By Mark Inabinett | minabinett@al.com
The San Antonio Brahmas had the No. 1 statistical defense in the United Football League this season. But it turned out, the Birmingham Stallions had a championship defense.
The Stallions defeated the Brahmas 25-0 in the inaugural UFL Championship Game on Sunday at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis.
“I thought our defense played a heck of a football game,” Holtz said. “They kept the ball in front of them, didn’t give up any big plays, tackled – just an unbelievable effort by our defensive side.”
Birmingham added the new spring-football league’s crown to the championships won by the Stallions the past two seasons in the USFL, which merged with the XFL to form the United Football League this year.
The outcome avenged Birmingham’s only loss of the season. The Brahmas beat the Stallions 18-9 on May 25 in Week 9 of the regular season.
“We were undefeated when we played San Antonio the first time,” Birmingham linebacker Kyahva Tezino said. “And if I’m being real with ourselves, we were comfortable, we were complacent. We probably needed that. Coach Skip actually came in the locker room and said he would rather lose that game and win the championship than for it to be vice versa.
“We just came together, and we said we’re not going to let (San Antonio running back Anthony McFarland) beat us, we’re not going to let this offense beat us, and we’re just going to come together and play our butts off, and that’s what we did.
“Shout out to those guys. Shout out to the D-line. It starts with them, and then everybody else follows right behind them, so it’s just a team effort.”
With the No. 1 offense in the league, Birmingham opened the title game with three punts and a fumble on its first four possessions. Then the Stallions scored the next three times they had the football.
For San Antonio, though, the offense produced six punts, lost two fumbles and got stopped on downs twice.
Birmingham’s breakout play was a 44-yard burst by running back Ricky Person Jr. to the San Antonio 30-yard line. The big play led to an 8-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Adrian Martinez to wide receiver Gary Jennings with 40 seconds left in the first half. Birmingham took an 8-0 halftime lead on Martinez’s 2-point conversion pass to wide receiver Amari Rodgers.
Receiving the second-half kickoff, the Stallions moved 64 yards in eight plays for another touchdown. Martinez ran in from 11 yards with 11:00 left in the third quarter, then hit tight end Jordan Thomas with a 2-point conversion pass for a 16-0 lead.
“We are a defer team,” Holtz said. “We will always defer the ball, so when there was a coin toss, I was hoping we would win it so we could defer, and they won it and took the ball. And our whole sideline was like, ‘Yes!’ because what we have talked about is the opportunity if we can manage this clock the right way and we can find a way to get a score before half and then get the ball in the third quarter and go score again, it’s a two-score game before they get back out. They had the ball at the end of the second quarter, we went down and scored, went down and scored again, and when their offense came back out it was 16-0. That is hard for an offense to overcome.”
San Antonio then made the fatal error of the game. Birmingham linebacker Kyahva Tezino caused Brahmas wide receiver Jontre Kirklin to fumble on a completion on the Brahmas’ first snap of the second half, and safety Kenny Robinson Jr. recovered at the San Antonio 24-yard line.
The Stallions cashed in with Martinez’s 1-yard quarterback sneak for a touchdown – a play ruled short of the goal line on the field but turned into a TD via video review with 7:25 left in the third quarter.
A 49-yard field goal by Chris Blewitt with 11:31 left to play set the final score.
San Antonio ran for 127 yards on 33 carries in its regular-season victory over Birmingham. On Sunday, the Brahmas had 52 yards on 16 rushing attempts. Meanwhile, the Stallions ran for 210 yards and two touchdowns on 35 carries against San Antonio on Sunday, with Person picking up 102 on 13 attempts.
“I told the team in the meeting today I was going to run the ball 25 times, and they said 30,” Holtz said. “I told them if they could average over 4 yards a carry, I’ll call it 30 times. We wanted to run the ball in this game. That was the game plan going in. I was getting flustered when we went three-and-out, three-and-out. Had a couple of third downs and maybe a couple of drops or reads or throws that we couldn’t execute. But it was easy to stay with it with the defense showing a zero on the scoreboard, because even though it seemed like it was bad, it was still 0-0. You’re still right in the game. We’re right where we need to be. We don’t need to win it in the first quarter, and I applaud our players for just being patient.
“And the offensive line – we knew (the San Antonio defense is) athletic, they’re fast, they can run, they can rush the passer. They’ve proven that. But we feel like our offensive line is pretty good, and we felt like we would be receiving the benefits in the second, third and fourth quarters if we kept banging that rock because, eventually, we were hoping it would wear them down. And our offensive line, they got stronger as the game went on.”
Birmingham won even though Martinez finished with 98 passing yards, completing 13-of-23 passes with one touchdown and no interceptions.
Martinez, who was the UFL Most Valuable Player in the regular season, also won the MVP Award for the championship game.
Two Stallions with Alabama football roots played on Saturday. Wide receiver Marlon Williams (McGill-Toolen) had four receptions for a team-high 36 yards, and guard Deonte Brown (Austin, Alabama) did not record any stats.
