Trent Dilfer Previews UAB's Season Opener Against Alabama State On Thursday Night

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - August 26, 2025

Trent Dilfer’s third season as the UAB football coach kicks of on Thursday evening at 7:30 against Alabama State at Protective Stadium. He enters the season with a depth filled with transfer portal and junior college additions and a defensive coaching staff that is filled with veteran coaches new to UAB.

On Monday, Dilfer met with the media to discuss what happened in fall camp, give his thoughts on the season opener and generally look ahead to the season.

Opening statement: “Obviously, week one, excited about the opportunity. You know, humbled by the growth we've experienced since December through the turmoil of a new era of college football and turning your roster and your staff over yearly. But I really like the people in the building and feel like we're better than we've been in the past, but it's a lot of work to do.”

On play calling: “You know, (offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen) is one of the 22 people left in the building since year one. So we've established a really good working relationship. We've done it a few different ways. We feel very, very confident in our process this year. Mort will communicate with the quarterback. Nobody else will talk to the quarterback. It is truly a collaboration of play calling. We co-call it. We have different points of emphasis. I don't want him to be gun shy ever because I'm the head coach and offensive guy, so I don't second guess him when he makes a decision. We started with this last year and feel like it's even a better process now. Our process going into the game, the time we spend together, making sure we're thinking the same thoughts. You know it's good. Rice was the best example. Rice was the week I had the neck surgery. I missed the Tuesday practice. I felt horrible, I was just going to miss work for two weeks and still came in on Wednesday. I knew I added nothing, right, to the game plan. But by the day the game came, I felt pretty good and Mort took the lead. Then I was able to chime in when I felt necessary conceptually and philosophically, it was a really good blend. Charlotte at times was really good because I was taking the lead and there were times when him and the staff probably called 30-40% of that game even though I had  taken the lead. We've gone back and evaluated good calls,bad calls, how the quarterback plays, speed for which the call comes in. And at the end of the day, it's a true co-calling situation where both of us feel like we can pull the trigger at any time, because we're on the same page.

Defensively, right now, it's the inside linebackers (wearing the communication helmet). I think they switch off who takes the lead with it. I think (Devin) Hightower has had it most of the time but we do have three green dots on defense we can use, one at a time. But other inside linebackers have practiced with it as well.”

On recruiting bigger players at cornerback than in the past: “Yeah it's a totally different recruiting philosophy this year than we've had in the past, both in the portal as well as the high school space. One of the core tenets is a bigger more physical, longer corner, so that the scheme fits that and it's something that this staff believes in and I believe in it as well. The other way works too. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it's the type of cover schemes, the type of run fits that you have within your defense that dictates how you recruit that position.”

On what he hopes to see in Thursday’s opener: “How they respond to good and bad. If you just want to put a simple blanket over the issues we've had for two years it's been we've been reactive to good and bad things, overly emotional is another way to say it. We've let our feelings dictate our actions. And I say we, this is all of us. I think that if you have one biggest theme from everything we've talked about, everything we've tried to implement, it's choosing your best response over how you feel. Our feelings lie to us most of the time. Most of the bad decisions we make in life are feelings based. We need to make sure we're responding with discernment, wisdom, poise, making good decisions, regardless of how we feel and where our emotions are.”

On the importance of first games: “Well, I think that it's a good question because so much, you know, people love football. We that play it and coach it love it and people that watch it love it. So there's such this great buildup of anticipation. The other night, I came home late, and my wife had a preseason NFL game on. I never watched preseason. I mean, I didn't watch preseason when I played in the NFL. But I was like, oh my gosh, it's football. Like, there's football on the TV. I'm like, that's kind of cool. I sat down and ate  my dinner at 10 o'clock at night and watched a little football. Because of that, I think there's a lot put on week one. But then if you step back and just say, you know, what's the significance of week one? It's one game. Like, it's one game. Now, we want the approach where every game is a big deal. You're always trying to get the next one. You're trying to go 1-0. But I do want to make sure that everybody knows we're a work in progress. We're not close to what I want us to be yet. But we do have a lot to earn and a lot to prove, too. And I think that as long as you can balance those two things it's really important because we have a lot to earn. We have a lot to prove. But it's the next one, even though it's the first one. And you take that approach, too. If you can balance those two dynamics going on, I think you probably have a pretty good mindset to play as good as you can play.”

On having former Alabama State defensive coordinator Ryan Lewis Sr. on the UAB staff: “I think you look at it both ways. I know last night, it was a long night, and we started to chase some ghosts because of that. And I'm like, stop. You know, they know that we know that they know. There's a truth there. And I said, listen, let's go with what we see, not on what we think we might know. And then in game, if what we think we might know is unfolding, we can react to that. Let's not plan a game plan around insider information. I think that's a very dangerous thing to do. It happens all the time, I think, in the NFL. A coach goes in conference to (another team) in conference or player in free agency. You're always thinking they're gonna tell all the signals or we got to change these calls or we’re gonna check this different, block this differently, play a different coverage. And then you're chasing all these ghosts and you get in the game and you’re like they didn't even pay attention to any of it. You know, like that was not important to them. I don't know what's important to Alabama State in them getting ready for this game. I know what’s important to us and we will be our best if we're focused on the us and not what we might know or think we know or what could happen. We have to be very focused on making sure we handle ourselves in a much better way than we have in my tenure here.”

On the slot receiver position: “I see us playing seven receivers consistently. We've done it before, we like it. Our play count is higher. I wouldn't say it's one of the highest, but it's higher, it's a lot of snaps. It's hard to play fast for 75 to 80 snaps. So you want receivers playing full speed the whole time. It's a big core tenet of what we believe in offensively. To do that, you need to play a lot of them. All of them, except really one, plays in the slot. So that's the other thing I think that is hard to defend is when you don't know who's gonna be the number two receiver, which is typically the slot player. We have a lot of guys that we've cross trained this offseason to play in that position.”

On center Adam Lepkowsi: “He's had a really good camp, obviously by earning the starting job. It's a heated competition, it's a daily competition. I will say that the competition for him and Baron Franks, I call it a posidional battle daily. We think both can play at a high level. And both are within the seven, eight best offensive linemen. But A-Train edged it out and had a really good camp. He's a very smart player. He's been here a long time, cares deeply for this program, the city, the school. His energy makes us better, and he's become a much better player. It's kind of a great story, I hope somebody picks up on the story. Over time, just his journey here has been pretty remarkable, and we're really proud of him.”

On playing with a prove-it mentality: “I think it's his fine line of we're really don't want to talk about what's happened the last couple of years because there's, I want to say it's 64 new people in the building that had nothing to do with it. But I think most of those 64 new people have come in like Hey, we want to be the reason why that never happens again. So there's a little bit of like without looking in the rear-view mirror you know what is there. We all drive fast. You don't always have to be staring in your mirror,  you know that there’s the obnoxious person's on your tail, right? You feel it. So I think there's a sense of feeling amongst the new guys that over my dead body is that gonna happen when I’m here. I think that's probably the general theme in the building but with an eye on this is how it will not happen again. I’ve tried to take that approach. I catch myself saying this has happened or we've done this or that. I tend to say it more in the media than I do it to the team. I catch myself and like, well, you guys had nothing to do with it. So, let's make sure we're forward thinking, we're moving forward and not looking in the rearview mirror. But it would be a total blatant lie to say that there's not that feeling of that obnoxious driver on your tail without looking in the rearview mirror and seeing him.”

On the college football normalcy of starting to build with a low number of returnees: “At first we thought it was a pretty huge number. Like Dec. 23, I thought that was a massive number. Like, when I looked down at my spreadsheet and saw a half of program, that was pretty alarming. And then you spend the off season with other coaches, you know, just the football community realized that everybody's kind of going through an iteration of this. I think what hit us the hardest is the attrition of the staff. You know, we only have, I think it's 15 original staffers here from year one. And you're talking about a building of 45 plus staffers. We're not just talking coaches. The turnover and the elevation of this coaching staff has been pretty remarkable, from the NFL to the Power Four to other bigger Group of Five options. For whatever reason, our coaches have been really attractive to the football community. And it's really hard to continue to recycle coaches. I mean, Bill Walsh used to say it takes five years of collective experience to put a staff together. Well, that's impossible in modern day football, at least for me it is. So I've had to really try to find some unique ways and lean on some people that have had to deal with this before. And how do you get a staff on the same page quickly? I mean within the last month, no, the last 10 days, we've had new two staffers leave, that are important people to our program. So onboarding people, getting them up to speed, integrating them into the culture. Those are all things that are part of it that isn't being talked about quite as much as the player turnover. That's another challenge that we're all facing and we're trying to find solutions that help you build a building that can thrive.”

On what he is looking for in the opener: “How we play. I've been maniacal about how we play football. Again, I'll go to the response. How do we respond after the offense gives up a sack? How do we respond after turnover? How do we respond after we miss a gap in the run game and it's a big, clipped off run? How do we respond when in a two minute drive a corner gets beat for a touchdown? How do we respond to hot, fatigue, cramping, I don't feel good? How do we respond to all the different things that come up in football? Yesterday we threw a touchdown in a two-minute drill, a really great play by the quarterback, the receiver. But there was a 1:10 left in the two-minute drill and we're having a party in the end zone. It would have been a 15-yard penalty with the other team getting the ball, now only down two. So we just gave them field position with a 1:10 left and they had one time out to go out and kick field or beat us. Yes it was a great moment but we didn't respond, our celebration was outside the rules of celebration. So there's been a lot of teaching moments on kind of a professional approach to how to respond to good and bad, that's what I'm looking for.

Listen, I've watched the TV copies, I've seen this. I've watched it live (or) as I had a coach want to say to me ‘live and in person.’ And I don't like what we're known for. I don't like the reputation we have in the American Conference with the referees. I don't like the antics we've shown, I don't like losing games because guys can't have any self control. I don't like how I responded in Tulane year one. I don't like a lot of things that have happened. So we've been very maniacal for lack of a better term on how we play is as important as what we do playing the game. It may sound like the same but it's different. Effort is a huge thing. We're going to give up some plays, we're going to have bad plays. Is there 11 hats flying to the football? Are we fighting to get off blocks? We've been engulfed by blocks the last two years defensively. No effort to come off of them, the guy blocked me, okay I'm done. Great defensive football is destroying the blocks.

Offensively, are we sustaining blocks better? Are we finishing better? Are we transitioning as a receiver into the blocking game? I can go on and on and on. But all the things that are our daily points of emphasis, how we play the game. The scoreboard matters, it’s always matters. It mattered when I was eight years old and it still matters. But I do think how you play it should affect the scoreboard in a positive way, more than worrying about what the scoreboard is going to say.”

On Alabama State: “They're very good defensively. Ryan (Lewis) created a culture there of a certain style of defense and it will not change. They're going to be very physical. They're going to force things to bounce to the perimeter and use their team's speed to run you down. They're going to, in their coverages, try to keep it in front of you and tackle and be physical. And then they have a very, very good pressure package. You know, they are a defense that knows how to pressure. They're sound in their pressures. They do a really good job of taking you out of drives with pressures. People move the ball on them for a little while. You know, if I had to define their defenses, (it is) not for long. Like you can do some stuff, but they have the mentality of not for long. And they found an amazing way of the past few years to get off the field and not allow a lot of points. So it is a real challenge to finish drives on them.

Offensively, you know, they're pretty physical. They can run the football. They run it with quarterbacks, which obviously gives you a whole other numbers situation on defense. They believe in what they do. So they have conviction on what they do offensively. They've done a lot of different quarterbacks. I think they played five quarterbacks last year. So they've been able to do it with multiple quarterbacks. And I think they kind of identify what they do well and they're stubborn in doing it well. So it's a challenge. Listen, we're not good enough to where any game is not a challenge. But this is a real challenge.

And the other thing we haven't talked a lot about is it's going to be a big time atmosphere. We’ve got to make sure that even though we're at home, they're going to bring, I would guess, as many people as we have. And it's not going to necessarily feel like a home environment all the time. I think the band noise is going to be something we have to be cognizant of. You know, the distractions that can come in week one. There's a lot of dynamics that go into this game that make it challenging.”

On studying Alabama State quarterback Andrew Body, who is in his second season with the Hornets, when he was with Texas Southern: “I take a quick look. I did more defensive stuff in the last two years. I don't know if that was a good thing, obviously. So I I have really trusted Steve (Russ) with the defense and trust his process. They've asked me a question here and there on things like this. But I'm relying on this defensive staff to fix our biggest issue for the last two years and part of that fixing is the study of personnel. I think our personnel department is fantastic. We take a very NFL approach in our personnel department. I happened to walk into the defensive scouting report meeting to ask Coach Russ a question and actually sat down and listened to the scouting report. And it's what I remember from NFL. Like you sit down and you let the personnel department tell you what they've done 30, 40 hours of work on and then you use that as context and go study the things that they just told you. I thought that was really, really well done and I feel like we have a pretty good grasp on the personnel that we believe will be playing in front of them.”

On the experience of UAB’s defensive front and linebackers: “A general statement about our defense is they played a lot of football and that was a priority. And yes, that is the front six. I guess in college football, it's mainly front six because of the nickel. But yeah, they have a lot of snaps. They’re experienced, they're older guys that have seen a lot, done a lot. I think it's huge. I think it's massive in our ability to turn this around. It's also their temperament. It's like when something bad happens, they don't lose their minds. They're like, okay, yeah, next play. So there's really a reset mechanism that I've noticed in our defense. It's been impressive. I wish we had more on our offense to be honest with you. I think the defense is way ahead of the offense in terms of how they respond to situations that aren't ideal. It's something our offense needs to grow exponentially on, where the defense has shown the ability through all camp and the bonus week to have good plays, play the next play. Have a series of bad plays and play the next play. I think that comes with experience, you learn how to do that.”