Longtime NFL quarterback and media personality Trent Dilfer, who was the Ravens’ signal-caller during the team’s run to the Super Bowl XXXV title, joined Glenn Clark Radio recently to explain why he took the head coaching job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham following the 2022 season.
Dilfer’s journey to coaching began when he was a high school and college quarterback. He played at Fresno State from 1991-1993, throwing for 7,631 yards and 53 touchdowns while learning from head coach Jim Sweeney and top offensive assistant Jeff Tedford. For Dilfer, those two and his father represented what coaching should be about.
Dilfer: I never was ambitious. In fact, for nine years if you go back and look at my TV career I would rip ambitious coaches. I would say, “I’m the son of an offensive line coach that ran a disabled services program at a high school.” And then he went to a junior college and he passed up Cal and Stanford and all these big jobs because he was a passion coach. Jim Sweeney, who everyone forgets about, is one of the greatest college football coaches that ever lived, and he could’ve gone to the Raiders. Al Davis tried to hire him. He could’ve gone to the NFL and he said, “No, I’m passionate about these young men at Fresno State.” Jeff Tedford, I was his first first-round pick. He passed up head jobs early at lower programs because he was invested in us at Fresno before he climbed the ladder as a coordinator and ultimately became a head coach. You almost had to pull his teeth out to make him become a head coach.
Dilfer was the No. 6 overall pick of the 1994 NFL Draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He played 13 years in the league, posting a 58-55 record as a starter and throwing for 20,518 yards and 113 touchdowns. He won Super Bowl XXXV with the Ravens in January 2001 after replacing Tony Banks in the middle of the season. Though he had a successful career, Dilfer wasn’t always impressed by coaches in the NFL.
Dilfer: I saw coaches that were using you as players and using games as resume-builders because all they cared about was themselves. You leave so much shrapnel in the building when you do that, so I would talk about this on TV globally. You have passion coaches and you have ambition coaches. You can be a great coach if you’re based in passion, and you will climb the ladder. You will be given other opportunities to make more money, coach better players, have a bigger platform, but it starts because you’re passionate for the people you’re trying to develop — not just your players but your assistant coaches and all the people in the building.
(Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Ravens)
Dilfer served as one of ESPN’s top NFL analysts from 2008-2017 and was a mainstay on “Monday Night Countdown.” He also joined Elite 11 to help develop young quarterbacks in 2011. But after his ESPN tenure, he took a step back and settled down with his wife, Cassandra, and three daughters.
Dilfer: I turned down management offers in the NFL, quarterback, coordinator jobs in the NFL, college head coaching jobs, and I retired. I got out of football. I was just kind of disgusted with the game of football and where it was going. I played golf 218 times in 2018. I was still getting paid by ESPN, so I was kind of living the American Dream. But I would wake up each morning and the hairs on my arms wouldn’t be standing up. I wasn’t tingly. My wife and my kids were like, “You’re not the same, Dad.” I made a conscious decision that I wanted to go climb the mountain. I didn’t know it was going to be coaching, but I was going to take on a great challenge in life that was going to wake me up every morning, get me excited about living and have people tell me I can’t do it so I could fight against that.
Dilfer was named the head football coach at Lipscomb Academy in Nashville in January 2019. The program was in rough shape when he took over, but the Mustangs finished the 2022 season as the consensus top-rated team in Tennessee.
Dilfer: They had 38 kids in the building total and six were lifting with a PVC pipe [when I took the job]. They didn’t have hair on their body, and they were running out of bounds not to tackle kids. They had nine seniors on Senior Night the year before that chose not to play, and not one senior was hurt. They just quit. That’s what I walked into. I cried. You can ask a guy named Trenton Kirklin, who’s now an analyst at Vanderbilt and was my first OC. I cried the first time I watched them play football. I cried. I looked at him and said, “We’re never going to get a first down, ever, in our whole career. We’re not going to get one first down.” And we turned that into the 10th-ranked team in the country in four years, the most dominant defense probably in the history of high school football. We were really good. We were dominant. We had a running clock in almost every game we played at the end of the first half. We did that in four years. We got to the mountaintop.
Dilfer said he was recently talking to his wife while they were watching a Tuesday night MAC game when the topic of his future came up.
Dilfer: I looked at her and I said, “You know what, I don’t want to [coach college football]. I love what we’re doing here. We’re changing kids’ lives. We’ve got great friends. We love this city. I’ve got a grandkid here that lives in the city with my daughter and son-in-law and they’re seven minutes away.” I’m like, “We’re living it great.” And she goes, “That’s exactly why you did this, was not to get comfortable.” She goes, “You were made for more than this, and you are your best when you’re uncomfortable, when it’s hard, when it’s building, when it’s trying to get everybody pulling everybody in a new direction, when you’re battling battles.” That’s what wakes you up and gets you going. She goes, “I’m in. We’re empty-nesters. We’ll figure out the grandkid thing. If you want to go do something bigger, go do it.”
Dilfer began talking to athletic directors and school presidents about some possibilities. One of those athletic directors was UAB’s Mark Ingram, who had a lot on his mind in the months prior to his first discussion with Dilfer. Bill Clark, who posted a 49-26 mark in six seasons as the head man at UAB, stepped down from his position in June. Offensive coordinator Bryant Vincent served as the interim head coach for the 2022 season, leading the Blazers to a 7-6 record and Bahamas Bowl win. UAB and Dilfer turned out to be the perfect match.
Dilfer: I had three things that I was looking for if I ever went to the next level. I had a president that cares about excellence and all he thinks about is, “How do we make this institution excellent at every level?” You’ve got to have that. You have to have an AD that understands the impact of football — not the importance. It’s not more important than anything. It’s really not. Listen, I have three daughters that are Division I volleyball players. I don’t want football to be more important than their volleyball programs, but the fact of the matter is it’s more impactful. It impacts an institution more than anything else, in the Southeast especially. It impacts a city if done right for positive [reasons] — for unification, for morale. And then you’ve got to have a donor base, and this was a key one. There are a lot of donor bases that talk a big game, but they haven’t actually shown that they’re invested. This donor base I would argue is as invested as anyone. They brought football back. They built these incredible facilities. They’ve invested in football and what it can do for your institution and your city, so it checked all those boxes. And I was like, “Well, I guess this is the direction I’m going,” because it’s uncomfortable — that’s where I’m at my best — [and] it checks all the boxes that I want to check, and I’m young enough — 50 years old, although I look 70 — and I’ve still got juice now.
For more from Dilfer, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of UAB Athletics