UAB OC Alex Mortensen And The Rest Of The Blazers' Offense Are Poised For An Early Test
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 6, 2025
UAB offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen spent the week getting the Blazers offense ready for one of their biggest tests of the season. Mortensen stopped by after practice to talk about facing Navy on the road in the American Conference opener with kickoff scheduled for 2:30 p.m. CT on Saturday.
On Navy NT Landon Robinson: “He's a really good player. I know they're really high on him at Navy too. Really, they've been good on defense for a while now, of course. So, they're really good at all three levels. You know, certainly they can be disruptive up front. But last year they had a safety to get drafted. So, I think sometimes people underrate their talent. They play hard and they play tough and they're well coached but they have a lot of really good players and he's obviously right at the front of that.”
On attacking a defense that is getting good inside rush like Landon Robinson provides: “I think one of the things, you're always looking to try to control the line of scrimmage. In the passing game, obviously, you want to be able to protect the quarterback. And you want to be able to protect them inside out and keep the middle of pocket firm. When someone can push the middle of pocket, sometimes that's the most difficult pressure to deal with as a quarterback. You always want to have a plan for that. And then obviously that can be disruptive in the running game too, if they're able to create penetration and stop a play before it gets started. There's a reason people talk about controlling the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball because that's what you had to do to get a play started, so it can be tough. But we feel like we've got good guys too and we're gonna have a plan for it as well.”
On not allowing a pressure in the opener: “It's certainly encouraging. We've got a lot of guys that haven't played a lot, but I do believe they've got a maturity about them. And certainly that was encouraging, but we know that we played a good team, and we're gonna play some even better teams too. We're certainly not gonna rest on our laurels after that, but it was a good start.”
On Logan Moore: “Logan’s made a lot of growth. Physically, he's really developed. He's a guy that's a really good athlete, and he has great length. And now he's kinda grown into his body. He's strong and he's become physical and he's smart. Logan has really developed tremendously and we're really excited about him. And we're really excited about his future beyond too.
On Jalen Kitna playing his first road game of the season: “I think Jalen's just overall understanding of what we're doing, being in the offense longer. I think people forget too when he got here, he had not played football in a while. Part of it, I think, it's actually just knocking some rust off and playing, seeing the game at full speed. I think the other part of it is having familiarity with what we're doing schematically and being in our meetings for another year. He's done a really good job taking on the information, owning it and has a lot of confidence in his answers that reside inside of our offense.
On handling the offensive snaps and touches for three running backs: “We do like to get as many guys involved with the offense as we can, running back and at other skill positions as well. We feel like we're better when we do that. We feel like we're tougher to defend when we do that. Obviously, you want to feature the guys that are your best guys. But we feel like we're better when we have a lot of guys involved most of the time. The running back positions is different. We like the entire room. We want to certainly make sure that they're all involved in the game. Ideally, they all get involved in the game early and stay involved in it to the fourth quarter. That’s our belief.”