Skip Holtz is 32 games into his pro football coaching career and has been calling the shots as the head man for 305 games in all.
During that time, his message has never changed.
“We didn’t try to go 21-3,” he said last summer after his Birmingham Stallions won their second consecutive United States Football League championship. “We tried to win one game at a time, and every time we’ve taken the field, we’ve just tried to win one game.”
The “1-0 mentality” continues to serve Holtz and company well in the United Football League. At 8-0, Birmingham is the league’s only undefeated team. Since starting their spring football journey in April, 2022, the Stallions are 29-3 and are currently riding a 15-game winning streak.
Thing is, Holtz and his team aren’t talking about that last part.
At all.
“I didn’t even know what that number was,” Holtz said on Tuesday. “I mean, honestly, we don’t talk about it.”
He then started adding up the numbers.
“We’re 29-3 right now, but we didn’t start out three years ago to go 29-3,” he said, repeating a familiar theme. “We started out to try and beat New Jersey in the opening game. We’re fortunate we won that game and then we tried to win the next one and the next one … when it’s all over, I think we’re gonna look back and go, that 15-game win streak, or 16 or whatever that number ends up being, is a great accomplishment.
“But right now, beating our chests or patting ourselves on the back about what we’ve done just means our eyes aren’t forward.”
Birmingham’s last loss came in its final USFL season in 2023. The Stallions were upset by the Houston Gamblers, 27-20, which dropped their record to 3-2 and – at the time – third place in the South Division.
Holtz’s crew then proceeded to win their next seven, capped off by 28-12 conquest of the Pittsburgh Maulers in the USFL Championship Game.
Birmingham has the distinction of playing in the first and last games of the modern USFL.
In 2024, of course, the winning has continued. Saturday’s foe –the San Antonio Brahmas – stand in the way of 16 straight “Ws.”
To put the accomplishment in perspective, the longest winning streak in professional football history is 23. That belongs to the Indianapolis Colts, who won nine in a row to end the 2008 National Football League season and started the 2009 campaign with a 14-game winning streak.
The Calgary Stampeders lead the way among Canadian Football League franchises, stringing together 22 victories over the 1948-49 seasons.
And when it comes to alt-football leagues (excluding the myriad semi-pro clubs), both the Hartford Knights of the Atlantic Coast Football League (1968-69) and Carolina Storm of the American Football Association (1982-83) won 20 in a row, while the Charleston Rockets finished 14-0 in the second season of the Continental Football League (1965), but lost the final game of the 1964 season and opening game of the 1966 campaign.
The Rockets join the 17-0 Miami Dolphins in the Perfect Pro Season Club: the Stallions need four more victories to join them.
“We don’t talk with them about yesterday’s history,” Holtz explained. “What happened yesterday is over, it’s in the books … you can’t change it. All you can do is learn and grow from it. Tomorrow’s a mystery because we don’t know what tomorrow brings. We don’t know what the injury situation is gonna look like. Today is where our focus needs to be.
“And right now, the talk in the team meetings and the talk on the practice field is what we’ve got to do today to get better and what we have to do today to prepare for our upcoming game.”
With three upcoming clashes against San Antonio (an XFL Conference playoff qualifier), Michigan, and Michigan again in the USFL Conference Championship Game, Holtz says the Stallions are, for all practical purposes, already in the postseason.
And that makes the “1-0 mentality” more important than ever.
“When it’s all over, when the season’s done and we don’t have anything in front of us, I think we’ll look back and we’ll say, ‘Wow.’ It’s kind of like climbing a mountain. You can’t get halfway up and start looking down and say, ‘Look at how far we’ve come.’ You wait until you get to the top and when you get to the top, you look back, You take a deep breath.
“That’s kind of how we’re looking at this season. We’re climbing a mountain and as soon as we start looking up or looking down, we’re gonna lose our footing. Our focus is, what do we have to do today? We have a saying around here … just be where your feet are. Our feet are today.”