UAB’s Dilfer meets with Media At AAC Media Day
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - July 25, 2025
Coach speak was not part of UAB head coach Trent Dilfer’s time at the podium during Friday’s American Conference Media Days in Charlotte.
Dilfer talked about trying to turn around a program that struggled in his first two seasons as the head coach. Following is what Dilfer said during his appearance at the podium:
Opening statement: First of all, I will start by complimenting (the) commissioner, Tim (Pernetti), who has been such a strong leader. I was telling a reporter earlier, if being a coach in this conference feels like one as a player in Baltimore when Steve Bisciotti took over. It feels like when I was a player in Tampa and the Glazers took over. It feels like being a player at the 49ers when Jed York was learning how to be one of the best owners in football. You have a strong leader, that has courage, that has boldness, that is willing to think outside the box, that communicates so clearly with his people under him and that can build a great team because Tim gets a lot of credit but the team he’s built is so good in this conference. It just gives you comfort knowing that you're led by the right person and the right people. So I want to start by thanking him.
I'm sure every coach came up here and thanked their admin and their president, nobody is more thankful than me that I even have a job. After seven wins in two years, I'm incredibly grateful that we get an opportunity to try to fix this thing this year. It's been incredibly disappointing. At times, I don't know how to articulate what's happened, but Jon Gordon's, a dear friend, he has this corny acronym that he's used forever, but it's so true and I’ve experienced as a player and a coach - loss (is) learning opportunity, stay strong. Everybody talks about the learning opportunity, the stay strong is the hard part, because you have to stay strong for your people. In the midst of incredible turnover, in the midst of some very difficult situations we've had to encounter, the staying strong for the people that are under me has been a real challenge. There are times I felt very weak, you know. There are times where you just don't feel like you have the stuff that they need. I know a lot of coaches, we're in an era when college coaches are supposed to be strong, invincible. We celebrate ego and brashness and this and that and I'm the opposite, I've been broken.
Now, I’ve obviously had a much richer football life than many of them, but I'm not afraid to admit that I've been broken by this and that's a good thing. I think if you think that's a bad thing, then you're probably where I was a few years ago where you haven't realized in your journey that this is part of it. I've had to rethink through some leadership things, I've had to rethink through some football stuff, I've had to rethink through some nurturing things. The one thing that I've come back to is that the biggest mistake that I made, that others make when they're not successful is they try to be something they're not. We're all wired a certain way and I'm wired as a nurturer, I'm wired as a positive guy. I've gone back and talked to teammates and (asked) what were the best qualities about me as a leader. I've gone back and talked to coaches that I've worked for or worked with me and I've tried to go back to being a better version of me. I think that's what our building needs.
I went out and I tried to align myself with new coaches that see the world through my lens. We've tried to love our players tough. We've really pushed them to be growing men, get the childish ways behind them. They've been given more responsibility in this era of rev share and NIL. I think that it's our responsibility to help them grow faster, be more mature earlier, so that money doesn't ruin them. So we've had to align our building in such a way that maximizes not just the coaches in it but the players in it. The best analogy I've given is if you took a towel and you soaked it in water and then you started twisting it to get the water out. Most of us will twist it and get it to where we think it's dry but it's not dry, it's still damp. So then you got to really grind it a little bit harder, get a couple more drops out. You think it's dry, it's not dry. Then you step on one side and you twist it more, you get some partners (to help). You think this towel is dry, but there's still more water in there. That's how we're looking at our program. We're trying to twist that towel to squeeze out every possible drop of potential our players have, our coaches have, our staffers have. Twist that towel to maximize every resource that we have. We're loving the battle of doing so.
Listen, I learned how to coach speak when I was about 24 years old. I wasn't going to do that to you all, I'll be honest. I'll be transparent. I'll answer any question you have, but that's the state of the UAB football program.
On the strategy to compete with upper level of the American Conference: (It’s) probably something that other coaches talked about. I'm taking the stance that we have what we have and we're going to maximize every single part of it. I can't control what other people have. I can't control any of that stuff. I can control what the resources we have and we're going to position ourselves by looking under every rock and breaking every pane of glass like the commissioner said to maximize the potential within our building.
On defending the option attack three times this season: The strategic challenges are real. I was just doing the TV thing and was trying to explain that I wanted to find a defensive staff that has the same background as I have defensively. (I was) part of two of the greatest defenses in the history of professional football in the (1999) Bucs and the 2000 Ravens and both Monte Kiffin and Marvin Lewis were very similar in a lot of things they did. So, I wanted to bring somebody that kind of saw the world that way but also could defend the triple option. I was basically looking for a unicorn. You guys probably notice about me, I’m a man of faith. I sat there and I just started praying ‘Lord I don't think this is possible but you know could you please try to bring me this person.’ And he presented Steve Russ. During his time at Air Force, he became very familiar with defending the triple. (He) knows it like the back of his hand. Now, the triple has evolved a lot since then so we all have our challenges defending these incredible coaches that coach this hybrid triple option thing. But to have both of those things, the structure of an NFL style defense, with the sophistication with the teaching progressions, with the knowledge of how to play certain structures but then also have the ability to defend the triple. It’s something we have to do and Steve is the man. And then be able to hire people and maybe fill gaps with people he's comfortable working with,it has been pretty amazing to watch him put together the defensive staff.
On Jalen Kitna: I thought long and hard before I came here how I was going to talk about Jalen. Those in your (media) seat, I was for years, I would think there'd be a natural bias by me talking about Jalen and there probably would be if I were just to give you a basic outline of them. I've been very close to the family for years. Jon and I grew up playing the same time. We're dear friends off the field. We're both board members of a ministry. So our wives know each other. We did the high school coaching thing. We leaned on each other for high school stuff.
The thing I didn't want to make the mistake of with Jalen when he came to UAB was you could tell in about three hours that he was the most talented person in the building. It didn't take long to realize that. I didn't even know how talented Jalen was when he went to Florida. I was so busy at Lipscomb and so busy doing that and dealing with my own quarterbacks that I had forgotten how talented Jalen was. And then to see him and be around him you realize that you truly have a unique talent. But he hadn't played a lot of football and I didn't want to throw him in there and it be a ‘Well, Trent's biased so he's gonna play his buddy’s kid.’ I didn’t want that Daddy Ball stuff to come up. So Jalen had to earn it. He came off an injury that set him back a little bit. And then it just became clear that he was the best quarterback on our team.
When we made the move, we knew there was going to be some growing pains because he hadn't played a lot of football. He played kind of like we expected him to (play). His highs were extremely high and his lows were extremely low. But what gave us tremendous confidence in the process going into this year was that he never changed. Whether he threw for whatever he threw for (against) Tulsa or whether he threw a few interceptions or whether we got beat by a million by Tulane, he stayed the same. He showed a lot of the qualities that the great NFL quarterbacks have, that I wish I had more of, which is just that temperament to not flinch. The kid just doesn't flinch. He's gone through a lot of adversity already. And as a young person, he’s handled it extremely well and the football was part of it.
Here's how I’m going to sum up Jalen Kitna, because I'm sure I'm gonna get a lot of questions, and you can refer back to this quote as the season goes on. I was the sixth pick of the NFL draft in 1994. I was projected to be the first pick. At the time, I was one of the higher rated quarterbacks that had ever been evaluated. Now, I was not very good, but I was very talented. Jalen Kitna is better than me at every level of football at this stage of our career. There's not one thing that I was better at than Jalen Kitna is and I was the sixth pick of the draft. Now I also played with, I think, seven NFL players on that offense. I had Jeff Tedford as my coach, who's a much better coach than I am. So I had some advantages.
Our challenge is not for Jalen to play to our expectation. Our challenge is to support him with people that can help him flourish. And the responsibility is on us as coaches to coach him that well. Because when you're given a unique talent, there's a burden on the coach to not dumb it down too much. Like we have a responsibility to not just win games, but to get him ready to go have a 15-to-20 year career in the NFL. We take that very serious and we demand a lot from him in that process. And, like last year, he has not flinched in that process.
On defensive lineman Denver Warren: Denver has been a great asset to our team. We really targeted a certain type of kid in the portal. We know that we have to be very strategic and watch the markets play out in the portal. So with this new staff, with some additions to our personnel department, we took a very tactical approach on the type of kid and the type of traits we were looking for. Denver, we targeted him off jump. In fact, he's one of the very few that in the early evaluation period when the markets were really hot and people were being paid more than they're worth, he was already at the top of that list. We were very fortunate that we were able to wait it out and get him for the price that we got him.
He's a dynamic interior player, he's versatile, he can play the three technique, he can jump inside and play a two, he has pass rush ability, he's got strength, he's got twitch, he's super smart, really good leadership qualities. He has really been a huge asset as we've tried to make our building take kind of more of a professional approach to how we do life and football. Denver has been a great leader. We prioritize service in our program, probably as much as anybody in the country. It’s at 4,500 hours now of our kids serving the 99 neighborhoods of Birmingham, which is really important to us. Denver, in a short time, has already put in 40 hours and by the way Jalen Kitna leads our team with like 70 hours.
On striving for offensive balance: We always wanted to be more balanced. You know I'll take a lot of that blame. We also got to a point where when we weren't going to go to a bowl game, I wanted to make sure that Jalen was getting as many attempts as possible. If I could go back and do it all over again to protect his body, to protect some the limitations we had on the offensive line, I would have stayed more balanced. My history has been being balanced. If you go back to my high school Lipscomb play calling days, I would end each year like 51 percent run, 49 percent pass. Like, it's a kind of scary balance. I believed in that the NFL, we got out of whack a little bit last year.
I will say this though the college game has changed a little bit too and with the rules, a lot of these passing attempts are really runs. If you go back and look at the Green Bay Packers split back sweep, that’s like six passes of ours. We're running sweep plays, they just happen to be called passes. So I don't get too caught up in those numbers anymore. I think yards per attempt is a much more telling stat when you're talking about rushing, I think finishing drives off running the football is really important. And then obviously more and more than any of it is turning the ball over and less bad things can happen when you run the football. Mitigating risk definitely doesn't get talked about enough from an offensive standpoint from a play caller standpoint. But to me, in my experience with football, when you can mitigate risk and still not limit explosive qualities, that's kind of the happy balance you're trying to find. We’re like every other great offensive coach in this conference, there's a bunch of them, are searching for that secret sauce.