but he said Dekkers would play as well<\/a>, and he was true to his word. Dekkers did enough to salvage Week 1’s loss to the Dallas Renegades to make it a question of whether he should start in Week 2’s home opener. Sumlin has not announced a permanent quarterback change just yet.<\/p>\nHenderson got the start but was benched after Dallas went up 20-3, having completed 3 of 8 pass attempts for just 34 yards and a couple of interceptions. Dekkers took over and went 19-of-29 for 227 yards, and while he did take three sacks Dekkers made up for it by rushing for 28 yards and Houston’s only offensive touchdown on the afternoon. Altogether he accounted for 255 of Houston’s 284 yards of offense. The final score was 36-17.<\/p>\n
Dekkers and the Gamblers will kick off in Week 2 against the 1-0 Birmingham Stallions at Houston’s Shell Energy Stadium. The matchup is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 5. Birmingham has won each of the last four meetings between these two teams but squeaked out a 15-13 road win against the Louisville Kings last week, so they might be vulnerable. We’ll see if Dekkers gets on the field and capitalizes on that opportunity.<\/p>\n
Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 1, 2026, 3:40 p.m. CT How did Hunter Dekkers do in his first UFL game? The young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[95878,7,896,55,2572,2571,6,397,15505,96128,95882,97397,115188,96129,95906,95883,104016,1461,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-848144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-new-orleans","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints","12":"tag-neworleans","13":"tag-neworleanssaints","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-saints","16":"tag-sstssportsnflsaints","17":"tag-sstsnsaints","18":"tag-tagamerican-football","19":"tag-taghouston","20":"tag-tagkevin-sumlin","21":"tag-tagnew-orleans-saints","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-tagufl","25":"tag-tx","26":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116332018573423440","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}