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Two Southern Conference teams needing a win badly will meet on Saturday afternoon at Samford’s Pete Hanna Stadium.
Samford is not only still searching for the first win with John Grass as the head coach but the Bulldogs are also riding a eight-game losing streak dating back to the final five games of the 2025 season. On the other side of the football, VMI has a 14-game losing streak, including the first four games of Ashley Ingram’s tenure as the program’s head coach.
It’s guaranteed that one losing streak will end on Saturday.
“I think we need a win bad,” Grass said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday morning. “We really do. This bunch has done everything we've asked them to do. They've bought in. They're still bought in. So, I think a win would do a lot of people well. You'll get back to even in the conference. This team's goal was to finish at the top of the conference and that goal is still attainable. But you got to win these games. Losing the first one kind of put some pressure on all the rest of them, so you got our backs against the wall as far as the conference. This is a must-win when it comes to conference play.”
One advantage for Samford is the Bulldogs are rejuvenated after the team’s first bye week of the season. The extra week of work came following close losses to UNA and Southern Illinois and a tough outing at Tennessee Tech in the SoCon opener.
“You know, the first three didn't go the way we wanted 'em to go but we got better every week,” Grass said. “We had a chance to win some games in the fourth quarter there with the first two and then with explosive plays (at) Tennessee Tech, it got away from us early but had a chance to get back in that game as well. You learn a lot about your football team in those first three games, so we got to build on that, and that's kind of what we did last week.”
The extra work also allowed the Samford defense an opportunity to get extra work on defending the triple option attack brought in by the new staff. Ingram was an offensive lineman on three national championship teams at UNA, which ran the option, and spent 16 seasons as an assistant coach at Navy.
“Well, I mean, I think it's tough,” Grass said of getting ready to play an option attack for the only time this season. “I think this conference used to have two or three teams at all times that, that run the triple, so you would see it from week to week. I asked our guys, ‘How many of y'all played against the triple in high school?’ Surprisingly, more of them played against it than what you thought.”
But it still takes a healthy dose of adjustment in preparation.
“The biggest difference to me, (after) you played three spread offenses the first three games, is pad level,” Grass said. “It's under the center offense. It gets on you a lot quicker than a gun offense does. The pad level of your offensive lineman is way lower than it is out of the gun. So, I mean, it's an adjustment. It's gonna take us a series to adjust to the pad level of the game because they're rolling off the ball, man. They're in a four-point stance and they're coming off the ball. It's a power run game, and they want to be able to crease with that fullback. So it is different. But like I said, the knowledge on our team was better than what I had suspected in that deal.
Game preparation isn’t done solely in meeting rooms, video rooms and the practice field, at least not for UAB cornerback Darrell Sweeting. He also mixes in a healthy dose of homework.
You see, Sweeting is a talker on the football field. This is where the homework shows up.
“I prep every week,” said Sweeting, a 6-foot, 185-pound redshirt junior. “I ain't gonna lie, I'm looking at their Instagrams and who they date. I'm looking at all that. I’m looking at who they named (after), their first name, their mom’s name. I'm trying to get under their skin, so when I get on the field, I'm just saying all different types of things. Not disrespectful but something where they’re saying ‘What, how you know that?’”
The genesis of this approach includes the position that he plays. Be honest, have you ever known a quiet cornerback? But the roots of Sweeting’s journey into trash talking began long before he became a college football cornerback. It came on the youth football fields of West Palm Beach, Fla., where trash talking is part of the game.
“If you ain't got a little dawg in you, you can't play down there, I ain't gonna lie to you,” said Sweeting, who was 6 years old when he first joined a team. “When I first started playing football, they installed trash talking into me. I’ll give you a quick story. When I was young, I used to be scared to run into people hard, you know what I'm saying? So my coaches would talk trash (to) make me mad. When they talked trash, I used to go running into people fast and hard. I got rid of that fear fast.”
The fear was gone but the need for trash talking remained. But that’s just part of his process.
“You got to back it up,” Sweeting said. “The confidence comes from the work you put in, obviously, in practice, in off-season training, in the weight room and all the running we do as a team. That's where the confidence first builds and comes from. I think the trash talking is just to get you going. It's like a mental game for myself as well, to go in there like, "OK, cool, if I'm gonna talk trash, I gotta go in there and do my job.’"
Sweeting’s job these days comes on the defensive side of the ball. In high school, at The Benjamin School in West Palm Beach, he was a standout in all three phases. As a junior, he had 70 catches for 1,261 yards with 17 receiving touchdowns. He also had 48 tackles, five interceptions, including one he returned for a touchdown, and a kickoff return for a score.
Sweeting played in eight games over his first two college seasons at Temple. Last season, he played in 12 games at Marshall and contributed 37 tackles, one tackle for loss, one sack and an interception. He came to UAB in January and immediately made a good impression. Sweeting latched on to one of the first team cornerback spots in spring practice and never let go.
“I think you just start with character, just showing the type of person you are,” Sweeting said. “Then you gotta go out there and play. I think over the course of the spring I did really well. My first day I came out with two picks. I put my name out there real fast in front of the team. I think I ended the spring with like eight or nine picks, so I was able to earn respect from the team. Coming into fall camp, I was able to just keep building off that. Now I'm in season, so I gotta just build off that.”
The next step comes on Saturday against Louisiana, which features standout dual threat quarterback Lunch Winfield. With Winfield’s ability to beat a defense with his legs and arm it’s a challenging game for the entire UAB defense. Sweeting does have the advantage of previous experience against Winfield, even though that didn’t go so well. Winfield came off the bench last season at home against Marshall and led the Ragin’ Cajuns to a 54-51 win in overtime. Winfield accounted for 254 yards and five touchdowns in about two quarters of action and scored the game-winner on a 10-yard run.
“He was a explosive guy,” Sweeting said when asked what he remembers from that game. “He could throw the ball, he’s got a strong arm. He can run the ball like crazy. If you let him have too much space, he'll run it. We got to just be on top of it, keep him contained in the pocket and then take away his throws.”
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