Mortensen Lays Out His Vision for UAB Football at American Media Days

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - July 24, 2026

Alex Mortensen experienced his first American Conference Football Media Days as the UAB head coach over the past two days. Friday’s activities included time at the podium with media members and an interview with ESPN-plus. Following are some of what he said in each of those interviews.

Opening statement: First of all, it's good to see you, and it's certainly an exciting time period. We know when we get to conference media days, football is close. The second thing is I'm still a rookie here at the podium. I'm a first-time head coach and I worked for Nick Saban for nine years, who didn't let us talk to the media, so take it easy on me. But I do want to thank you and I want to tell a media thank you. My dad was a member of the media for a long time, over 40 years. He started off as a writer, writing for papers, local papers, and ended up making the transition to television. And so I have a great appreciation for what you guys do for our game. I can remember being with him, going to grocery stores and picking up those preseason magazines. Now it's pretty cool to be on the other side of that. So I really appreciate you guys and all the attention you bring to the game and to our players.

I want to thank Tim Pernetti for the leadership he's shown in this conference. It's a very exciting league to be a part of and he's been very innovative, creative and aggressive in his strategies. I think the American Conference, some of the success we've had here lately has been very notable. So very appreciative of him and what he's done and then what he's looking to do.

In terms of UAB, I want to thank our school president, Dr. Ray Watts. I want to thank Dr. Watts, one, for his support. He's someone that talks a lot about striving for excellence in everything we do. The growth at UAB under his leadership has really been remarkable, especially on the academic and medical side. I want to thank Mark Ingram, our athletic director. I want to say I appreciate his support and I'm grateful for this opportunity. Our community at UAB, our alumni, our boosters, our supporters (for the) tremendous support they showed us during the time period I was the interim head coach and beyond. I'm excited to see where we go. We got a community there that loves UAB, they love football and they love Birmingham.

I want to highlight the players we've got with us (today). We've got Ryder Burton with us on offense, quarterback, and then we also have (linebacker) Ike Esonwune. These are two high character guys, they’re hardworking, they're leaders on our team. I've worked closely with Ryder because I work a lot with our quarterbacks. He's smart, he's hardworking, he's talented, he's got a live arm, is accurate and I'm really excited to have him in our program. Ike has been a joy to have on our team. He transferred to us from Oklahoma State in January. He's wasted no time. He leads the right way, he's a good athlete, he's explosive, instinctive and tough as a football player. We're really grateful to have him a part of our program as well.

On the way the program is structured under Mortensen: With us being new here, a little bit new, there's a few things that I at least want to touch on in terms of what we're looking to do with the program.  We want to represent UAB with excellence on and off the field. I talked about the academics and the medical community we have that's world class and so as a representation of that we want to represent it with excellence. We want to develop and win in three big areas as a program One, the individual, two, the team and then three, the community. What does that look like?

The individual, we think there's really three parts to that. There's the person, there's the student and then there's the football player. In terms of the student, our last two semesters here we've had the highest academic GPA in the history of the program. So, that's been positive, we want to keep that going. The team – unity, cooperation working together, accountability. The team thing is interesting. When last year ended I met with every guy I could on our team that I could. You know, here we are in this age of the portal, a lot of transfers, a lot of roster turnover and I can't tell you how many of these guys crave being a part of a team. They crave being a part of being something bigger than themselves, they want to get to know each other. We're not giving up on the idea of team. It's something we're greatly emphasizing, even with the roster turnover and the shorter life cycle with a lot of our players.

The community. What does that look like? Look we want to connect with and serve Birmingham, Alabama and beyond. Let's start with Birmingham. I love Birmingham. I grew up south of Atlanta, I've been familiar with (Birmingham) for some time. I think it's a great city, a lot of quality people, the elite medical community and it's an awesome place to live. We want to serve the people there but we also want to connect with them further and bring them along with us as we go forward.

We want to recruit the area. I mentioned I grew up south of Atlanta, I believe in the football in that region. If you draw five hours around Birmingham, I think there are a lot of really good football players, whether you go into West Georgia, you go to South Alabama, you go to East Mississippi, there are a lot of really good football players. So we want to recruit the area and we want to continue to connect with our alumni and former players.

The other thing is I want to give you an idea of what we expect out of our coaches. There's three big things to me. When I got done playing, I said the coaches that had the biggest impact on me, what did they do, what were the commonalities. There were three big things. Number one, they had a relationship with the players and they had a relationship with me. It's bigger than football. Number two, they were great teachers, so we're looking for coaches that are great teachers. Number three, be demanding, expect a lot. It's hard for me not to mention Nick Saban, I worked for the guy for nine years. The way he demanded of his players benefited them. The way you show love to someone is if you demand the best and expect the best from them. That's something that we're not running from right now. I think a lot of people (say) ‘Hey are these guys gonna run out to the portal, do we give up on being demanding?’ We are demanding. We tell them ‘Look man if you don't like that this is not the place for you, go somewhere else.’ We're gonna love our guys but we're gonna do it through also being demanding and expect a high standard from them and confront them if they don't do it.

In terms of core values of our team, there are a few things. One, we want to work hard. I still believe in hard work, I think it's incredibly important.  We want to play hard with great effort, we want to play smart and then we want to play together. In terms of working hard, that obviously speaks to the preparation component, being detailed and consistent with high effort in the way we work. Then the next thing playing hard that's relentless effort, scrap, compete, fight to the end. Then I think a prerequisite for playing hard is toughness. We want to have a tough team and that's the expectation. You talk about toughness, one, there's a physical component to toughness. We want to have a physical team but then there's also this idea of what does it take to break you. We want to have a team that's got an unbreakable spirit. We want to play smart. What does that look like? One, it's having discipline to do your job. Two, I think it's having great poise and competitive composure no matter what's going on. And then, three, I think it's not beating yourselves. If someone's gonna beat us let's make them beat us physically but let's not give the game away.

On the program’s identity: In terms of football, in the three phases, I do think it's important to create an identity but I think part of how you do that is through flexibility. Flexibility allows you to create an identity. What I mean by that is we've talked a lot about this roster turnover and how many new players you get every year. One of the great things about our system, you go back to that time in Alabama, one of the things I did learn being there from Coach (Saban) is that think about these quarterbacks - Blake Sims, Jake Coker, then you go to a guy like Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, Bryce Young. All those guys, obviously, are great players. We were fortunate to have them. But they were all different. We were able to still have a team that controlled the line of scrimmage, still physical, still tough but we adapted to the guys we had. That's important that we have a system that can adapt. Then the other thing I'll mention is in our first year at UAB we set a school record for total offense. Jacob Zeno, our quarterback, a lot of people are unaware of this, that 2023 season he completed just under 74 percent of his passes. That is 10th all-time in the history of the NCAA. So we feel very confident that we can adapt to our players. We have a strong staff on offense (and) that staff is intact. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be cocky or arrogant here. We have a lot of work to do but we have a lot of confidence in the way we develop and adapt to our players.

Defensively, I'm very excited to add Todd Grantham. Coach Grantham is obviously a veteran. I think it speaks to the health of our program and speaks to UAB to be able to get a guy like Coach Grantham, who's been an NFL defensive coordinator and been a coordinator at a number of stops. He and I worked together at Alabama in 2022. He's worked for Coach Saban twice, he also worked for him at Michigan State, so we do have a little bit of a shared background. What I really like about him, I think he's smart, he knows football. He is flexible like we talk about the flexibility thing on offense. I think it's important to also be flexible on defense because if you don't know what your team's going to look like every January you got to be able to adapt. He connects with the players, he has a relationship with them and then finally he is demanding. We talked about that earlier. He's a demanding coach that's going to expect the best of the guys, that's something I love about him.

John Jones, our special teams coordinator, he's in his third year as being the coordinator at UAB. A really bright good young coach that I'm really excited to work with again. He’s really enthusiastic about what we're doing there.

On the expectations for this season and the future: In terms of expectations, I kind of talked about this a little bit at my opening press conference back in December. Look we know there's work to be done in the short term for the 2026 season. Then there’s also a lot of work to be done to close the gap as a program, to get the program where we want. We have a challenging non-conference schedule and we also are playing in a very challenging league. I have a lot of respect for the coaches in this league and the quality competition. I do step into this position with optimism and hope. But I'm not making any wild predictions either. I say this joking, we're certainly not going to war, in the words of Winston Churchill ‘We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ So we'll start there and we'll see where that gets us. But, you know, we're gonna attack things full speed. I’m really grateful and honored to be in this position and excited about it.

In terms of our 2026 team, here's what I will tell you, again no wild predictions. We have a lot of work to do but i do think we have a hard-working team. They've been competitive, they have really grown together and that's been positive. I saw really good intensity from our first spring practice to the 15th. I know talking to our strength and conditioning coach Lyle Henley, they've been working very hard this summer very. I should have mentioned Coach Henley earlier. Very grateful to have him here, he's been a part of some very successful and great teams at UAB running the strength and conditioning program. He's doing a great job with our group right now. Going forward our approach to camp is going to be very important. The way these guys attack camp is really going to set the tone but I think we've set a good foundation for ourselves. As we all know most football seasons carry a lot of ups and downs and it's going to be important, I think, no matter what that we have a resilient, tough team and we're working to build and create that.

Having a whole off season to try to create a culture I think is really helpful. Give our staff a lot of credit, I mentioned you know our strength and conditioning staff earlier. I think they've done a really good job. You have so many new players that show up in January. I think how you establish your way of doing things how you set the tone, if you start too loose, man it's hard to get it back. I think (Lyle Henley) did a really good job before the coaching staff even got their hands on him. I think each phase I've been very pleased with our staff. But, more importantly, I've been pleased with the players. It seems so cliche that hey you got to have a player-led team (but) it's true. I think our guys, they've taken upon themselves to make sure that they're holding each other accountable. I think with all those cultural things, having a runway to the season helps, but at the same time too you know there's gonna be more that has to take place in camp.

I think football, is a very seasonal game. So obviously you get done with the season and we've got different objectives for each time of the year. That really started with getting the right guys on the team and keeping the right guys. I think that’s one thing we've been excited about. I don't know what kind of team we're going to have from a won-loss result standpoint, but to this point, they've been hardworking, tough, selfless about the team. That's been a real positive.

On the team’s quarterback situation: We're really grateful to have Ryder. And I think he's also got leadership qualities. So that's really positive. Now, we have a really good quarterback room. We've got Nate Rogers, Adrian Posse, Cam Jennings. We have some really good players in there. But, you know, Ryder, I think having the whole offseason here to kind of go in and go out first and get those reps, that's something he didn’t get the benefit of a year ago. So I think he's so much further along than he was a year ago. I'm really excited for him.

On fixing the turnover ratio: It is three phases. And look, (the defense has) to get it out, but the offense has got to protect it, too. So it's both. When you look at winning and losing, as we all know, one of the things that correlate the most is turnover margin. And after that, you get to explosive plays. Let me back up. I used to hate hearing this when I was a player. You know, like, ‘Hey, more games are lost than won.’  You know, don't beat yourself. There's so much truth in it. You know, it starts with being a disciplined team. If someone's going to beat us, make them beat us physically. Let's not give the game away. So that's an emphasis for our offense. And it's also going to be an emphasis for our defense to disrupt and get the ball out. But that's where everything really kind of starts for us.

Some of it is coaching and teaching it. You know, there's points of emphasis, yes, but there's technique on getting the ball out, right? And there's different scenarios in terms of how you're pursuing on punching a ball out. And of course, there's different ways interceptions get created, but a lot of it starts with this, can we affect the quarterback?  Sometimes you may not always sack them, but we talk about affecting the quarterback. Can we move him off a spot? Can we hit them? Can we disrupt them? So that's a big thing. And then on offense, again, there's technique things there, and then there's decision-making things there, too.  We're going to coach all that every day.

On the running game: Look, we like to run the ball. And look, football to me, it starts at the line of scrimmage. So we want to dominate and control the line of scrimmage. Yeah, I did work for Saban for nine years. (Those) teams were physical, were tough. So those are things we believe in and we want to run the football. We want to run it well. And we also want to stop the run. It starts at the line of scrimmage with our offensive line. Adam Lepkowski, who's a center for us. I feel like he's a ninth-year senior. It kind of starts with him, but we have a good group up there. It's going to be very competitive. All those guys setting a tone and then we like our running back room. It's a deep room. We've got a lot of guys there that I think are really going to help us. Some of which have collegiate production already, have 1,000 yards to their name. Some of which have a high ceiling (but) haven't really done it yet. I think they will for us. So I'm pretty excited about that group.

On the receiver room: We have a lot of receivers right now that are competing, and we're really excited about all of them. But yeah, Ty Mims has done a good job. Very excited to have Kaleb Brown back. You know, Kaleb suffered an injury in the spring, but he's bouncing back. You know, we brought in C.J. Smith, who we're also really excited about. KJ Daniels is another new guy. AJ Johnson returns. Lamar White's been coming on. Look, I'm leaving guys out. I mean, it's a room that we think has some depth and it's going to be very competitive in camp. But I think they can all help us and we'll find ways to play all of them.

On getting quicker starts in games: It's like what's important? The first part of the game, in the fourth quarter, people talk about the middle eight. It's all important. I want to win every play I play. But it all does matter. Talk about the Memphis game, it was my first game as the interim. We took our opening drive right down and we scored. You know, started fast, and we ran the ball well and we threw it in. And then you think about the Tulsa game, another game we won, we scored early in that game. So I think we are capable of that. But at the same time, again, man, it's hard not to talk about Saban when you've been around the guy for nine years. I'm a little bit brainwashed, but man, everything was, hey, each play has a history and life of its own. I was a part of some games where we fell behind big early. And there was just, you know, there's always the underlying intensity, but there was no panic. There was a great amount of poise. I'm old enough to remember (or) my dad showed me 15-round fights, not the 12-round fights. The game's not won or lost in the first quarter. And so we certainly want to start fast if we can and prepare that way, but we're also not going to panic if we don't.