UAB’s New Cornerbacks Coach Starts With a Fresh Evaluation

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - March 30, 2026

Watching film of the players he’ll be working with this season wasn’t part of the spring practice preparation for UAB cornerback coach Lionel Stokes.

Now, he didn’t have a lot of time to study up on his players but that wasn’t part of the plan anyway. Stokes was on the job for about two weeks before spring practice. He spent the first week getting to know the cornerbacks while everyone was gone on spring break the second week. Learning the defense to prepare for spring practice teaching also took up much of his time.

But he purposely stayed away from watching his players in previous game or practice film.

“I actually told the players that I did not do that because I didn't want to have any thoughts coming into it,” Stokes said. “I wanted everybody to have a clean slate. I wanted them to show me who they were during spring ball. I didn't want to have some thoughts of ‘Oh, this guy's pretty good on tape, this guy's pretty this on tape.’ I didn't want to have those thoughts coming in. I wanted to have fresh thoughts, clean thoughts, and trust what I see in person at that point.”

What does he see after four spring practice sessions?

“Let me start talking about the skills, man,” Stokes said. “We definitely have a skilled group. We have some stuff that we obviously still have to work on (but I) love the way they compete. It's a group of competitors. Regardless of the situation, they are gonna compete. That's one thing I like about it. We got guys that's you kind of have to ‘woah’ them instead of ‘sic ’em’ sometimes, that's the way you definitely like it. Wish I had maybe another guy, just to kind of help out saving legs at times, but overall I think it's a good group so far.”

Delvon Gulley and Isaiah Crozier each had playing time in their first year with UAB last season. Gulley started six of the 11 games he played in and Crozier had one start in eight appearances. Those were the lone returning scholarship players at cornerback for the Blazers. UAB’s staff filled the secondary with experienced through the transfer portal.

Gulley, Crozier and transfers Darrell Sweeting (Marshall) and Guylijah Theodule (Southern Miss) have been spotted running with the first two groups during media viewing periods. Sweeting had a pair of interceptions during team work during media viewing earlier this week. But Stokes said the secondary coaches are working everybody in and out of the rotation.

“It's a lot of similar guys,” Stokes said. “I don't want to single out one guy, but it's a group of guys that's very similar, if that makes sense. Long, strong, big, all of them competitive, a lot of them have the same type skill set. Maybe one might have a little better ball skills than the other but for the most part, it's very, very similar.”

For Stokes, his path through coaching is filled with stops that aren’t necessarily similar to the stop before. The Columbus, Mississippi native, who was a two-year starter in the secondary at Louisiana, began his coaching career with the first of two stints at his alma mater. He coached in Division III at Howard Payne and was in FCS at Jackson State, where he was the defensive coordinator part of his time there, and Nicholls State. For the past two seasons he’s served as a defensive analyst at the University of Michigan.

“You know, I actually learned probably more in the smaller spots,” Stokes said. “I don't know what it is about it. I guess maybe they have to tweak their coaching or figure out things for quote-unquote maybe a lesser athlete. But I probably kind of learned and grew more when I was at some of the smaller level schools as opposed to like Michigan.”

The opportunity to come to UAB developed quickly.

“When the call did come, I had some other interviews and stuff set up,” Stokes said. “Initially the plan was to fly down here, do an in-person interview. Since I had a bunch of stuff going on and a bunch of interviews, we just went ahead and did it in the phone so we could get it done.”

The first time he stepped on campus was to report to work and he’s been going full speed ever since.