The movie was loosely based on the 1987 NFL strike, specifically the Washington Redskins, who won all three replacement games without any of their regular players and went on to win Super Bowl XXII.

Hackman narrated the episode of NFL Network's America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions devoted to that team.

An unnamed (fictional) professional football league is hit with a players' strike with four games left in the season.

Falco tries to rally them, but on the last play, he falters when he sees a pending blitz and calls an audible, which falls short of the winning touchdown.

At a local bar, the replacements are brooding over their loss when some of the striking players, led by their prima donna quarterback Eddie Martel, arrive and taunt them.

Farrell meets Falco the next day and tells him that he's the first quarterback she's seen in a long time who cares more for his teammates than himself, and a connection starts to grow between them.

The next day, in a "chalk talk", when McGinty asks the players what their fears are, they begin to realize they're all afraid of failing in their second chance at football.

When they return to D.C., O'Neil tells McGinty that Martel has crossed the picket line, as has the entire Dallas team—the league's defending champion and the Sentinels' next opponent.

In the first half of the Dallas game, Martel clashes severely with the replacement players, blames them for his own mistakes, and smugly ignores McGinty's play calls.

The website's critical consensus reads: "The clichéd characters and obvious outcome make all the fun and excitement amount to nothing.