice Bowl selection. The Kobras were heading for an imperfect season before managing to save some reputation with a win over the Fraggles in their season finale.
Another promising new coach who entered the QFL scene was Buvag who successfully featured as interim for two teams. He had his QFL debut finishing the Reds win over the Moles in week 3 before taking over the dieselz the week after. En route to winning the division for the dieselz, he set a new QFL record scoring 65 points against the Malfs and clinched the division with a 14-point comeback against the Reds.
The dieselz, who had had the league's best defense in the previous season, this time had the top offense overall and through the air. The Drinkers had the best ground attack.
The Reds, whose defense had finished second to the dieselz in the previous season only due to a late overtime appearance, improved to first place overall and again had the best passing defense while their rushing defense were second only to the Beasts.
Ice Bowl II: The Alpines 31, The Nordics 24 (Final)
This season's all-star game pretty much reflected the superiority of the Autralian Division over the Gothic Division. Making up for their loss in the previous season's Ice Bowl, the Alpines beat the Nordics coming back from a four-point halftime deficit. The game-winning touchdown came with 36 seconds remaining when the Malfs' offense threw a 49-yd scoring pass against the Moles' defense. Also featuring were the Fraggles' defense for the Alpines and the Warriors' offense for the Nordics.
The Australian Division outwon the Gothic Division 8-2 in the interdivisional games and, again, won both wild cards thus occupying the maximum of three playoff spots.
Season II, Divisional Playoffs: duffeldoffel's Reds 31, zugschefz dieselz 13 (Final)
Season II, Divisional Playoffs: Dicey Beasts 31, Moderate Drinkers 36 (Final)
The top-seeded dieselz who had beaten the Reds in their regular-season finale hoped to ride their momentum to take revenge for the rout they had suffered at Fever Bowl I. This time, though, the Reds would not squander their comfortable lead and cruised to another comprehensive playoff win.
The Beasts remained winless in their franchise's postseason history and again failed to qualify for the Fever Bowl. The Drinkers started well and took a 17-point lead early in the third quarter before standing tall to see out the game after the Beasts had come within five points late in the fourth.
Fever Bowl II: duffeldoffel's Reds 48, Moderate Drinkers 21 (Final)
The Drinkers had high hopes to beat the defending World Champions as they entered the game riding a five-game winning streak. However, only a minute into the second quarter, the game was all but done in the Reds' favor.
Even though the Drinkers actually outscored the Reds by a point in the last 44 minutes of the game, a 28-point deficit surely was way too much to overcome for the expansion franchise against an experienced championship team like the Reds.