2022 UAB Dynasty | Pre-Season Time! - AyoGaz's Dynasty

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2022 UAB Dynasty | Pre-Season Time!

Posted on September 6, 2022 at 10:46 PM.

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2022 UAB Dynasty!

Pre-Season Time!

After a few years of being the Quarterbacks Coach at the University of South Alabama, Gage Swann has been offered a job at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. The UAB Blazers football team is coming off of an impressive win in the Independence Bowl over BYU in 2021. Bill Clark, the former head coach, decided to step down in the off-season for health reasons. This led to a job offer for Gage Swann to take over the interim head coaching job at UAB. He accepted the offer despite never being a head coach before. This was going to be a heavy task, but the first thing he had to do was meet the team.

UAB Blazers Depth Chart - 2022
Regular Offense
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH
WR	Michael Coleman	Gabriel Bell
TE	Dominique Jones	Maurice Moore
LT	Omarr Smith
LG	Pat Lawrence
C	Jermaine Jenkins
RG	Robin Johnson
RT	Jeff Hall
WR	Corey Jones	Adam Olsen	John Washington
QB	J.R. Smith	Shawn Harper	Corey Finley
FB	Chris Gould	Nick Malloy
HB	Jeff Harrell	John Harris
Base 4-2-5 Defense
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH
LDE	Calvin Flores	David Jackson
LDT	Ryan Bonner	Jared Murray
RDT	Braylon Newberry
RDE	Trevor Thompson	Bubba Charles
SLB	Andrew Vincent	Brad Gardner	Clint Spicer
WLB	Sean Hicks	Nick Brant	John Hagen
CB	David McCall	Victor Bergstrand
SS	Chase Haley
FS	Chris Robinson
SS	Marcus Ryan
CB	Lance Williams	Geremy McDonald
Special Teams
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH
K	Ben Lewis
P	Lance Espinosa
H	Ben Lewis
PR	Gabriel Bell
KR	Gabriel Bell
LS	Jeff Hall

After meeting with the team, coach Swann was confident that he could bring this team back to a bowl game, despite the pre-season AP Poll having the blazers at 96th. This was a team that had some very experienced players, while at the same time being young in quite a few positions. Coach Swann was coming from the #14 South Alabama Jaguars as a QB coach, to the "96th" ranked UAB Blazers as the head coach, but he believed in the guys that he had. The Blazers have a few pre-season AP Top 25 teams on the schedule, so he needed to see how the poll was shaping up.

NCAA Football Rankings - AP Top 25 - Updated: Aug 27, 2022
RK	LW	TEAM (VOTES)	W	L	POINTS
1	NR	Alabama	0	0	-
2	NR	Nebraska	0	0	-
3	NR	Texas A&M	0	0	-
4	NR	Florida	0	0	-
5	NR	Stanford	0	0	-
6	NR	Syracuse	0	0	-
7	NR	Tennessee	0	0	-
8	NR	Utah	0	0	-
9	NR	Clemson	0	0	-
10	NR	North Carolina	0	0	-
11	NR	Miami	0	0	-
12	NR	UCF	0	0	-
13	NR	Georgia	0	0	-
14	NR	South Alabama	0	0	-
15	NR	Michigan	0	0	-
16	NR	LSU	0	0	-
17	NR	Texas	0	0	-
18	NR	California	0	0	-
19	NR	Arizona State	0	0	-
20	NR	Washington	0	0	-
21	NR	Army	0	0	-
22	NR	Mississippi State	0	0	-
23	NR	Houston	0	0	-
24	NR	Oklahoma	0	0	-
25	NR	Cincinnati	0	0	-

After seeing that the Blazers open the year with his former team the #14 ranked USA Jaguars, he was a bit concerned with how that would affect the confidence of the team. Especially since they follow that up playing in Death Valley @ #16 LSU. Starting the year 1-0 would be awesome, even if they went and lost to LSU, but starting the year 0-2, is probably the most likely thing to happen. There were a few pre-season all-conference players on the team, but no one that could really make a push towards a Heisman, so he thinks. He checked out the pre-season heisman favorites in the meantime.

Heisman Watch - Updated: Aug 27, 2022
NAME	POS	SCHOOL	SEASON STATS
Mark McGee	HB	Rice	-
Jared Young	HB	Alabama	-
Dallas Stephens	QB	Utah	-
Adam Palmer	HB	Nebraska	-
Ryan Rawlins	HB	Wisconsin	-

The last thing that coach needed to do, was to start recruiting, redshirting, and playing some dang football. The recruiting trail was not going to be easy, especially with a new coach, and some new staff members. There was a lot of work that was going to be put into the team, and quite a few positions to fill. The next thing to do was to study the week 1 opponent, who coach Swann knew all too well. Of course, with it being his former team, he knew the ins and outs of the Jaguars team, but they also knew him very well, but he also has never ran a football team.