Steve Irvine Recaps UAB’s Spring Showcase

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - April 18, 2026

UAB football closed spring practice on Saturday with a Spring Showcase that didn’t included live tackling and lasted just short of 50 plays.

“I think we did get out of the day what we wanted to get out of it,” said Alex Mortensen, who concluded his first spring practice as the UAB head coach. “Again, it was another practice, another workday, a chance to go execute. Really, scheme-wise, we were very vanilla today. We just want to see guys execute. And we had a lot of guys playing out of, some guys playing out of position. So I really appreciate them stepping up too and helping us kind of be able to fill out a full team on both sides. So that was positive. And we did want to try to stay healthy, too. All those things happened today.”

Focusing too closely on the stats probably wasn’t necessary on Saturday. For example, UAB’s top running back Rod Robinson had four carries for 19 yards, at least those were the official numbers. One of runs could have very well been a dynamic touchdown run that could have been about a 70-yard touchdown. But the play officially was a 6-yard run because the officials ruled a defender got a hand on the 6-foot-1, 235-pound Robinson. As Robinson has shown throughout spring practice, getting to him doesn’t ensure you are getting him to the ground.

“It definitely would have been a bigger gain,” said Robinson, who had one defender to beat when the whistle sounded. “I mean I think we've seen it in the scrimmages earlier this spring. None of my coaches really doubted that it would have been a much longer gain. But you know, shout out to the defense. (They) were there, hopefully they make that play.”

The only scoring in the regular part of the scrimmage came on a 29-yard pass from Ryder Burton to Ty Mims and a 55-yard field goal by Jonah Delange. Burton also threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Mims on the first of two goal line plays to end the scrimmage. Burton said the first touchdown pass to Mims came from previous knowledge of the defensive look on the play.

“Well, we got a very similar look in the previous scrimmage, one play before Rod scored in the previous scrimmage,” Burton said. “They came out in split safety. They were playing triangles, nickel was outside leverage. But Ty's got a different level of speed and ability to just start and stop. So I knew the second that he got up and attacked leverage, he was going to go right by him. So I sunk the fake, stared down to the field safety and let it fly.”

That was the biggest offensive play on a day that featured success on both sides of the football. Colby Archie and Myles Cook combined for a sack and the defense also had sacks by Marlin Dean, Sterling Sanders and Ike Esonwune.

One of the best parts of the offense on Saturday was no turnovers.

“We did talk to the quarterbacks about protecting the ball,” Mortensen said. “We have a lot of offensive linemen hurt, and then we also have a number of receivers that are a little bit banged up that we held out today. So we had some guys playing out of position. One of the things we challenge the quarterbacks with is ‘Hey, if the picture's not right around you, everything's not clean, let's not let someone else's mistake become ours.’ I thought they did a good job of that and protected the ball well. So that was certainly positive to see. Now, we've done a lot of tackling already. We didn't tackle today, so our ball carriers probably didn't get challenged as much from a ball security standpoint today.”

Saturday was the final chance this spring for Nate Rogers and Adrian Posse to battle for the backup quarterback spot on the field. Rogers was the first of the two to get on the field and he was 8-for-12 passing for 60 yards. Posse was 1-for-2 for 4 yards.

Running back Bam McReynolds make an impact during his time on the field, carrying the ball three times for 42 yards, including a 37-yard run on the first play of the scrimmage. True freshman receiver Brogan McNab, who began spring practice at quarterback, had three catches for 23 yards and Jailen Holmes had three catches for 17 yards.