Coaching Change Carries Outlaws to Division Championship

The Pittsburgh Outlaws, in their second year in the American Arena League 2, are North Division Regular Season Champs. However, this team struggled in the AAL2 last season, going 0-8. The team started with a major shift that has sent the Outlaws from an okay team to a great team. How could this team turn it around so quickly, you may ask? There was a change in coaching as the Outlaws added Luke Capurso as the head coach.

Coaching Changes Lead to Complete Turnaround

Coach Capurso got his coaching career started in 2022 at Perry Traditional Academy in Pittsburgh, PA, as a line coach and special team coordinator on the varsity team and the offensive coordinator on the JV team. Coach Capurso joined the Outlaws in week 3 of the 2025 season. He used that week to evaluate the team and started making changes, bringing in a couple of Free agents, and changing up strategies on both sides of the ball.

The Outlaws would go on to lead a few games, but late-game meltdowns would lead to them being unable to win a game in the 2025 campaign. In the 2025 Winter Indoor Football League season, Coach Capurso would change things up and do an almost complete overhaul on the team, bringing in new players that he found through tryouts and bringing back some of the big names that had made a statement last season in the WIF and in the AAL2 for Pittsburgh.

Then Coach Capurso and the Outlaws would run roughshod through the WIF, going 5-1 on their way to winning back-to-back championships. So again, what changed? Coach Capurso is changing things up and being able to keep teams on their toes with his ever-changing offensive playbook, an eye for those hidden gems at the tryouts, commitment to studying the playbook and game film, and his hard-hitting workouts and practices.

After a close game vs the Steel City Stampede and a learning experience vs the Wheeling Miners, a game of the year candidate vs the Ohio Legend, and running through the Avengerz and the Grizzlies and picking up a forfeit win over the Avengerz, sit as the regular season North Division Champs. Last week in the North Division Championship, the Outlaws fell behind 12-0 after the first and battled back to cut into the lead of the Michigan Raptors. Going to the half down 20-12.

Late Game Rally

Coach Capurso once again dug into his bag of tricks and rallied the troops. The Outlaws made sure that the Raptors, who had been on a winning streak for the last four weeks, would not make it into the endzone. The Outlaws, who trailed 20-6 at one point, rallied to score 18 unanswered points.

But with the help of coach Capurso, the Outlaws have made a complete 180-degree turnaround, and if he hasn’t already, I definitely believe that Coach Capurso deserves to be in the conversation for coach of the year with how he’s shaken up this roster and taken the Outlaws to 19-5 since last fall.

Unfortunately, the Outlaws fell just shy of a trip to the AAL2 Championship, losing 55-45 to the Steel City Stampede this past weekend. However, the future is bright for the Outlaws with the high-level coaching they have added.