UFL STALLIONS POST PRESS Conference, Coach Holtz, Ronnie Perkins, Matt Corral, Discuss Game 3.

Thank you. Well, what a game, huh? What a game. Kept it exciting all the way to the end. But really proud of this football team because they continued to fight. They continued to compete. They never gave up. I want to thank the crowd for everybody that stayed, who had an opportunity to see an incredible finish. And there's other people that might have left that heard an incredible finish in the car on their way home. But really, what a testament to the chemistry, to the attitude of these football players to never give up. We had to have a stop. We go down there, we get stopped in the red zone. Thought about kicking a field goal, but I thought three points, six points still puts us in a tie game. So you know what? I decided to go for it on the first one. We don't make it. The defense gets a great stop. Offense gets the ball. And just to add a little bit of dramatic flair, we throw an interception only to find that we jumped off sides, which may be one of the few penalties I appreciate this entire season. We did have way too many penalties, way too many missed assignments, way too many mistakes, way too many we did not execute very well today as an offense. Proud of the way our defense competed. Ronnie, who's up here, did a great job, brought pressure all day. Demarcus Gates, having him back, he has been a huge impact all over the field. Defense kept him out of the end zone today. Did a great job, really gave up two drives that led to a field goal. And then we threw an interception early in the game that led to a field goal. But I thought defense played great red zone defense. They did a heck of a job. And offensively, we did just enough to win. We woke up just in time to see a great finish to a great game. So really proud of these players, the way they competed, what they were able to do on the field. But like I said, we have not lost in Birmingham since 2023. And I'm very appreciative to the fans, the energy that they bring, and what they do for us here, and how much we enjoy coming back to Birmingham and having the opportunity to play at home. That interception, that two bounce back, that quick break like that, was that enough? Yeah, I mean, especially when you haven't been hitting targets all day. Yeah, defense did a great job. Coach couldn't say that enough. They really played like the top defense, like the number one defense in the state, for sure. That's the only reason why we won the championship. They kept us in the offense. We did a good job. It was just our responsibility, the offense, whatever that was. In and out was just, we just got to get better. We got to get on the same page. I need to do better. Find a way to win one game today, Ed. Can't wait to see you play, man. How much does it help to find a way to win one game today? Oh, yeah, Ed, the result helps tons. I mean, like we said, our goal was to go 1 and 0. The last PowerPoint slide I put up today said 1 and 0, find a way to win one game today. That's all we got to do, find a way to win one game. I don't know how we do it. You'd like to say we had 550 yards of offense. We gave up eight yards of defense. You know, we shut them out. I mean, you'd love to be able to do that, but we're not there. What we got to do is we got to compete. Told them, compete for 60 minutes. Keys to this game, we'll compete for 60 minutes. We needed every one of them, and we've got to find a way to go 1 and 0. Find a way to win one football game. Maybe it's low scoring, maybe it's high. We were struggling offensively. Matt struggled a little bit with his accuracy today, which is very uncharacteristic of Matt. Even got in, started saying, you know what? Let's secure our edges and run the ball. Let's see if we can get something going with the running game, and we ran a counter play and gained eight. We had second and two and ran an inside zone for 1 and then ran an inside zone for minus 2. I was like, OK, that didn't work. What's next? Where do we go from here? Then we just went to spread it out. I do know this, that I don't know what we have to be right now as an offense. I keep saying this, we're learning who we are. I don't think in the years past we have been a 16 play drive, control the ball, go down the field, score. We've been able to run the ball. We've been able to throw the ball. We've been very efficient as an offense the last two years. I just, I don't know, maybe I'm trying to make this offense something it's not. Maybe our best way to be productive is to open this thing up a little bit more and start to throw it. Maybe we're not good enough to be able to do it. We just got to find a way to score one more point than they do. And there's going to be some games where we've got to win 10-9. And there's going to be some games that we're going to have to win 28 to 27. And we've got to really take a hard look at who we are as an offense and what we need to do to move this thing forward to be able to keep improving as an offensive football team. Just keep playing, keep myself. And I think they did a good job of having my back. And that's something that a quarterback kills for. I can't be more thankful enough to be a part of this team than for these guys to have my back the way they did. You know, performance like that. It was, like Coach said, uncharacteristic. But I don't know. I just got to be better. I take full responsibility of it. I've got nothing else to say. I need to do better. Yeah, I thought the O-line did a really good job of pass protecting, especially since we lost one of our tackles right before the half on defensive field goal block. We lose our starting tackle. And then we lose our center. So we've got to put our left tackle at center. Our right guard went over. We started preparing. With seven linemen, we started preparing our tight end. If we were to lose another offensive lineman. So we were down to playing a tight end on the offensive line. With all that taken into effect, I thought they did an outstanding job of protecting the quarterback, especially at the end of the game. Everybody in the stadium knew we were throwing it. You know, we were dropping back. We were an empty. We were no backs. We were just dropping back and throwing it. We were one-dimensional, telling those ends, tape your ears back, and let's go get them. And I thought they did a great job of protecting the quarterback. I thought our run blocking was not very good. And I did not think we ran block. We did not do a very good job with our run blocking. But I do think they did a really nice job of protecting the quarterback in the passing game, which is a far cry from where we were at eight sacks two weeks ago when we played at DC. And those weren't all on the offensive line, in fairness to them. I mean, a lot of those were on the quarterback holding the ball and trying to scramble and run around a little bit and make some things happen. But I thought they did a really good job of pass protecting. No, I don't. I know they're going to put him in a boot, ice him, try and do everything they can to get the swelling out. But right now, I just know it's an ankle. So at this point, I don't have anything on Jaron Jones, and I don't have anything on Coach Snyder right now. But we'll find out. We'll get a better idea of where we are tomorrow. Pretty much, once they got down to the red zone, our mindset was just hold them to three points the whole game. Like, we owed those guys three points. We gave our offense a great chance to go down and do what they did in the end. So as you can see, we held them to three points on three drives in the first half, and then no points in the second. So just holding those guys to three for those three drives helped us win this game. And I'll just say to that, to add to this, and I really challenged the defense. After the offensive performance at DC, I told the defense if they want to be a championship caliber team, they're going to have to do it on defense. I said, for two years, we've had the number one offense in this league, and the defense has kind of benefited from the offense scoring points. We've got a lot of new faces on the offensive side of the ball. And where we are right now, we are way behind where we need to be, and we've got to keep getting better. And if the defense wants to win, they've got to stand up, and they've got to carry the load. And, oh my gosh, they have done that and more. I'm really proud of the way these guys have really, they know it's a tough sled, and they know it's a tough deal. But if we want to win, this is what we've got to do. And I'm really proud of the way they lined up and the way they competed today. Luis is a great quarterback. He made all the right throws, made all the right decisions, and he kept his team in this game. And I think that's the biggest thing. So I mean, I respect Luis and his game, and he did a heck of a job. What walks in my sleeve? Yes, yes, there's no doubt. And it's a testament, I keep saying it, testament to these players. They never doubted, you know what I mean? They never doubted, they just kept competing, they just kept fighting. And I gotta be honest, I mean, there might have been a little doubt if we were gonna win when we threw the interception on fourth down, and there was about a minute to go. There might have been a little bit of doubt at that point, but it was like, you know what? God's got a plan, you know what? God's got a plan. If you ever want to make him laugh, just tell him the plan you got for your own life. He's got a plan. And right now I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to be here and to be coaching at Birmingham. Thank y'all. Thank you very much. Giddy up. It's good to be back, I promise you. It's good to be back.