Happy Opening Week, UFA fans! After the most eventful offseason in UFA history, the season is finally here! And to celebrate, we're giving you early access to our most ambitious, most ridiculous, and craziest project yet: the UFO Preseason Spectacular. It's a digital magazine that contains an interview with commissioner Tim DeByl, all 24 teams previewed, and Shaggy's playoff picks. Shaggy and I spent a laughably insane amount of time putting it together, I hope you'll take a few minutes to look it over. One thing to note: if you have any corrections, please let me know! You guys are getting a sneak peek before we put it out publicly tomorrow, and since it's a digital mag, we can go in and fix any mistakes. Also, any photogs that see your pics in there just let me know and I'll be sure to attribute you. I took most of them from teams' Facebook pages, where they're not always attributed.
Exciting development: we're going to be doing a “Pick 'Em” contest each week, starting with this one, and the winner is gonna get a brand new official UFA ultimate frisbee! Just go here to put in your picks.
Secondly, the newsletter is gonna switch gears a bit now that the season is here. We're gonna drop it once a week, with recaps of the previous weeks games, a look at the upcoming week's matchups, “Coaches Corner” with our buddy and former Empire Coach Charlie Hoppes, and some fun stuff with a player in the league. This week's edition will give you a basic idea of how we're gonna do things. It will be shorter than our monthly off-season newsletter, but still a lot of fun.
If you enjoy this newsletter, we simply ask that you share it with someone else who might dig it. And be sure to join us on Instagram.
Frizputin the Flatball Feigner is a legendary man of mystery, whose ability to forecast the future is non-pareil. We are truly honored for him to join us this week to give us his 100% guaranteed picks for this weekend.
New York Empire at Oakland Spiders. New York flies out West to kick off the 2025 UFA season, and takes on a young but explosive Oakland Spiders team that is poised to make a statement. This should be an exciting matchup, but my third eye sees New York pulling away in the 4th.
NEW YORK 23-OAKLAND 19.
Austin Sol at Houston Havoc. The Sol beat the Havoc by a combined total of 31 points in 2024, and the Sol got stronger in the offseason. I am looking into the future and I am seeing…a rout.
AUSTIN 25-HOUSTON 16.
New York Empire at Las Vegas Bighorns. Pro ultimate is coming to Vegas, which is very exciting. You know what won't be exciting? This game. New York is going to throttle an expansion team playing its first ever game. I don't even need to use my otherworldy powers to predict this one.
NEW YORK 28-LAS VEGAS 12.
Montreal Royal at Boston Glory. All eyes will be on Tobe Decraene, the Belgian star who played for Montreal last season but who shockingly defected to Boston this year. (I was the only one who saw that coming.) The Royal upset Boston in the final game of the 2024 season, but don't expect a repeat.
BOSTON 23-MONTREAL 16.
Salt Lake Shred at Atlanta Hustle.This game is this week's Big Money Battle (thus the green lettering). Predicting games like this is why the prognosticators like the Great Frizputin get paid the big bucks. Two elite franchises going head to head (Charlie Hoppes will cover this one in detail below), and in the end the difference will be home field advantage. The Hustle win a thriller at the buzzer. The Great Frizputin is excited to watch this one.
ATLANTA 21-SALT LAKE 20.
Philadelphia Phoenix at DC Breeze. DC is coming off an 11-1 year, Philly off a 5-7 one, and the game's in DC. But this one is harder to call than it first appears. Each year, the Phoenix tend to fight like a cornered cougar in one matchup against DC and get whipped like a rented mule in the other. Which one will this be? My mystic powers predict…Cougar! But although the Great Frizputin loves cougars, it won't be enough).
DC BREEZE 19-PHILLY 17
Oregon Steel at Colorado Summit. The Summit have beaten the Steel by an average of 11 points per game over their last 3 battles, but the rebranded and refreshed Steel will put up a better fight this year. The Great Frizputin sees this as the first chapter in a grand adventure for the Summit this season…if you want me to tell you more of what I mean by that, you'll have to call my 1-900 number. ($4.99 per minute)
COLORADO 26-OREGON 20
So the Great Frizputin predicts it, SO IT SHALL BE!!!
Each week we'll be going in-depth on the biggest game on the schedule with our good friend and legendary coach, Charlie Hoppes. Charlie was the co-Coach for the New York Empire, winning two championships with them. Coach will break down both teams, and tell you what to look for in the big game. And there's no question about what the big game is this weekend: Salt Lake vs Atlanta. Charlie breaks it down for us:
This is a bit of a surreal week. This off-season seemed to take ages–so much interesting player movement that I was dying to see in action–and somehow it still feels like it snuck up on me. It’s Week One, and there is an unbelievable slate of games to kick us off: the re-tooled Empire on a western road trip against the unproven but deeply talented Spiders and the brand new Bighorns, our first Texas showdown of the year, Tobe Decraene’s Boston debut against his old team, a feisty Philly team aims for the upset against DC, and the first look of the rebranded Steel against the supercharged Summit.
But unquestionably the game of the week is Salt Lake and Atlanta. These have been the top two “League Pass” teams since the pandemic, teams that you have a blast watching even if you aren’t a fan. They are dynamic on both sides of the disc, have rosters stacked with playmakers, and seem to have a flair for the dramatic. Both teams missed Championship Weekend last year in gutting fashion– the Shred unable to beat the buzzerand advance to a title weekend hosted in Salt Lake, and the Hustle unable to get the disc back for a shot at the tying score, their third loss by one goal in the game-to-go in four years. Both have had a lot of changes this off-season, and both are going to come into this game envisioning it as the start of their road to Championship Weekend.
Salt Lake Shred
The Shred are going to be on the road in this one, always an extra challenge when playing an inter-divisional opponent. They are going to be without the services of a number of key members of their team over the last few seasons who have now departed, including the legendary Grant Lindsley, O-line regular Ben Field, D-line stand outs Simon Dastrup and Joe Merrill (out for the year with an injury), and new Hustle players Elijah Jaime and Sean Connole. Further, both Luke Yorgason and Jonny Hoffman–fixtures in 2024–are inactive for the opener.
But what they do have is a fully healthy Jordan Kerr. After a season dealing with injuries, Kerr returning to his All-UFA and MVP candidate level of 2022 and 2023 would be a huge boon to the offense. They will also continue to pull from a deeply rich youth pipeline, cultivated in its current form in part by coach Bryce Merrill and other members of the Shred organization. Salt Lake invests in regional player development more than perhaps any other team in the league, and there is no question we will be introduced to the next wave of young Shred stars on Saturday night.
With this much turnover, expect the Salt Lake coaching staff to use the opportunity to re-imagine their lines, on-field tactics, and anything else they think may be useful to tweak. The Shred will be a strong team in 2025. How strong depends on how quickly these new ideas and personnel come together. They are the underdog against Atlanta, but no opponent knows exactly what to expect from them yet. An offense that attacks from surprising angles and a defensive game plan that forces the re-made Hustle O-line problem solve on the fly could be the recipe to an upset and a hot start to the West Division race.
Atlanta Hustle
There has been a fair amount of ink spilled on the heartbreak the Hustle faithful have endured the last few years, but make no mistake: this has been and remains one of the very best teams in the league, and enters the season as one of the early title favorites. There are some critical losses here too–Justin Burnett and Aiden Downing, two elite young players, have moved on to other contenders, and franchise cornerstones Bobby Ley and Matt Smith have retired.
But coach Tuba Benson-Jaja has been presented with the opportunity to reload rather than rebuild. The all-time league leader in goals joins the team in the form of Cameron Brock, a future Hall of Famer hunting for another trip to Championship Weekend. The veteran finisher Elijah Jaime rejoins the team after two years in Salt Lake. And perhaps most excitingly, two explosive and productive players in the heart of their primes join the fray. Alec Wilson Holliday led the league in goals last season and represents as good a downfield target as there is. And Sean Connole brings his cannon of an arm to deliver the disc to a receiving corps that includes those three, plus Hayden Austin-Knab, Jeremy Langdon, and superstar Brett Hulsmeyer. Austin Taylor has long been one of the best distributors in the league. And if an O-line featuring this many weapons ends up being a bit overkill, we could see a number of these guys grinding on the already-excellent D line alongside Lukas McClamrock and other strong ballhawks.
The Hustle will be both thrilling and experimental in Week 1. Ley wasn’t just a long-distance bomber. He bent defenses with creative shots in ways that will be hard for Connole or anyone to replicate. Matt Smith was such a huge part of the team’s identity that it would be impossible for anyone to replace him. So instead of fitting in, expect Connole, Wilson Holliday and Brock to show out, and the Hustle to spend the first few games building something new together. If a team this talented can get everyone to be greater than the sum of their already valuable parts, they will push into Championship Weekend and want more once they get there.
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It’s been a long winter, but the UFA is back! And with as interesting a match-up as there is to help kick us off. Enjoy, everyone!
Pawel Janas is the greatest passer in UFA history, but we don't care that much. No, we like him better because he's a trash talking smartass, just our kind of guy. Here are his 5 hot takes for the 2025 season.
Championship Weekend will feature four new division winners but Central will still win it.
Majority of the 21 players selected for All-UFA teams will be foreign born.
At least 5 franchises decide not to participate in the 2026 season.
The frisbee media landscape will fundamentally shift as new outlets appear and consumers realize that the current prognosticators are lazy charlatans.
The UFO doesn't flop.
A LOT of info to consume this week. What can we say, it's the biggest week of the year for us UFA nuts! But if you still need even more,here's a good piece from Evan Leplerabout what to expect this coming season.