Category: Alternative Football

So, what’s to make of Saturday’s Week 10 clash between the Birmingham Stallions (8-1, 5-0) and Michigan Panthers (7-2, 4-1) at Protective Stadium?

The object of the game is to win, of course, but the win that matters most comes on June 8. That’s when they play again – at the same venue – with the USFL Conference Championship and a trip to the United Football League’s title showdown in St. Louis on the line.

Do you rest starters?

Do you shut down your offense?

Do you treat the game like an exhibition, even though the best way for UFL players to get a shot at the NFL is to never take a day off?

If you listen to Michigan coach Mike Nolan, there’s plenty to play for this Saturday as well as the next. As for who’ll play, however, well … who knows?

All teams are dealing with injuries, but the Panthers have been inundated with them.

“Hopefully we get some (injured players) back, but I kind of wonder … do I want them back now, or do I want to wait till next week to get them back?” Nolan said. “Things like that are the kind of the decisions we’re in the process of making. Naturally, this game is important to us for a lot of personal reasons, I would say as much as anything because obviously you want to win the division.

“We all know that whether we win it or not, we’re still going back to Birmingham. So, a little bit of that plays into it.”

The Stallions clinch the division with a victory, or a loss by 21 points or fewer.

While the Panthers are coming off their fifth straight victory, the Stallions are trying to rebound from their first UFL loss – an 18-9 setback to the San Antonio Brahmas last Saturday. It snapped a 15-game winning streak dating back to the 2023 USFL season and was also the first time Skip Holtz’s team has been held to single digits in its nearly three season history.

Holtz said his charges are angry about the defeat, and have no intention of going through the motions in Saturday’s first leg of the Michigan series.

To get back on track, though, they have to fix some things.

“San Antonio has got a really good defense and did a really nice job, but I think we had three drops in the first quarter,” he said. “We ended up with four on the day. We just did not execute very cleanly, which was one of the frustrations that I had. It was just very hard to get momentum going … we weren’t very consistent as an offensive football team.

“But probably one of my biggest frustrations that came out of this game was the personal fouls. We ended up with four of them.”

Birmingham and Michigan met in Week 2 at Ford Field in Detroit with the Stallions taking a 20-13 victory. The winners rolled up 161 rushing yards in the that game, but since then the Panthers have become one of the best teams in the league at stopping the run.

If you look at that game for clues about this one, you won’t find many.

“They’ve changed quite a bit,” Holtz said. “They’ve changed philosophies. Offensively, they’ve become much more open. They started running their quarterback much more after our game. They had an injury to their starter, their backup went in last week, and he’s very athletic. They started running him a lot more, doing the zone read … they’ve gone away from a traditional professional offense.”

Since E.J. Perry went down for the season with injury, Bryce Perkins has stepped up for Michigan. In last week’s come-from-behind, 26-22 victory over Houston, the former University of Virginia record-setter went 12-15-1 for 121 yards and a touchdown.

Backup Danny Etling was 12-18-1 for 110 more yards.

“I think a lot of credit obviously goes to Bryce and his work ethic,” Nolan said. “He’s continued to work hard and he’s an exciting player to watch. He can extend plays, which is always important in our league and any league, for that matter, with the quarterback position, especially when the play breaks down.”

Birmingham has been led by Adrian Martinez, who is the league’s leading MVP candidate. He continues to top the UFL in rushing yards (487) and is third in passing, with a stat line that shows 120-201-3 for 1,586 yards and 14 TDs.

But before he won the starting job, he split time with Matt Corral, and it would hardly be surprising if the former Ole Miss star sees plenty of playing time on Saturday.

Running back Larry Roundtree III, tackle Armani Taylor-Prioleau, linebacker Elijah Sullivan, cornerback Mark Gilbert and kicker Chris Blewitt have been activated by the Stallions, while linebacker DeMarquis Gates, running back Ricky Person Jr., defensive back Nevelle Clarke and offensive lineman O’Shea Dugas have been placed on the inactive roster.

Ramiz Ahmed, who filled in for Blewitt during his absence, was waived on Tuesday.

Birmingham leads the league in total yards (3,252) and rushing yards (1,244), while Michigan is No. 1 in rushing TDs at 18.

Defensively, the Stallions and Panthers are 1-2 against the run and near the middle of the pack defending the pass.

On paper, it looks to be a fairly even match, but a mysterious one in that who plays and for how long is anyone’s guess.

Regardless of the lineups, Holtz – and Nolan – want their teams to come out of the fracas as healthy as possible.

“I think one of the things I probably didn’t take into account is the wear and tear that travel takes on your football team in this league,” Holtz said. “Something that I have never done before is where you’re on the road for nine straight weeks (traveling from the Arlington, Texas, hub). As the year’s gone on, I’ve kind of gone to just shoulder pads on Tuesday and shorts on Wednesday. But this week, we took them out of pads completely. We’ve got to coach little things in the details at this point.”

Saturday’s game is set for 1 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN and listened to on ESPN Xtra on SiriusXM.

Linebackers are sometimes called “quarterbacks of the defense,” and Birmingham Stallions hitman Kyahva Tezino has certainly been a vocal leader in that role.

It’s no surprise, then, that he harbors dreams of calling plays on both sides of the ball – once his playing career is over.

“If you’re a player wherever you go, you try to take a little from each coach and see what you can put in your coaching style one day,” Tezino said on Wednesday. “I think whenever it’s my time to coach, I’ll use what I’ve learned from (Birmingham head coach Skip Holtz) all the way to my Pop Warner coach and take it forward.”

At age 26, the United Football League standout has plenty of time to plan for his next vocation.

Right now, though, Tezino’s mind is focused on stopping the Michigan Panthers.

Not only do the Stallions (8-1) play the Panthers (7-2) in a Week 10 matchup, they’ll face them again a week later in the USFL Conference Championship Game.

Both contests will be played at Protective Stadium.

Birmingham won a Week 2 matchup with the Panthers, 20-13, at Ford Field in Detroit.

Tezino had five tackles and an assist in that contest, one that saw the winners limit Michigan to just 205 yards of total offense.

“It’s hard to beat a team three times,” he said. “But it can be done. Last year I was with the (Pittsburgh) Maulers and we beat Michigan three times, so it just comes down to the kind of want you have. You’ve got to know the situation. Somebody might say this is a ‘waste week’ or a game where we see what they do for next week, but I think we know what we’re playing for, and that’ll help us for this week.”

Through nine games with Birmingham, Tezino leads the team with 65 tackles (37 assisted), and also has a half sack as well as four pass break-ups. Among all UFL defenders, he ranks fourth in number of tackles.

As a senior at San Diego State University, Tezino was an Honorable Mention All-American as well as First Team All-Mountain West Selection. In five seasons as an Aztec, he made 148 solo tackles, assisted on 140 more, had 14.5 sacks and also picked off a pair of passes.

His single-game best was a 17-tackle showing against Army in 2017.

The 6-0, 235-pounder was taken by Pittsburgh in the 31st round of the 2022 United States Football League Draft.

During the 2023 season with the Maulers, he had 94 tackles (54 solo) and two interceptions. Stallions fans might recall he led Pittsburgh with 11 tackles in a 28-12 loss to Birmingham in the USFL Championship Game.

A year earlier in the Maulers’ debut campaign, he registered 55 individual takedowns and 70 in all.

Tezino was signed by the San Francisco 49ers last year before being waived in August, and originally entered the NFL after signing with the New England Patriots as an undrafted rookie free agent on April 27, 2020. Following his release three months later, he inked a deal with the Carolina Panthers as a practice squad player but was let go on August 16, 2020.

With designs on getting back to the NFL – something he hopes to do before transitioning to coaching – that means there are no off days. Week 11 has much higher stakes than Week 10, but Tezino has no plans to take it easy in the first of a two-game set.

“With a 10-week regular season you don’t have a bye week, so if you make the championship, you play 12 games straight games,” Tezino said. “But everybody knows that, and everybody is trying to get to the NFL, so you just have to take your soreness with a grain of salt.”

Saturday’s game is set for 1 p.m. and can be seen on ESPN and listened to on ESPN Xtra on SiriusXM.

To say it’s been a trying couple of weeks for the Birmingham Stallions would be a bit of an understatement.

For openers, the 2024 Stallions won’t be joining the 1965 Charleston Rockets or the 1972 Miami Dolphins as professional football teams that went through an entire season with a perfect record.

Last Saturday’s 18-9 loss to the San Antonio Brahmas made sure of that, snapping a 15-game winning streak in the process.

“The San Antonio game was a tough loss,” Birmingham coach Skip Holtz said on Tuesday. “You know, any loss is tough, but especially your first one of the year. I’m just glad we got to wait until the ninth week. We had a good run going, and I think we’ve had some success along the way.”

For two games the team found itself short one coach, with defensive coordinator John Chavis sidelined by illness before the game against the Houston Roughnecks and now no longer with the club.

Corey Chamblin has taken over the DC role and Anthony Blevins has been added to the staff.

“Nobody wants to go through what we’re going through,” Holtz said. “Two weeks ago, when John was dealing with a medical issue and he missed the game, we tried to put band aids on it to get through. We were fortunate in the Houston game (a 35-28 victory on May 18) that we were able to score enough points to win. But you’re also coaching a coach down, and you only have three coaches on defense.

“And the role that Corey was playing when Coach Chavis was calling the defense was echoing the calls of the secondary, getting the personnel groups and getting your different packages in on defense. There was nobody there to take that role.”

Enter Blevins.

Last summer – before the USFL and XFL announced their merger – he was tapped as the new head coach of the XFL Vegas Vipers. But when the Vipers found themselves among seven other spring clubs that were not absorbed by the United Football League, Blevins was out of a job.

“Anthony has a Birmingham background, he has a spring league background, he’s got a huge pedigree in the NFL with special teams, defense and linebackers … he just fit the bill,” Holtz said.

Blevins was a member of Watson Brown’s first recruiting class at UAB in 1995, and had five tackles in a 29-0 loss to Auburn on August 31, 1996 – UAB’s first game as a member of the NCAA’s top division.

The Pleasant Grove product was part of the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship Program with the Chicago Bears (2008), Arizona Cardinals (2010) and Indianapolis Colts (2011).

And Blevins also managed to get a PhD in instructional systems and workforce development at Mississippi State in 2015, meaning the Stallions now have a doctor on their defensive staff.

Holtz admits his team’s psyche could use a bit of healing heading into Saturday’s matchup with the Michigan Panthers (7-2) at Protective Stadium.

“They’re disappointed, they’re upset and probably a little bit angry, which is all good because I feel like we got their attention and I’m looking forward to a great practice today and getting ready for a tight contested matchup this week,” Holtz said.

Despite the loss to the Brahmas and upheaval on the staff, Birmingham is hardly stuck on a gloom and doom loop.

Still on the table is a chance to join the 1929-31 and 1965-67 Green Bay Packers as pro football three-peaters.

The two-time defending United States Football League champions have the best record in the inaugural season of the UFL at 8-1. And no matter how Saturday’s game turns out, the Stallions and Panthers will square off again a week later at the same venue in the USFL Conference Championship Game.

“We play Michigan back-to-back, which is very unique,” Holtz said. “It’s something that I have not been involved with but something that we’re going through, and we’re putting two game plans together this week.

“We’ll learn some of the things they’re going to be doing to us that we’re going to have to make adjustments for in game two, but we need to come back we need to get back on a winning track.”