Birmingham Stallions win UFL behind 3 TDs by Martinez, a former KSU QB Martinez

The San Antonio Brahmas had the No. 1 defense by stats of the United Football League this season. It turned out that Birmingham Stallions had a championship defense. Birmingham Stallions had a championship defense.

By al.com

“I thought our defense played a heck of a football game,” head coach Skip Holtz said. “They kept the ball in front of them, didn’t give up any big plays, tackled – just an unbelievable effort by our defensive side.”

Birmingham has added the spring-football league’s championship to the league’s championships taken by the Stallions in the last two years in the USFL that combined and the XFL to create the United Football League this year.

The result avenged Birmingham’s first loss in the season. The Brahmas defeated the Stallions 18-9 on the 25th of May in the 9th week of their regular-season.

“We were undefeated when we played San Antonio the first time,” Birmingham linebacker Kyahva Tezino told the media. “And If I’m honest about ourselves, we were at ease with ourselves. We were comfortable. It was probably a necessity. Coach Skip actually went into the locker room to say he’d rather lose that game and then win the championship, than to lose it and win the championship the reverse.

“We have just come together and we’ve said that we’re not letting (San Antonio’s running defender Anthony McFarland) beat us We’re not going let this offense defeat us. So we’re going to band together and show our hearts out and that’s exactly what we did.

“Shout out to these guys. Shout out to the D-line. The first step is with them first, and then everyone else follows them. It’s an effort of the entire team.”

With the No. #1 defense in football, anchored by ex- Kansas State quarterback Adrian Martinez, Birmingham opened the title game with three punts and a an fumble on its initial four games. Then, the Stallions scored the following three times they got the ball.

In the case of San Antonio, though, the offense threw out six punts as well as two fumbles. They also was stopped twice on downs.

Birmingham’s most memorable play was a 44-yard swoop of the running back Ricky Person Jr. to the San Antonio 30-yard line. The huge play resulted in an 8-yard touchdown by Martinez at receiver Gary Jennings with 40 seconds left in the opening half. Birmingham had an 8-0 lead in the halftime period with Martinez’s conversion pass of 2 points at Wide receiver Amari Rodgers.

The second-half kickoff was received and the Stallions were able to move 64 yards in just eight plays to score another touchdown. Martinez was able to score from 11 yards with 11:30 to go in the final third. and then connected with the tight end Jordan Thomas with a 2-point conversion to take an 16-0 lead.

“We are a defer team,” Holtz declared. “We will always play the ball deferentially, so when we saw an opportunity to win a coin I was hoping that we could win it to defer the ball, which they did, and got the ball. The whole team was”Yes!’ as what we’ve talked about is the possibility to win this game if we manage the clock in the right manner and figure out the way to score before the end of halftime and take the ball into the third quarter to scoring again and it’s a two-score match before they return. The ball was in their possession after the conclusion of the first half, we scored, went down after which we went down and scored another time the offense came out, it was 16-0. This is a challenge for an offense to conquer.”

San Antonio then made the fatal mistake during the game. Birmingham linebacker Kyahva Tezino caused Brahmas wide receiver Jontre Kirklin to fumble on an attempt to complete the Brahmas first play of the second quarter, as well as the safety Kenny Robinson Jr. recovered at the San Antonio 24-yard line.

The Stallions were able to capitalize on Martinez’s 1-yard quarterback snoop for a touchdown, a play that was not allowed to cross the goal line, but that was later converted into an TD by video review with 7:25 remaining during the 3rd quarter.

A field goal of 49 yards made from Chris Blewitt with 11:31 left to play was the score for the game.

San Antonio was able to run 127 yards and 33 carries during its regular-season victory against Birmingham. On Sunday the Brahmas scored 52 yards in sixteen rushing efforts. In contrast, the Stallions ran for 220 yards and two touchdowns in 35 runs in the game against San Antonio on Sunday, with Person getting 102 yards on 13 attempts.

“I told the team in the meeting today I was going to run the ball 25 times, and they said 30,” Holtz declared. “I informed them that If they can average more than 4 yards on a single move, I’ll make the ball 30 times. We were looking to play the ball this game. That was the strategy before the game began. I was becoming anxious as we went three-and-out out three times. We had a few third downs and possibly some drops or throws or reads could not be executed. It was easy to keep going when the defense showed an 0 on the scoreboard, since although it appeared as if it was a mistake but it was actually at 0-0. The team is still in the game. We’re in the right place to be. We don’t have to be winning it in the first quarter and I congratulate our players for taking their time.

“And on the offensive line, we know (the San Antonio defense is) quick, athletic and can run. they’re able to smother passers. They’ve proved this. However, we think that our line of offensive players is quite excellent, and we were confident that we’d be reaping the rewards in the third and fourth quarters if we continued hitting that rock because, eventually, we hoped that it would weaken them. The offensive line became stronger throughout the game.”

Birmingham was victorious despite the fact that Martinez was able to complete an impressive 98 yards passing. He completed 13-of-23 passes, with one touchdown and zero interceptions.

Martinez Martinez, who was named the UFL Most Valuable Player in the regular season, also took home an MVP Award for the championship game.

The San Antonio Brahmas had the No. number one defense on the statistical scale within the United Football League this season. It turned out that Birmingham Stallions had a championship defense. Birmingham Stallions had a championship defense.

The Stallions defeated the Brahmas 25-0 in the debut UFL Championship Game on Sunday at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis.