Empire Fight Cancer, Beat Atlantic City

With more than 9,000 fans filling the Times Union Center and many of them wearing pink, the Albany Empire won a wild shootout against the Atlantic City Blackjacks, 63-61 on Saturday afternoon. The fans wore pink shirts and waved pink towels and players wore pink socks and gloves in the Empire Tackles Cancer game.

For the fourth time this season, Tommy Grady threw seven touchdown passes in a game and the Empire have now matched last season's win total of eight victories only nine games into 2019. Five of those TD passes in Albany's highest-scoring output of the season went to wide receiver Quentin Sims who now leads the Arena Football League with 23 receiving touchdowns. The defense helped hold off Atlantic City despite allowing two touchdowns in the final 3:11 of the game.

With an 8-1 record, the Empire will travel to Philadelphia next weekend to take on the Soul before the bye week mercifully arrives in this 12-game regular season schedule.