Craig Has The Scout - UAB 2026

Coming Up:

Who: UAB Blazers

When: Thursday, September 3, 2026, at 8:00 PM

Where: Home Sweet Home

How: BTN

Opponent Primer:

Head Coach: Alex Mortensen

Alex Mortensen (obligatory note, yes, he’s Chris Mortensen’s son) is the man in charge for his first full season after one of the sport’s stranger succession stories. Trent Dilfer’s brief, baffling 9–21 run ended with an interim tag slapped on Mortensen last year. Mortensen, Dilfer’s OC, was brought on as a stabilizer, a triage selection instead of succession planning. One might go so far to say it was not ideal but not a dagger to the heart.

Six days later, UAB walked into the Liberty Bowl and stunned No. 22 Memphis, 31–24. It was the biggest debut upset for a new head coach since 1978. That’s the kind of result that forces everyone to reevaluate what they thought they knew. Mortensen instantly became the silver lining on a very gray UAB season. The success was fleeting as the rest of the schedule looked like the rest of the season as the Blazers finished 2–4 under Mortensen. The The far more important challenge arrived away from the football field. Hours before the start of Senior Day two players were stabbed inside the operations building by a teammate. The team chose to play. Mortensen chose to emphasize counseling, stability, and togetherness. His players responded.

That maturity gave the administration confidence to remove the interim tag. From a football standpoint, it’s still a tiny sample with a lot of emotional noise. Beating a ranked team is memorable. Holding a shattered locker room together is admirable. Building a program is the unglamorous work of stacking Tuesdays until they become Saturdays, especially when you were part of the previous Tuesdays. Mortensen talks about effort, poise, and togetherness, the usual first‑year coach vocabulary. The difference is that his version has already been tested in ways most coaches never face.

Offensive Style: Spread Formation with multiple concepts derived from the Air Raid.

Whatever influence Dilfer once had on the menu is gone, this is Mortensen’s fourth year calling plays but his first full season without Dilfer nudging the steering wheel. The offense is the expected “Multiple” pro‑spread blend with spread spacing, pro‑style structure, motions, formations, RPO tags. Mortensen stitched together the scheme from the Kiffin‑Daboll‑Locksley‑Sark‑O’Brien curriculum he absorbed over nine seasons at Alabama. If camp chatter holds up, this edition leans harder into run‑centric physicality. Less space‑and‑pace, more power at the point of attack. Still modern, still adaptable, still quarterback‑friendly, but very much a punch‑first operation.

Mortensen’s résumé reads like a redemption arc without the actual redemption. He is a former Arkansas quarterback, who spent nearly a decade apprenticing in the Saban academy of coaching redemption. He witnessed Kiffin’s chaos‑with‑purpose, Daboll’s NFL pragmatism, Locksley’s adaptability, Sark’s sequencing wizardry, O’Brien’s structure‑heavy game planning. By the time UAB handed him the keys, he wasn’t an up‑and‑comer so much as a composite sketch of modern offensive football. With Dilfer out of the frame, Mortensen finally gets to run the offense he’s been assembling behind the curtain, and now we get to see what it looks like when the whole thing is truly his.

Defensive Style: Multiple 3‑4 front with a plethora of blitzes

The UAB defense should be a full‑scale renovation from 2025. Todd Grantham was hired as the new DC in the off-season arriving from Oklahoma State and their abysmal year. Out goes the 4‑2‑5 base, in comes Grantham’s trademark multiple 3‑4 front. Grantham carries the kind of résumé that makes athletic directors nod solemnly and has the fanbase checking their blood pressure. Grantham has 35 years’ experience: Oklahoma State’s DC in 2025, two years coaching the Saints’ defensive line, coordinator stints at Florida, Mississippi State, Louisville, and Georgia, plus a turn running the Cleveland Browns’ defense. And tucked in there is the 2022 analyst season at Alabama, the year he and Alex Mortensen first crossed paths. Grantham is the prototypical veteran defensive coach, a guy who has seen it all but never conquered anything. He’s assembled a roster that barely resembles the one he’s replacing.

Grantham’s messaging syncs neatly with Mortensen’s program‑wide ethos, “discipline, accountability, and toughness.” The on‑field identity is louder by design. Grantham has already announced UAB as a nickel‑first outfit (three corners, always), a callback to his Florida days when press coverage was less a tactic and more a lifestyle choice. Expect tight coverage, pressure from every direction, and a defense that tries very hard to set the tone early. Whether it succeeds is another question entirely, but it certainly won’t be boring.

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