UAB Fall Camp SNAPSHOT: Day NINE
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - August 13, 2025
UAB Fall Camp Snapshot
A year ago at this time, UAB tight end coach Reilly Jeffers had an experienced group of versatile players. Fast forward and Jeffers still has versatility in the tight end room but the experience is much less. Junior college transfer Elijah Lagg, FIU transfer Antonio Ferguson and returnee J.C. Sivley are working together at the top of the depth chart.
Jeffers stopped by after practice to talk about the way he is approaching this group during fall camp.
On recruiting players who also wrestled in high school: “Especially in terms of line of scrimmage play, you know, it's a background that is invaluable because so much of the body positioning and the twisting and turning and the balance, it pays off big dividends. I saw something on Twitter about how when high school wrestlers are offensive linemen, their draft numbers are through the roof. It's incredibly helpful. And then you add to it his skillset running in the open field, it gives them a lot of balance and it's super, super, super valuable for him. When you see two guys that are even, when they are high school wrestler, you got to check some very basic boxes of height, weight, speed, athleticism, stuff like that. But like, that's a huge bonus for us. It's like finding a receiver or cornerback who runs track.”
On the top of the depth chart: “You know, it’s as much competition as possible, between J.C., Elijah Lagg and Antonio Ferguson. Those are like three starter level guys that you can rotate interchangeably. We’ve still got camp left to continue to push each other. The best part is they're also close. They all want each other to succeed. So there's an unselfishness as a group. And then there's other guys in the room that are pushing for their roles, between Josh Rubin, Brayden Johnson, Connor Harby, and then you got the two freshmen Gabriel Cline, Aaron Mattingly) who are working their butts off. Nobody's taking any reps for granted and everybody wants to compete, find a way on the field and just make the team better.”
On different skill sets in the group: “There's enough difference. It’s funny, they all have similar traits in that they're tough, they throw themselves in the run game and pass protection and they're all pretty good in the pass game. Each one has certain super-niche specific things they're really good at. So we can find guys, potentially, on different routes and stuff like that. Different combinations of the two when multiple (tight ends) are in the game. They're pretty fun little chess pieces to play around with.”
On J.C.Sivley: “J.C. is one of those guys you want to build your program around because he does everything the right way. He was a high school wide receiver with a high ceiling. He comes in here, he's on scout team the year before we got here. When we get here, we were so excited about him because the height, weight, speed combination. Then he gets hurt that first year. It was pretty gnarly injury and he mentally locked in and battled back. Last year, we had such a deep room he ended up not having playing time as much but knew his time was coming. He really leaned into the development. He could have played any single week. I could have put them him in there totally confidently. He knows his time is now and is allowing those guys to continue to push him and allowing me to be you know really hard on him in terms of the details and making and raising his standard even higher. His ceiling is so high, you don’t want to relax on him but you also want to celebrate him for all the great things he has done. He's a program guy that should have a great year. I’m excited about him.”
On coaching guys with less experience after coaching an experienced group last season: “It’s different because you take less things for granted. There's some things last year where you know guys were so savvy. Take the passing game for example, guys just knew how to run routes with such detail and find the grass. You're kind of starting fresh. One of the biggest things I have to do is find a way to make things game-simulated by applying pressure, holding them to a super high standard, not necessarily being mean or unreasonable, but being super hard on them. Their standard, it does have to be so high, because so much is asked of them. Then when you're in the meeting room, you've got to love them up, show them all the good things they also do. I think we find a really good balance of putting pressure on them, making things game-like and showing them like, hey, why that won't work in a game (or) here's why this will work. Then also celebrating them for all the good work they're putting in, the things they are doing well.”