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Stallions cement spring dynasty with UFL championship
As young as the modern era of spring football is, the Birmingham Stallions have established it as theirs to rule by securing the inaugural UFL championship with a 16-0 win over the San Antonio Brahmas on Sunday, June 16, in St. Louis.
The championship game marks the end of the first year of a league formed by the merger of the USFL and XFL. The Stallions won the past two USFL titles and have cemented their dynasty with a third straight trophy.
Skip Holtz was a head coach in college for four different schools since the mid-1990s. While the USFL was originally seen as a step below major college football. It turned out to be the peak for him.
“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” Holtz said. “I love these young men that we’re coaching. I think they’re here because they love ball. I think every one of them has a different why. … If we brought up our whole team they can all tell their own story, where they’re trying to go, what they’re trying to do, and they’re hungry. They’re respectful. They take notes, they ask questions, they’re involved, they want to get better and for me as a coach, my favorite part of coaching is watching a player and a team develop. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me.”
While Adrian Martinez’s numbers weren’t flashy. He only threw for 98 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 52 yards for two scores. However, the league’s leading passer and rusher demonstrated why he was named MVP by turning the title game from a 30-minute staring contest into a flat-out rout.
For leading the offense to a decisive victory, Martinez was named MVP of the UFL Championship Game, presented to him by none other than Tom Brady, who was there on behalf of FOX.
“I don’t know if that was a real moment or not,” Martinez said. “Even Tom Brady himself looked like a freaking wax figure.”
It took nearly the entire first half for one of these two teams to find the end zone. The Stallions saved their best drive for last, capping the drive with an eight-yard touchdown pass from Martinez to Gary Jennings, and later a two-point pass to Amari Rodgers.
The Stallions picked up where they left off in the second half with a touchdown in their opening drive. Martinez scrambled 11 yards toward the end zone to make it a 16-0 game.
The Birmingham defense immediately forced a turnover to set up a third consecutive scoring drive, and Martinez’s second rushing touchdown of the night.
The scoring ended after the Stallions capped their fourth straight scoring drive with a field goal. Throughout the game, they rode their running back to dominance, as Ricky Person Jr. rushed for 102 yards on only 13 carries.
“We played very conservatively,” Holtz said. “It was really easy to do that when you keep looking up the scoreboard and your defense was holding to zero points. You don’t have to open it up. You didn’t have to go crazy.”
Linebacker Kyahva Tezino led the defense with nine total tackles (six solo, three assisted) and forced two fumbles, recovering one. The recent era of spring football has done wonders for him.
“It’s been a great experience,” Tezino said. “I can’t take any moment for granted because just before the USFL even started (in 2022) I was on the couch. I was working for Amazon, and my life changed on a snap of a finger.”
The Stallions avenged their only loss of the season with this victory. San Antonio defeated Birmingham 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.”
The XFL Championship Game drew 22,754 fans in San Antonio last year. This year, 27,396 fans in St. Louis saw San Antonio play for a title.
Even though the results didn’t go their way, Brahmas head coach Wade Phillips still sees this season as a success for his team.
“We had a great year, until this game,” Phillips said. “Winning in the playoffs is big. Winning the XFL was really big. These guys accomplished a lot. One more step that we didn’t make, but these are winners. This is not the last-place game. This team was picked last going into the season, but these guys played really well throughout the year.”
Brahmas quarterback Chase Garbers completed 18 of 26 passes for 116 yards before being pulled for Quinten Dormady, who connected on 6 of 9 attempts for 58 yards.
“We knew when we first got here in February that we wanted to be in this game,” Garbers said. “We fought ups and downs throughout the whole year, and we ended up here. We just couldn’t execute and finish it out.”
While the championship game could have been better to watch and it's clear the St. Louis Battlehawks coming up short in the XFL Championship game last week damped the potential of attendance, the UFL completed its first season since the merger between the XFL and USFL.
Now comes the true test of spring football, where we find out how many players make it onto NFL training camp rosters and even break camp with them.
"I don't think anyone in this league is a finished product," Martinez said. "I think a lot of guys get written off and come here to prove them wrong. So I think a lot of guys on our football team had a chip on their shoulder coming in here wanting to prove people wrong and prove that they can continue to get better and be a player at the next level."