By Steve Irvine
November 9, 2026 - BIRMINGHAM, AL
The chance to reach bowl eligibility for the first time since 2022 is not the focus this week for the UAB football program. Sure, a win this week at Temple would give the Blazers their sixth win needed to become bowl eligible but Alex Mortensen and his program are still striving for more.
“I think it'd be very significant,” Mortensen said on Monday during his weekly press conference. “It would be a pretty great accomplishment for the program to get there. I know it hasn't been done in some time, and then particularly in a new era of NIL, portal, all those things. The positive to be able to accomplish that would be really good. At the same time, like I mentioned earlier, from a leadership standpoint, there's a fine line of how much we talk about that vs. chasing our best, trying to be the best version of ourselves and all those things. Getting better and improving and regardless of what we're playing for or not playing for. But I do think it would be a really big deal just globally for our program. It could hopefully build momentum going forward. I'll just say this too, like, in terms of program goals that we want long-term, we want to go way beyond that. It would be one step, but we want to accomplish far more than that over the long time period.”
That was just part of Mortensen’s meeting with the media on Monday. He talked about last week’s win over Charlotte, looked ahead to the Temple game and discussed what has made UAB defensive end Marlin Dean so special.
On the program’s relationship with Children’s Harbor: “Just really a neat thing to be a part of. I know a lot of the people that follow the program are already aware of it, but, you know, they've got a great organization. They help children with serious illnesses, do a lot of neat things for them. We're partnering with them in this last game where our players partner with one of those families and wear that family's name on the back of his jersey. We give that jersey to them later. So they do incredible work. We’re, what, 9-1 in Children's Harbor games. So really a neat tradition there, very grateful to be a part of it and a lot of our guys enjoy being a part of it, too.”
On the win over Charlotte: “On defense, I thought we played very, very well. We had a lot of guys have standout performances. I thought our defensive staff did an excellent job as well. We dominated most parts of the game. We were pretty good in the kicking game again, too, so that was really positive. Offensively, we started very poorly in both production and self-inflicted wounds, namely turnovers. Then somehow found 20 points in the second half and finished the game fairly strong. As we point out we need to and want to play with more diversity, more aggressiveness on early downs. That doesn't necessarily mean everything's got to be high risk or downfield throws and things of that nature. For us to be able to play the way we want to play, we need to be able to do that. But to overcome multiple turnovers, obviously our defense played really well and I think that says a lot about them.
If you're looking for a silver lining or a positive, the offense did not unravel psychologically (or) mentally. We kind of got into the game with a little bit more variety in terms of a mix of calls on early downs, which is really a little bit more how we want to play. I'll be frank with you, my ego is not attached to total offense. It's not attached to scoring offense. We want to do whatever we can to win a game. At that point when we failed to execute some things, obviously it's our responsibility to help our players execute better. We're obviously in partnership with that. We've got to teach and they've got to be good students. I love the guys we have but we did not start the way we needed to. So once that was the way it was, at that point I was like, ‘What's gonna give us the best chance to win a game where our defense is playing really well?’ And so we mitigated risk and I thought the guys also executed well, too. We started to control the line of scrimmage. Runners ran well. And we got more efficient in the passing game. So that was a positive.
We did have opportunities for explosive plays in the first half. I think that was probably one of the more disappointing things. It was both. There were some routine plays. Like the first play of the game (a five-yard loss) should be a routine play, a really efficient play, maybe potentially explosive. There were other plays like that. But then the other part, too, as it is some of the explosive plays and really plays that could result in scores in one play were things we missed on. I'm of the belief that those things can be corrected and improved. I want to be clear, we're not going to just do the same things. You know, everyone learns different. We're going to find the best teaching methods to help our guys get better. Anyway, ultimately, a good resilient win for our guys.
Moving on to Temple, Coach Keeler's won a lot of games through his career. They're a team that I think is improving and playing pretty well right now. They took a good Navy team and made it a one-score game and they scored a bunch of points on them. They played ECU really close. They beat South Florida earlier in the year. They're really a good team. They're the real deal in terms of they've got some really good players at certain spots. Going up there in November will certainly be a challenge. We're excited to take it on.”
On how UAB defensive end Marlin Dean makes life tough for a play caller: “When you deal with a great pass rusher like Marlin, it can be very limiting for you because if you want to call pass plays, you've got to have a plan on how to protect him. With everything you do, just like in life, you know, there's trade-offs with almost every decision you make. So if you decide you're going to do additional things to help protect against him, that's probably going to hurt you somewhere else. Maybe you can't get as many guys in the route, maybe they're slower to get into the route, maybe it allows other pass rushers to be isolated. All that can help an immense amount of ways. Then too, you may get more conservative, more cautious. Does it shrink how many longer developing patterns you want to run? Are you going to the screen game more? A guy like that can have a major, major impact on a game.”
On what makes Marlin Dean a great player: “Well, one, let's start with his tools. I do think he's talented. I think he's got really good physical traits in terms of he's got the size that you want in a position like that. He's very explosive. He's very fast twitch. He's fast off the ball. He had, with (strength coach) Lyle Henley, a great summer in the weight room. I don't have all of his numbers off the top of my head, but I can tell you his power clean was really impressive, particularly for a guy of his height. That bar has got to move a long way. I think the next thing is he's really embraced the teaching. I think Coach Grantham's done a tremendous job. You know, we talk about that whole thing of the teacher and the student and your partnership working together. Coach Grantham's got an immense amount of knowledge. He's a great teacher. I think Marlo has really embraced that. And going all the way back, there's aspects of his technique that help him. The other part, too, is that I'd be remiss if we didn't say he's also playing well against the run, too. So there are a lot of positives there. And at the same time, as I'm saying all these positive things, um, I think the maybe best part about him is his hunger. I think he's very hungry to go accomplish more and get better and continue pressing forward to get better.”
On Marlin Dean’s path to UAB: “Marlin can answer more questions about his journey than I could. Obviously, I know where he's been and we did a lot of work and research on that. You say, ‘How did we find him?’ One, I want to give our recruiting department, our personnel department a lot of credit there. I think Brendan Donovan did a tremendous job in the portal, particularly with the defensive side of the roster. Leno Lupinetti did a great job as well. Then obviously, Coach Grantham is a really good evaluator and has really good work ethic. Those guys worked really hard to get a good group. I think when we all saw Marlin's film, we were all pretty excited because we felt like there was a high ceiling here that a guy that had not even come close to playing his best, not even close.
He accepted the challenge, like, of OK, here's how I played at whatever level, whatever ability or performance level and here's what I'm capable of. But here's the things it's going to take for you to get there. I think Coach Grantham (and) our defensive staff really tried to define that for him early, and he really committed to it. I think he got excited about it and has really more than answered that challenge. So, I think we knew what he's capable of. Now, was there a moment? First team pass period. Really we knew, frankly, in the off-season, the way he was working and with all the reports from Lyle Henley in terms of what he looked like, how he was performing in workouts, It kind of confirmed everything we knew probably in terms of a lot of his physical traits. But then there was a work ethic and drive that was showing up there. When we got to team periods, he was really a challenge to deal with pretty quickly. It did not take long at all to recognize that.
On still playing for prominent goals: “You talked about motivation, I'm certainly no psychologist but just the idea of extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic or being focused on external things or internal things. I think what we want to do is we want to create a program where everyone is striving for excellence. I think that starts at the top of our university. You know, Dr. Watts talks about it a lot – to strive for excellence. When I worked for Coach Saban, I think he talked a lot about ‘Hey, it's not just about trying to win a championship, it's really more about trying to be a champion and the results kind of fall where they are.’ It's all really about trying to get better and be your best. So that's really what our hope is to create a program where guys are motivated that way.
Regardless of where we're at in the season, whether we're in contention to play for a championship or a bowl or whether we're not, we really want to have the kind of character that is always pressing forward. That's the first thing. And I do think there's also, you'd be naive if you didn't acknowledge that there's a human element that when those things are alive. I think people can definitely be more motivated and it's a little easier to sometimes get guys going.”
On what he meant by mitigating risk: “I was here in 2023 when we set a school record on offense. We averaged 450 yards a game. I don't want to overstate it, but we were pretty good offensively. But we were balanced. We were diverse in our presentation. We were diverse in play type. We had a lot of quick throws. Our quarterback completed the ball at a really high rate. I think there's some positives when you can play that way. We didn't necessarily take on a exorbitant amount of risk there, but we, we did probably play a little more aggressive in some respects. Getting to this last game, I'm just going to be frank, there are some areas that we failed to execute. I don't want to get into too many specifics. I'm just going to ask that people give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. We know what's going on. I don't want to sound pompous or defensive, but at that point, our defense is playing well and we knew we could get out of the game with a win by tilting it a certain way in terms of what we did in the game.
I want to be clear, our players did play well down the stretch. I mean, I think the last 14 plays of the game, we scored 14 points and averaged something like 8.3 a play, really were coming off the ball well and had a little bit of balance. The players executed really well down the stretch. There's two things (once) you get into a game, I think. You do what you need to do to win that game and ensure the odds are in favor of that as much as possible and you're always trying to manage risk-reward as it pertains to that. Again, our defense is playing really well, special teams playing pretty well. But then there's this other thing where, OK, here's these other things we need to be as good as we need to be. We need to work on all this. We need to get better at this and we're not going to wave the white flag.”
On what it takes to win on the road: “I don't want to make light of going on the road. Obviously there's components of travel that are involved and maybe sleeping in another bed and things of that nature. But I mean, I think sometimes those things become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you get too worried about it. It’s going to play a football game. You're still going to eat X amount of meals, you're still going to be in the bed X amount of time. So I think sometimes if you take all the components out, like you said, like crowd noise and some very more tangible things that can affect cadence and whatnot, it's some of like mental toughness and not making it to be more than it is. I don't want to make light of it. We're going to approach this one with a level of seriousness and aggressiveness that we need to, hopefully. Last year in the interim time period, we went and won our last game of the year on the road, a conference game. I think it was the first one in like three or four years or something like that. There wasn't a big narrative around the need to win on the road. The narrative was we need to play our best football. We need to make good identifications in the run game. We need to protect. We need to make good decisions. Like it's more keeping the focus on, what we need to do from an execution standpoint with football.”
On what steps the offensive line needs to make to improve: “We have a few guys that are beat up (and have missed games). We'll see how the week goes or maybe closer to getting more available, so that's positive. We've got some guys that have played recently that are a little beat up. Those are things we have to monitor, too, through the course of the week. So it's a little bit of a mixed bag in terms of health (like) probably most teams at every position right now this late in the year. I think it would be a major error if we took this approach like, ‘OK, we just got to get the Saturdays.’ We need to get better. I've pointed this out before, we have a lot of the guys, uh, particularly on the offensive line, that have not played a lot of football going into this year and we need to improve fundamentally. We need to improve how we play together in terms of communication. That's, I think, a really important focus. We're going to take steps to actually improve and develop. We don't want to give up on that idea right now. There are some other things too that we need to do. And obviously, I think it's important to not be stubborn. We're also going to say, "OK, what do we do well? What do these guys do well? What do they not do well?’ And put plans together a game plan and call a game in a manner that helps them too. I think those are some of the big things that we can do. We'll see how guys show up today, but I think we have a mindset of guys that want to go do that down the stretch. I know people can probably roll their eyes when I say this, but of 10 (or) 20 things we needed to get better at, there are a few focal points we actually did get better at in this last game. We can et better at a few more things this week and just keep marching forward in that regard.”
On close losses by Temple and the win at South Florida: “Look, they're good. I mean, they are. Turn the film on, they have good players, they really do. As a competitor, don't even look at the record right now. Put the film on, trust what you see a little bit because you don't (you’re in trouble). Look around college football, pretty wild things are happening every week and it works both ways. You can be a team that's got a great record and that's not going to earn you a win Saturday. I think they're really good. I really do. I think their team is getting better.
I don’t want to get specific (but) I'll cite one example from early in the year. Oklahoma State gets beat by Tulsa, right? I think pretty handily. And then they go and play Oregon the next week and kind of dominate Oregon. You've got to show up every week with the right preparation, intensity, mindset to compete. I think Temple, they’ve got some really good people at certain spots. Really at all three levels on defense, I can say for sure. There's no doubt about that.”