Walk-On Mentality Still Drives UAB Linebacker Muaaz Byard
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - April 6, 2026
Muaaz Byard never wants to shed the walk-on mentality he carries onto the football field.
The label no longer fits the 6-foot-2, 230-pound linebacker, who spent four seasons at Middle Tennessee before transferring in January to UAB. He finished his time at Middle Tennessee on scholarship and is currently sitting on the top of the depth chart at linebacker for the Blazers. His days as an unwanted recruit are done but Byard never wants to forget what that felt like.
“I’ve always been an underdog,” Byard said. “I'm blessed to have been a walk-on. Everyone makes it seem like that's a bad thing, but that mentality, that grit, that trying to get after it every day never goes away. I still play like that because I was the guy who that no one wanted. No one wanted me. I’m just using that as motivation every day. Now I'm the guy that people look up to, the guy that they want to make plays. So just keeping that same fire in me every day. That's what I am. That's what made me the type of player I am, the type of plays I make, things like that, how I play the game.”
Byard comes from a football family. His brother Kevin, who is nine years older, is a former All-Conference USA safety at Middle Tennessee, a third round pick of the Tennessee Titans in the 2016 NFL Draft and is now entering his 11th NFL season as a member of the New England Patriots. His younger brother, Tawfiq, was a three-star recruit who signed as a safety with South Florida, earned All-Big 12 honorable mention at Colorado last season and is now at Texas A&M.
The football story for Muaaz is a little different. His senior season at DeMatha Catholic High in Washington, D.C. was affected by Covid-19 restrictions and he spent a postgrad year at St. Thomas More School in Connecticut.
“After my prep school year, I really had gained a lot of weight and things like that,” Byard said. “The only opportunity I really had was MTSU and they wanted me to walk on. I took that opportunity and ran with it.”
Byard redshirted his first season and didn’t see any action the next year. The next two seasons he became an important part of the rotation. Over those seasons, he had 57 tackles, six tackles for loss, an interception, two pass breakups, two quarterback hurries and a fumble recovery over 20 games with five starts. He was also a key special team member. Last season, Byard played in eight games with four starts before missing the final four games of the season with an injury.
While he’s new to the UAB roster, Byard said he came to Birmingham prepared to be a leader. He’s a newcomer to UAB but a college football veteran.
“I feel like it's different and the same at the same time,” Byard said. “It's different because I'm basically like a freshman when it comes to learning everybody, learning the support staff, learning the playbook and things like that. But I'm also a vet because I've been through everything. It's not anything in college that I haven't been through from off the field, on the field. I’ve seen everything. I played in multiple defenses. I had a new coach come in while I was at my last school. I understand how that goes and how the culture has to shift and things like that. On my visit, when I had talked to Coach Mort, he wanted me to be a leader, one of the guys who advocates for him and pushes his agenda in what he wants to accomplish. That's what I've been trying to do since I've been here, be a leader, be vocal and just do the right thing always.”
That was put to a test on the day before spring practice opened.
“I got a call at 7.30 the night before saying ‘You're playing (middle linebacker) tomorrow,” said Byard, who is lining up next Ike Esonwune on the first team defense. “At Middle Tennessee, we kind of ran kind of (a similar) defense. My defense coordinator Middle Tennessee (Brian Stewart) and Coach Grantham actually coached together for the Dallas Cowboys. So they have some similarities as far as running the 4-2-5. We kind of had some of the same structures and concepts and things like that. But it's just putting together different words and things like that. I had to look at my notebook real fast to get a couple notes, things like that. Then I talked to Ike because he played both positions at Oklahoma State. I feel like that just shows the trust and the trust they have in me.”