The UAB Preview
This is widely considered to be a make-or-break year for UAB head coach Trent Dilfer.
UAB is a proud program with high expectations; Dilfer inherited a team coming off six consecutive winning seasons, including two Conference USA championships. His hire was something of a surprise. While he was a Super-Bowl-winning quarterback, Dilfer’s coaching experience had been limited to the high school ranks, where he won two state titles in four years at Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy. It’s an impressive track record, but not one that typically catches the eye of college administrators.
At the time, though, taking big swings with unconventional coaching hires was a popular idea, most notably with Deion Sanders at Jackson State. It’s the line from Moneyball; if we think like the Yankees in here, we’ll lose to the Yankees out there. Despite the success the program had under Bill Clark, school leadership decided to take a chance. Perhaps the school’s move to the American Conference and its bigger budgets played a role in the decision to zag when others zigged. Regardless, the experiment is in peril; in his two seasons in Birmingham, Dilfer has compiled a 7-17 record. Now, in year three, the pressure is on.
The problem for Dilfer is that actually building a program at UAB has become seemingly impossible. No team in the American has been hit harder in the transfer portal than the Blazers. Quarterback Jacob Zeno, who started against Navy in 2024 but was later supplanted by Jalen Kitna, left for Texas A&M. The secondary and the offensive line were both hit hard as well. UAB’s top three receivers last year were two freshmen and a sophomore, which could have been an excellent foundation for the future. Instead, the top two both entered the portal. Sophomore Amare Thomas, who led the team with 670 receiving yards, went to Houston. Kam Shanks was only a freshman, but he was named third-team all-conference as a receiver with 656 yards and 6 TDs. He was also named to the all-conference first team as a return specialist, leading the nation in punt return average (20.56 yards/ret.) and PR TDs (2). He’s now at Arkansas. Lee Beebe Jr. led the team with 1,103 all-purpose yards last year and also earned all-conference recognition. In 2025, he’ll be in Indiana‘s backfield.
By the end of 2024, UAB only had 41 scholarship players left on the roster, and had only 55 players available in spring practice. That left Dilfer no choice but to dip into the portal himself. He tried to be strategic about what kind of player he took, prioritizing guys who had starting experience at their previous stops. It can take time for a team with so many new pieces to gel, so he wanted players who at least earned the trust of other coaches. Still, it’s a lot of turnover. Including their recruiting class, the Blazers have 49 new faces on the roster in 2025. Of the 31 new transfers, 19 are from FBS, eight are from FCS, two came from junior colleges, and two from Division II schools.
To their credit, the offense seems to have hit the ground running, rolling up 520 total yards in a 52-42 win over Alabama State. The Blazers pounded their way to 273 rushing yards, led by UTEP transfer Jevon Jackson with 166 yards on only 17 carries. Kitna was both efficient and effective, completing 18 of 23 passes for 247 yards and two touchdowns. The Blazers needed more of those 52 points than they probably would have liked, but at least in week one, the offense was up to the task.
The rushing yardage was especially eye-opening. UAB ran for 190 yards against the Mids last year, which was their high-water mark against FBS competition. In their first four games, they averaged 41.5 carries per game. After facing Navy, though, that number tailed off to 28 carries per game the rest of the way. At the conference kickoff, Dilfer explained that this was intentional. Kitna replaced Zeno after the Navy game, and once the Blazers were out of contention for a bowl game, Dilfer wanted to get his quarterback of the future as seasoned as possible. Kitna averaged nearly 40 passes per game, while UAB’s rushing attack finished the season ranked 95th in the country at 130 yards per game. That isn’t the long-term plan, though, as Dilfer has high hopes for his running backs. Before moving to UTEP, Jackson was an FCS All-American at Austin Peay. Solomon Beebe and Isaiah Jacobs combined for 93 rushing yards in the opener. The Mids will likely see all three this week.
But Kitna is still the straw that stirs the offense’s drink. Dilfer was the #6 pick in the 1994 NFL draft, a fact he uses as context when he says that Kitna is ahead of where he was at this point in his career. At 6-5, 225, the senior certainly looks the part, and his 272.9 passing yards per game are impressive. Last year, however, he threw 11 interceptions and had a tendency to fumble. Part of that is undoubtedly due to being thrown into the fire the way he was, so the question for this year —and this week —is whether those growing pains will now pay dividends.
On the plus side, he has targets who can make plays. Wide receiver Corri Milliner had entered the portal after catching 23 passes for 396 over the last half of 2024, but decided to stay in Birmingham. He had 98 yards and a touchdown last week. Fellow redshirt sophomore Iverson Hooks caught seven passes in the opener for 73 yards and a score, emerging as another reliable pair of hands after catching 14 balls a year ago. But the real question is whether a patchwork offensive line will give Kitna time to find these receivers. The unit returns only one starter from last season, G/T JonDarius Morgan. Center Adam Lepowski returns after missing last season due to injury, but no other player on the line has started a game at UAB or anywhere else. To their credit, they didn’t give up any sacks last week, but Navy will present a much greater challenge.
Of course, UAB’s defense may present a challenge of its own to Navy. The Blazers were disappointing on that side of the ball in 2024, ranking 120th in scoring defense (34.3 ppg) and 94th in total defense (393.3 ypg). Dilfer decided to overhaul his defensive staff. His search for a defensive coordinator was, as he put it, like searching for a unicorn. He wanted a coach with NFL experience who would bring that mindset to his program, but he also wanted someone with triple option experience; UAB faces all three of the American’s option teams (Navy, Army, Rice) this season. He found his needle in the haystack when he named Steve Russ to lead the defense.
From 2018-2023, Russ was a linebackers coach in the NFL, first with Carolina, then with Washington. Prior to that, he was the defensive coordinator at Air Force. He was co-coordinator in 2012 and 2013, but was the sole playcaller from 2014-2017. Against Navy, he has an interesting history. In his four years as the sole DC, the Falcons were 2-2 against the Mids. It was during his time on the Air Force staff that Navy started experimenting with different looks specifically for the service academy games, which had mixed results. The low point for Navy– and high point for Russ– came in 2016, when the Falcons limited the prolific Navy offense to only 57 yards on the ground in a 28-14 Air Force win. Russ’ tenure in Colorado Springs included two ten-win seasons.
There was, however, one team that was his kryptonite: New Mexico. This was the Bob Davie era for the Lobos, and they also ran a triple option offense under coordinator Bob DeBesse. DeBesse ran his offense out of the shotgun, and for some reason, Air Force had no answers for it. From 2014-2016, New Mexico averaged 372 rushing yards and 41 points per game against the Falcons. Their struggles were so pronounced that in 2017, Navy decided to mimic the New Mexico offense against Air Force, running the option out of the shotgun. Even as the Mids looked shaky at times running their new look, the change had its desired effect. Navy ran for 471 yards, with Zach Abey accounting for 214 while Malcolm Perry ran for 127 on only four carries. The Mids won, 48-45, on Abey’s pass to Tyler Carmona in the closing seconds.
What was the difference? Why was Air Force so effective against the option when teams ran it from under center, but so bad out of the shotgun? It might be that in the shotgun, it was easier to use Air Force’s aggressiveness against them. At the time, Ken Niumatalolo mentioned that a lot of the motion that Navy used was “window dressing” to clear defenders away from the ball.
In the first quarter, Navy called a simple trap play that looked like an option. Schematically, the Falcons did everything right. They had someone covering the quarterback and the would-be pitch man, and had a linebacker in the gap that Perry ran through. Perry, though, was able to avoid the tackle, and once he got through, there was nobody at the third level to stop him. The safety had followed the window dressing.
It was a similar situation on Abey’s long run in the third quarter. With both Air Force safeties following other players outside, Abey was able to cut inside of them.
It’ll be interesting to see what Russ has learned from those years and if UAB will make similar mistakes. Unlike 2017, shotgun option plays are part of Navy’s base offense now, so they are much more comfortable in that look. There’s also no shortage of motion and shifting designed to throw off defenses. If history is any indication, this could be good news for the Mids.
But there is only so much stock you can put in history. It’s worth noting that Russ was on the Air Force staff last year as an analyst, so he has already seen Drew Cronic‘s offense first-hand. He has learned the hard way how it differs from the Navy offenses he has seen in the past. One potential wrinkle he could throw at the Mids is alignment. In the past, Russ always lined up against the option in an odd front. However, his base defense at UAB is a 4-2-5. The blocking rules are different against odd vs. even fronts, so if he decides to show different looks through the game, that can test a Navy line that’s still learning how to play as a unit.
Whatever look UAB shows, though, they still need players to run it, and that could be an issue. The Blazers have only one returning starter from last year’s beleaguered unit, safety Sirad Bryant. After recording 60 tackles and an interception a year ago, Bryant should be a steady hand on the back end. In front of him, however, are so many unknowns. Inside linebacker Devin Hightower is a transfer from Rhode Island whose career has included stops at Michigan State and Cincinnati. Defensive end Jamichael Rogers is a transfer from Division II Miles College who totaled 53 tackles last year. He had a career-best performance against another option team, Carson-Newman, with seven tackles. There are interesting pieces, but the question is how long it will take for them to come together.
It didn’t happen last week. Alabama State had 514 yards of total offense, including 202 on the ground. The Blazers gave up scoring plays of 60, 31, and 69 yards, which hints at some of the miscommunication you’d expect from a team that just hasn’t played much together. They will face a whole new challenge against an unconventional Navy offense.
UAB got off to a similar start last year, piling on 517 yards of offense in their opener against Alcorn State and pushing Arkansas for 60 minutes. It didn’t take long after that for things to go sideways. Still, the potential is there for this team to score points. While the Blazers are in flux, their unknowns also make them dangerous. Kitna and company will give the rebuilt Navy secondary one of their biggest tests of the season, and UAB’s coaches know a thing or two about option football. Saturday should provide both teams with an early read on where they stand.
