Franchise-best start continues as Knight Hawks pound Sharks on road

The winning ways of the Vegas Knight Hawks just keep coming after the team picked up a fourth straight win to start the new year.

Fresh off a week that saw the team sound the siren at a Vegas Golden Knights game, Vegas went on the road and beat Jacksonville, 61-35, Saturday, April 20. Just six weeks into the season, the Knight Hawks have claimed the season series after winning both games against the Sharks.

As a result, Vegas improved to 4-0 on the year while continuing to keep pace in the Western Conference standings. However with it being so early in the season, Davis and company aren’t even concerned about where they’re stacking up currently.

“It’s the first quarter of the season — we don’t even look at that stuff,” he said. “It’s about trying to get better week-by-week and if we do that, things take care of themselves.”

There is currently now a two-team tie for first place in the conference with the Bay Area Panthers being the other team. Vegas will return home for a chance to go 5-0 against Duke City Saturday, April 27 from Lee’s Family Forum. Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m.

“It’s always ‘Control what you can control,’” Davis said. “But what we preach is, ‘How do you handle success?’ You can go out and be 4-0 then lose the next four and those first four are irrelevant.”

With things still tightly contested in the second quarter, Jacksonville missed a field goal with a chance to chop a six-point lead in half. The team’s sideline appeared to be motioning for a flag as its kicker laid out on the field with his arms open awaiting the same thing.

The flag never came and the Vegas offense took over.

“Jacksonville is just a tough place to play,” Davis said. “We were just trying to get in where we fit in. It normally takes a couple of stops before teams can start to stretch their legs.”

That one mishap allowed the Knight Hawks to go down and score, resulting in the team’s largest lead of the night to that point at 13 points. Receiver Quentin Randolph hauled in three touchdowns on five catches for 63 total yards.

Quarterback Ja’Rome Johnson showed out yet again following a week where he was awarded the IFL’s Offensive Player of the Week. He responded to that honor by tossing four first half touchdown passes on the way to a 34-21 lead at halftime.

Johnson accounted for seven total touchdowns on the night including two on the ground while going 12-of-14 through the air for 184 yards and the other five scores. This season, the first-year Knight Hawk is completing 67% of his passes while racking up more than 800 all-purpose yards to go along with 23 total touchdowns including nine on the ground.

“He’s doing everything he’s asked,” Davis said. “We didn’t really have expectations for him coming in. We knew he was a good quarterback, I obviously knew some guys that coached him in college and they spoke very highly of him.”

The Vegas defense held Jacksonville scoreless in the fourth quarter and held it to just 14 points after halftime. Overall, the Sharks scored just 21 points in the final three quarters of the game after closing the first quarter with a 14-13 lead.

This performance came in the absence of defensive lineman Maurice Jackson and defensive back Rodrick Chapman, who each missed the game due to injuries.

“We’ve kind of embodied that right?” Davis said. “We had Jackson go down, somebody steps up. We have Chapman go down, we brought back [defensive back] Jericho Flowers […] It’s always like that in football.”

Defensive back Bryce Hampton snagged the game’s lone interception which counted as his third pick in the first four games of the season. Hampton is third in the league in interceptions.