Trent Dilfer, UAB's football coach, tells McElroy & Cubelic why he has to coach completely differently this year, what Jacob Zeno brings to this UAB team, and why his mindset is to ruin things
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McElroy and Kubelik in the morning starts now. All right, welcome back in. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. 716 a.m. Wednesday, August 14th. Right here on JOX 94.5. Right to the Buyer's Right Hotline. Welcoming in Trent Dilfer, UAB head football coach to the show.

Should be a lot more comfort, a lot more confidence offensively for you guys this year going into year two, coach. I'm just interested the install, how many things you were trying to do different, how you're sort of orchestrating that side of the football and practice so far through fall camp.

Yeah, the carryover has been really good. You know, having a veteran quarterback that can take in a lot of information, process a lot of information, fix things on the field is a great starting point to have a center who's played a ton of football, who's a natural born leader, who's another highly academic guy in the football field.

and then bringing in some veteran offensive linemen in the portal that have you know been part of systems learned offenses you know understand game planning understand all the looks the defense gives you um and then running backs you know coached by henley bregan was good at running back coaches in the country that are experts in pass protection and the run game and all these things so you do all that we can just overload them i think i told you guys

This last year, you know, our offensive philosophy of teaching is drop them off in Mexico and teach them how to order them a cup of coffee. You know, that's day one. And then eventually, just through immersion, they learn how to speak the language. And it's been a really good formula for us. We have a ton of volume.

We feel good about where we're at. But, you know, saying all that, we're still to me penalties, you know, to me drop balls, to me mental mistakes as we go through camp. So, you know, I've been real hard on them about raising their expectations on execution. What do you think is the hardest thing to manage right now in fall camp? Because a lot of people are looking at it and saying depth is a challenge everywhere.

getting your young players up to speed's really huge. Making sure you guys don't enter the portal in the middle of camp, which we've seen at other places. How do you approach this fall camp differently than you would have approached it, say, five, seven years ago? Great question. You know, I went on my staff two days ago, and I'm like, I got to coach this team different than I've ever seen a team coached or, you know, my limited time coaching coached a team.

Because we have some really good veteran players that have a lot of miles on them. And we need them to get through the year. And we have younger players that are very, very physical and athletic that are going, you know, a thousand miles per hour trying to prove themselves. And what we're having is a lot of car collisions happening.

and bang up some offenders. You know, we haven't, you know, fortunately we haven't been hit with the big injury bug, but we have a lot of fender benders and managing the health of the players depth and

um development is is definitely a key thing but i think it's more well i shouldn't say more in my world it's more finding that perfect balance of how do we grow and teach and get tougher and develop grit and resilience without this neanderthal approach of just banging each other every single day so um we i starting today we're going to be extremely tactical

on how we practice from here until the first game and make sure we're talking to Lyle Henley every single, probably five times a day about different methodologies, about keeping the engines revved up without banging up the exterior of the car.

Trent Dilfer, UAB head football coach, joining us on the Buyer's Right Hotline, middle of fall camp. I want to go back to a young man that you brought up earlier, Jacob Zeno. And I don't think people appreciate the numbers from last year. And we've seen what he's done prior to last season for you. But can you peel back the curtain just a little bit on maybe what some folks don't know about him? What he is outside of just a young man in pads playing football. Give us a little extra up on Jacob Zeno, the person, not just the quarterback.

mature beyond his years, um, quietly, insanely competitive. Like he's not a, he's not a guy you're going to want to play cornhole against, you know, or, you know, ping pong or whatever it is. He's just a guy that is, uh, has that kind of assassins approach competitively. Um, really, really smart, not, not kind of smart, but like really smart. Um, and,

He's a one rep guy. You know, what we mean by that is especially a quarterback, like he'll make a mistake. He makes tons of mistakes once. And then he, once he kind of understands why he made the mistake and he's taught around the mistake. And a lot of times I'll tell him, Hey bro, you don't have to make mistakes yourself. I'll tell you the mistakes I made.

And you can avoid them if you just listen. And he'll listen. He'll be like, yeah, you know, coach said, you know, cover two, Mike dropping a number three and three by one, probably not a good idea to try to rip in that bender, right, against a good Mike. And so he won't try it. You know, he'll just, he'll look at it and, you know, throw the ball somewhere else. I just love his temperament. You know, he, at times last year early, he would get a little, you know,

I wouldn't say in his head or lack of poise, just frustrated. And then I think by midseason, really after the UTSA game where he got the concussion and had to miss the Memphis game. And then after that, he really settled into, you know, one play at a time, not one play is more important than the next play. Stay within the moment and really become a guy that deals and operates. And he approaches his life that way, too.

How would you assess some of the progress made on defense? Because I know we've spent a lot of time talking about, whether it's on the air or off, how you want to grow on that side of the ball. Sounds like based on some of the things you've said so far, there's been progress made on that side, but I'm curious how much. How have you assessed that group? Well, progress, but we haven't proved anything, you know, and that's...

And it's hard sometimes too, because you have like seven to 11 new contributors on that side of the ball. So you can't get up in front of them and say, Hey, last year, because they're like, Whoa, don't talk to me. You know, I was in Indiana last year. I was Georgia tech last year, or I was, you know, Purdue last year. So,

Try not to say, okay, we stunk last year. We got to be better. It's more, here's the standard of defensive football that Bill Clark established at UAB. Here's the standard of defensive football that Sione and Trent Dilfer have had in their history. This is going to be the standard. How do you guys...

approach getting there. And we've seen real progress. I mean, the running of the ball, the shedding of blocks, the energy, the ball hawking ability, you know, these are things that have to become core values and cultural within your program and become standards on defense. And we're seeing massive progress that way. Now, are we still missing run fits? Yes. Are we still blowing coverages? Yes. But I would bet if you went down to Tuscaloosa, they're doing the same thing.

I bet you if you went to Oxford, they're doing the same thing. In this part of camp with this amount of information installed that they're getting, there's naturally going to be some mess-ups. What you're looking for is more up in the clouds, 30,000 feet. What is the culture identity of the defense? We're seeing more progress, but we got to go prove it. We haven't proved anything yet.

So I think there's kind of that healthy chip on our shoulder that, hey, we got to continue to improve every day so that we can prove that what was represented last year at the UAB football will never be represented again.

Coach, we know that offensively we've had you in here. You guys are going to be more than multiple. You're going to do a lot. But Greg and I have found it interesting looking at things, talking to people, hearing what people are saying, how a lot of offensive football sort of come in full circle, more tight ends, a couple people talking about fullbacks again. Hell, I saw I formation NFL preseason last week. They Vegas lined up in the I had Brock Bowers at fullback. And so is

Is this something that may be going to be a little bit a part of what you guys are doing? Some would call it old school. I talked to a defensive coach in the league the other day about this, and he said, I've never coached my guys against I-formation. They wouldn't even know how to fit it. They've never seen it.

Yeah, 21, 22, 13, 14, all these personnel groupings are difficult for defenses because everything's nickel-based these days. Also depth, it's hard to find three really good linebackers to put base on the field. Defensive linemen have become more laterally and, you know, went at the line of scrimmage instead of two-gap oriented. There

There's reasons to run a lot of things. As much as I love you guys, I'm not going to divulge everything we're going to do. I've always said we want to be an offense that ruins your practice, ruins your sideline. We want to be able to do a lot of stuff. We want to be able to be very multiple. We want to be good at those things. We don't just do them to do them. We're practicing a lot of different things. You don't just do them to do them. If we're not good at those things, we're not going to do them.

If you're good at 11, run 11. If you're good at 10, run 10. If you're good at 12, run 12. The challenge is how many things can you be good at? How many personnel groupings can you be good at? And I think that's the, in fact, that's the message in about three minutes to my offense is, hey guys, you know, we've made progress, but I wouldn't say we're great at anything yet.

Love it coach. Great stuff. We're looking forward to visiting with you each week this year. Definitely not trying to get you to divide, dive old game plans. I don't know what your problem is. Well, Greg, behind the scenes, we can go, you know, sneak out to Birmingham or Vestavia and I might be able to give you some secrets. That sounds like a really good plan. We'll just draw it up on a scorecard. That sounds like a great play. I,

Are you even able... I got a text yesterday from a random reporter saying, I'm writing a story about all the coaches' golf games in the sport. I'm like...

Why now? Don't do it now. Do it in April. Don't do it now because we don't need these coaches being thinking about their handicap. You guys are deep in camp mode right now. We can't be talking about golf. The same reporter reached out to me and you played. I'm not that good anymore, but I'm still exponentially better than any other coach in America. I,

That's what I told him. I'm like, look, I've played with a lot of these guys. Nobody wants Trent. Nobody. I told our coaches meeting for the American Conference at Media Days. We're all sitting around having a pop, talking some ball. Golf came up. I looked at Kevin Wilson. I said, listen, I'll play all of your best balls, and I'll still whoop all your asses.

And I'm not going to lie, I might take that bet. There's only two other guys that are within striking distance. One is Hugh Freeze. The other is Jason Candle, from what I've been told. I don't know about his game, but I know that Freeze can play. But you're giving him at least three a side. At least. Oh, gosh. I'm giving him three a side and stripping him. He knows that. Love it. Trey, great stuff as always, man. Look forward to catching up next week.

Appreciate you guys. There you go. Trent Dilfer joining us on the buyer's right hotline, where all the guests appear for your insurance, financial and HR needs. It's buyer's right insurance, a Higginbotham partner. I love that quote there, Greg, we want to be an offense that ruins your practice and your sideline, essentially forcing you to work on things that you haven't seen, which is going to waste probably your fundamental time, your individual time, some of your team time. And then two, um, when you get into a game and it's causing confusion, commotion, uh,

and panic, your sideline obviously is going to be scrambling. So it's like, like you said, then you have to make a decision of how much of that can we actually get good at. But I love the philosophy of just trying to say, we're going to try to ruin you before we even come down to competing mentally. If we can, if we can affect you before it even gets going, we're going to have a big advantage. I think so. And I like they, Hey, you got to prepare for a lot when you're playing against Trent and UAB, you got to prepare for a lot of different looks.

They might not have superior personnel in some cases for sure, but they're going to get you thinking. And that's a challenge. And if you can get big guys, strong, athletic, fast guys to play a touch slower and a touch lighter because they're trying to look and think,

It's really helpful. So it's a good start, I think. Absolutely. All right. Great stuff with Trent Dilfer. You can get great stuff at Royal Automotive. They want you to experience how car buying should be. Four Royal-owned dealerships in one location. Selection savings unmatched. Royal, only place to find over 19 unique truck and SUV options in one spot. Right now, get up to $14,000 off select 2024 GMC Sierra models. 0.9% financing on 2024 Volkswagen Atlas, Atlas Cross Sport.

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There's Royal. When we come back, we'll hear from Kane Womack, Alabama defensive coordinator, some of his thoughts on yesterday's practice next on Mac and Cube in the morning. Catch up with all things McElroy and Kublik in the morning by subscribing to the podcast. Mythically, he's grown. He's almost like a little bit bigger than a player, right? Like the myth of Bo Jackson. Like, rate, and download the show from the Jock Cup or wherever you get your podcasts.

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