{"id":9083,"date":"2026-04-09T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/?page_id=9083"},"modified":"2026-04-09T12:06:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:06:00","slug":"1987-usfl-playoff-preview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/news\/1987-usfl-playoff-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"1987 USFL Playoff Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by: Jack Elliot, USFL Insider since 1983<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the 1987 regular season in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/news\/1987-usfl-regular-season-report\/\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"9070\">books<\/a>, our focus now turns to the playoffs. After a chaotic season that saw both offenses and defenses excel, it remains to be seen if the old adage holds. Will defense indeed win a championship this year. Or, does any one team have enough firepower to win it all with their offense? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1987 USFL Playoff Power Poll<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>#1 &#8211; New Jersey Generals &#8211; The Generals last stand with Herschel Walker? Fitting that they took the number one seed in the playoffs and the East goes through them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#2 &#8211; Las Vegas Ace &#8211; Randall Cunningham took over the league and won&#8217;t rest until he brings a championship to the Ace.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#3 &#8211; Boston Breakers &#8211; Last year&#8217;s champs didn&#8217;t end up undefeated, but they&#8217;re back in the playoffs and dangerous as ever.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#4 &#8211; Birmingham Stallions &#8211; The stead Stallions just keep winning. Can they finally convert that into a championship?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#5 &#8211; Houston Gamblers &#8211; The 1984 champs hope to send Jim Kelly to the NFL with back to back championships this year and next.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#6 &#8211; Tampa Bay Bandits &#8211; Spurrier has the Bandits having fun again. A dangerous opponent for any one of the teams.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#7 &#8211; Denver Gold &#8211; The Run and Shoot sputtered some this year, but they are again a tough out. Looking to make up for last year&#8217;s championship game loss.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#8 &#8211; Jacksonville Bulls &#8211; The Bulls are just consistent enough to sneak into the playoffs. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#9 &#8211; Philadelphia Stars &#8211; The Stars are rising again in the Atlantic. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#10 &#8211; Los Angeles Express &#8211; Steve Young came back from last year&#8217;s disappointment to lead the Express into the playoffs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#11 &#8211; Michigan Panthers &#8211; Lucky break with the tiebreakers. They are dangerous because they are playing with house money.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>#12 &#8211; Oklahoma Outlaws &#8211; Switzer raised their win total by 4 and made them a more solid playoff contender this year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by: Jack Elliot, USFL Insider since 1983 Introduction With the 1987 regular season in the books, our focus now turns to the playoffs. After a chaotic season that saw both offenses and defenses excel, it remains to be seen if the old adage holds. Will defense indeed win a championship this year. Or, does any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9046,"parent":8913,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9083","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9084,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9083\/revisions\/9084"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.distantreplaysports.com\/usfldr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}