Hawkins Jr's Patience Paying Off For Blazers In 2025
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 20, 2025
Brandon Hawkins Jr. patiently waited for his opportunity to play a key role in the UAB passing game. Fortunately, Hawkins had experience is waiting patiently for a chance when immediate playing time was his first choice.
Hawkins grew up in Texas where football is king. Hawkins did big things on the football field for the Waxahachie High Indians. During his high school career, Hawkins caught 110 passes for 1,384 yards with 15 touchdowns and had 729 yards on the ground with seven touchdowns. Most of the time he played receiver but after injuries the team needed a quarterback heading into his senior season. So, the speedy Hawkins became a quarterback for a season.
Add it all up and Hawkins figured his next stop was a FBS program.
“You know, being a dude out of the state of Texas, you want to go to a bigger school,” said Hawkins. “You’re waiting for the offers, waiting for the excitement. But COVID hit and schools weren't reaching out, they were keeping their guys for another year and not taking a lot of high school guys.”
Welcome to his first lesson in patience.
Hawkins did have offers to play at few FCS schools, including Austin Peay and Incarnate Word, but decided to play junior college football. He headed about 45 miles south and enrolled at Navarro College. If success is measured by growth, it was a great experience for Hawkins.
“JUCO is not the easiest route,” Hawkins said. “You sort of learn just to fight through tough times, fight through adversity and it can make you better. My people always told me adversity is gonna come with the game.”
He had a pair of solid seasons at Navarro, compiling 40 catches for 789 yards with six touchdowns in 14 games over two seasons. He came to UAB with high expectations but also arrived with knee problems from an injury suffered in junior college. Hawkins missed the 2023 while healing from the injury.
Welcome to his second lesson in patience.
Hawkins watched and learned as much as he could about FBS football during that first year. Once he got on the field, he worked toward cementing a spot in the rotation. He turned a pop pass from Jacob Zeno into a 23-yard gain on a fourth quarter drive that later ended with a touchdown at Arkansas to trim the Razorbacks lead to three points. The following week, he had a 14-yard run against Navy.
“He was really finding a role last year going into Arkansas and had the big reverse in Arkansas,” said UAB head coach Trent Dilfer, whose team plays a non-conference game on Saturday against 15th ranked Tennessee at Neyland Stadium. “He did some good things in Arkansas game. Ball didn't find him, but did some really good things. He had a great week of practice (after the Navy game) and then got hurt.”
The injury came the following week against Tulane. Hawkins was blocking on a kickoff return when he got pushed back into a pile of players. He limped off the field and was later diagnosed with a Lisfranc fracture in one of his feet. It wasn’t an injury that required surgery but it did end his season.
“Of course it was frustrating because you know it was my second year here and I wanted to prove myself,” Hawkins said. “I’m getting some touches on the field, I get hurt, so now I just I got to redo the whole process and the rehab.”
Welcome back to the patience theme. This time, though, Hawkins considered entering the transfer portal.
“He wanted to graduate and there were some other external factors too that made sense for him to get back out of the portal and come back here,” Dilfer said. “We made a commitment to him and he made a commitment to us that even though we brought in new guys, even though we were redoing the room, he would get an opportunity to re-earn the role that he was carving out. That's what he did, he just went and earned it.”
That begin in spring practice, carried over to fall camp and now it’s paying off on the practice field and game day.
Hawkins has emerged as a much-needed steady option behind leading receivers Corri Milliner and Iverson Hooks. Hawkins has been targeted 13 times and is tied for third on the team with 10 catches for 120 yards. In last week’s game against Akron, he had a UAB career high five catches for 59 yards.
“He's the leader of that room,” Dilfer said. “He's the hardest worker in that room. He shows up every day with his lunch pail. He'll do the dirty work, like he'll go run nine routes in practice to save a guy's legs and run full speed. He'll go block secondary players. He'll volunteer on special teams. He'll do whatever it takes to help us win, trusting that the ball will find him over time. He's starting to find it more. In this offense, you kind of grow from finding a role to having an impactful role to then having plays called for you. I'd say right now he's in that impactful role, borderline getting the opportunity to have plays called for him.”