Ryder Burton Has the Swagger. Now He Needs the Stage.

Ryder Burton’s dad was in Detroit when the call came.

It was a Thursday night in mid-October 2025, and Burton had spent the week taking every first-team rep at quarterback for UAB. Jalen Kitna was still banged up. The coaches hadn’t said anything official yet, but Burton could feel it. He called home.

“Pops, if you can, I’d get on a plane.”

Brad Burton checked flights. Detroit to Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville — nothing under $2,200. So he got in a rental car and drove. Twelve, thirteen hours. Pulled into his son’s apartment at 3 a.m., blew up an air mattress and slept. Mom got on a flight Friday and made it just before Ryder had to go to bed for the game.

The next night, in his first career start, Ryder Burton completed 20 of 27 passes for 251 yards and three touchdowns. UAB 31, No. 22 Memphis 24. The Blazers’ biggest win since upsetting No. 13 BYU in the 2021 Independence Bowl — Bill Clark’s final game as head coach — delivered in the first game after Trent Dilfer’s firing, by a quarterback who had thrown one pass at the college level heading into the afternoon.

“I’m excited,” Burton told AL.com’s Tony Tsoukalas afterward. “I’ve been at three schools in three years. It’s tough when you’re not playing the game you love. But I prepared like I was the starter for three years, and I think tonight showed dividends of that.”

He was named to the Davey O’Brien Award Great 8. He won the Manning Award Quarterback of the Week. His phone didn’t stop ringing.

“There are some very busy previous people I played for and they found time to text me,” Burton said on the All-American podcast a few days later. “And I’m like, I know you’re getting ready for a big time opponent this week, so I didn’t think necessarily that they would catch that I played.”

That was October. This is May. And if you saw Ryder Burton walking across campus, you wouldn’t peg him for a starting quarterback in the American Athletic Conference. He’s 6-2, 200 pounds — not an NFL prototype. He’s got a mullet and wears a flatbill hat that looks like he’d be comfortable strumming a guitar in a Nashville honky tonk. He could just as easily pass for the best damn intramural quarterback you’ve ever seen.

Then you watch the Memphis film. Then you watch him throw darts on the run. Then you watch him step into a huddle full of new faces and command a room that nobody outside the building thinks can win — and you realize the thing that makes Ryder Burton worth watching in 2026 isn’t the stat line from one upset. It’s the way he carries himself. A confidence that borders on swagger, grounded in preparation, and contagious enough that the people around him have started to believe it, too.

Three Schools, One Constant

Burton is originally from Georgia. His family moved to Utah, where he became the starter at Springville High School and put up more than 4,200 yards and 48 touchdowns over his junior and senior seasons. He earned Region 9 Offensive MVP honors, all-region first-team recognition and led Springville to the Utah 5A state championship game as a junior. He was a three-star recruit, the No. 14 prospect in the state.

He signed with BYU as a mid-year enrollee in 2023 and redshirted. Then he transferred to West Virginia, where he sat behind Garrett Greene and Nicco Marchiol for a full season without seeing the field.

The time at WVU wasn’t wasted. Greene became something like family.

“Garrett Greene’s kind of the older brother that I never had,” Burton said on the Inferno podcast last November. “Garrett Greene was really the guy that hit that home for me. Like, listen, we’re competing, but at the end of the day, we’re brothers, too.”

When Neal Brown was fired at WVU and Rich Rodriguez was hired, Burton entered the transfer portal. It wasn’t personal.

“I don’t think I’d have ever left West Virginia if Coach Brown didn’t get fired,” Burton said. “I really loved it. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but Morgantown was a special place to me, man. It felt a lot like how Springville High School felt for me in terms of like small town. All anybody cares about is how football goes. And I kind of lived for that.”

Rodriguez’s offense asked quarterbacks to run 15 to 20 times a game. That wasn’t Burton’s game. So he left — and when UAB called, he did his homework.

“I had my QB trainer that I work with call Bryce Young and ask Bryce like, ‘What did you think of Alex Mortensen?’” Burton said. “When a Heisman Trophy winner says he’s one of my favorite coaches I’ve ever worked with, you should probably listen.”

He was all in.

The Coach

Alex Mortensen spent nine years as an assistant under Nick Saban at Alabama before joining UAB’s staff as offensive coordinator. When Dilfer was fired six games into the 2025 season, Mortensen was named interim head coach. He called the plays for the Memphis game. He became the permanent head coach shortly after.

Burton’s loyalty to him is absolute and specific. It’s not just that Mortensen gave him a chance. It’s that the system fits — a scheme that lets the quarterback move in the pocket, leans on the run game and then lets the passer work.

“I’m just super grateful for Coach Mort,” Burton told Break The Huddle this spring. “He’s really made the game a lot slower and simpler for me.”

On the Inferno podcast last November, he went further: “10,000%. Coach Mortensen’s my guy. I am the biggest believer in what that man can do as a head coach, as an offensive coordinator, as a quarterback coach. And I’ve said multiple times, wherever that man is next fall is where I’ll be.”

And when the losses piled up last season — UAB finished 4-8, 2-6 in the American — Burton took the weight off his coach and put it on himself.

“There’s a lot of people that are going to have some scrutiny for him,” Burton said. “It’s not Coach Mort, it’s me. Coach Mort will always build in the answers for me to be successful. And so when we’re not on offense, you can point the finger at everybody, but you can point the finger at me because he’s going to give me the opportunities to be successful.”

That’s not coach-speak from a veteran. That’s a redshirt sophomore, three schools deep, defending a first-year head coach on a podcast in November. Mortensen coaches him harder than anyone else on the roster, and Burton wants it that way.

“Even though me and Mort have a definitely a special relationship, that doesn’t mean that I get coached any easier or any less than anybody else,” Burton said. “In fact, I would say he coaches me harder. He expects a lot and deservedly so with the amount of time he’s spent with me. And you know, I hope that just continues because the man’s knowledge of the game is otherworldly.”

The Memphis Tape

The Memphis game deserves a second look — not because of the score, but because of what it revealed about Burton as a player.

UAB’s defense had given up touchdowns on all six opponent opening drives entering the game. Memphis’ run defense ranked No. 14 nationally, allowing 88 yards per game on the ground. The Blazers were three-game losers with an interim coach making his debut.

Burton completed his first five passes and led UAB to a touchdown on the opening drive. He finished 9 of 11 on third-down throws for 116 yards and a touchdown. He connected with Iverson Hooks 11 times for 172 yards and three touchdowns — all career highs for Hooks, who caught every ball thrown his way.

“Get the ball to Zero. It’s that simple,” Burton said of Hooks, referencing his jersey number. “The guy’s electric, man. The quickness, the twitchiness, and also, he wants the ball. What kind of receiver am I going to want that doesn’t want the ball?”

The preparation mattered. Burton had studied Memphis’ defense the previous year at WVU, when Greene played them in a bowl game. Greene gave Burton 12 pages of notes.

“West Virginia pays out,” Burton said. “I watched how Garrett prepared for him. We played him in the bowl game. So, it was my second time preparing for this defense. And it also always helps when you have a guy that’s played five years of college football help you get ready for a defense.”

But the preparation only explains the competence. The swagger was something else. Burton controlled the tempo, milking the play clock down seven or eight seconds before the snap, daring Memphis’ defensive coordinator to adjust.

“Against Memphis, we played on my timing,” he said. “We were down seven, eight seconds on the play clock and it was cuz I want to play chess. Let’s see if the DC can out-chess me and out-chess Coach Mort and they couldn’t.”

UAB outgained Memphis 470-362. They ran for 219 yards on 41 attempts against the nation’s 14th-ranked run defense. Solomon Beebe broke the program’s rushing touchdown record with an 81-yard score. It was a team win — but Burton was the engine.

After the game, he was walking up and down the sideline dapping up defensive players.

“I was like, ‘Bro, this is who I remember from fall camp. This is the defense that I was playing every day because they gave us some fits in fall camp,’” he said. “I was just extremely grateful for those guys.”

“Broken Clocks Right Twice a Day”

Burton knows what the outside world sees. A 4-8 team. A quarterback with two starts and 708 passing yards in nine appearances. A program picked near the bottom of the American Athletic Conference.

He doesn’t care — and he isn’t naive about it, either.

“Last year was last year,” Burton told Break The Huddle this spring. “I played great against Memphis, but even broken clocks are right twice a day. So, it’s about proving that I can go out and do it every single game now.”

That’s the line that tells you everything. He’s confident, not delusional. He knows that one game against Memphis doesn’t make a career. He knows the 4-8 record follows him into the fall. And he knows the only way to answer the skeptics is to do it again. And again.

“I really can’t stand when people just look at stats,” Burton said on the Inferno podcast. “Stats don’t tell the full story.”

He’s right. They don’t tell you that Burton controlled the play clock against a top-25 defense like a 10-year starter. They don’t tell you he studied a game he wasn’t even supposed to play in. They don’t tell you his dad drove through the night from Detroit on a hunch.

And they won’t tell you what this spring looked like — Burton running the offense with a new receiving corps, demanding energy at practice, grading himself a B+ on the spring’s first padded day because a protection call went wrong.

“I take practice really seriously,” he said. “I think that there’s a certain energy that needs to come to practice and I promise you I will enforce it.”

New Pieces, Same Energy

UAB lost almost everything at receiver. Hooks transferred to Oregon. Brandon Hawkins Jr. exhausted his eligibility. Corri Milliner left for North Texas. The Blazers return just 7 percent of last season’s receiving production.

Burton spent the offseason recruiting. His top target was already in the building.

Kaleb Brown, a former top-100 recruit who transferred from Iowa before the 2025 season, had the No. 5 jersey — Burton’s number since high school, the one his father wore as No. 55, the number that runs in the family of five kids.

“I told KB I’d give him $500 for it,” Burton told Tsoukalas this spring. “He said, ‘QB, you ain’t got to pay me nothing.’ He was gracious enough to let me have it, but I’m very grateful.”

Brown switched to No. 8. Burton got his number back. More importantly, he got Brown to stay.

“I was recruiting the crap out of him,” Burton said. “I definitely was all over Kaleb.”

Burton describes his new weapons the way a quarterback should — specifically, with clear eyes about what each one does.

“CJ is that overall red zone threat and deep ball threat everybody dreams of,” he said on Break The Huddle, referring to CJ Smith, a transfer from Memphis. “KJ’s got elite explosiveness. Just really, really talented with the ball in his hands,” he said of KJ Daniels, who came from Oklahoma. “And then EJ is very, very smooth. He’s always in the right place at the right time,” he said of EJ Reid, a Wake Forest transfer.

Then there’s Roderick Robinson II, the running back who transferred from Georgia.

“I told my mom, I’m like, I’m going to look so skinny in the backfield all year in all the backfield pictures cuz the guy’s just built like a tank,” Burton said. “It makes my life a whole lot easier though. When teams have to get out of two high shells and put one down in the box and we can throw versus middle closed coverages, it makes my life so much easier.”

Adam Lepkowski, the walk-on center who earned a scholarship and is now in his sixth year, anchors the offensive line. Cooper Young, a fellow former Mountaineer who followed Burton to UAB this offseason, is healthy again after an early spring injury. The pieces are new. The confidence binding them is not.

Why Not Us?

Spend a few minutes listening to Ryder Burton and you start to understand why his teammates respond to him. He’s not performing confidence. He’s operating from it. It’s in the way he talks about controlling the play clock — “I want to play chess” — and the way he acknowledges what he still needs to fix. It’s in the way he defended his first-year coach on a podcast when the record was 4-8 and it would have been easy to hedge.

“10,000% I’m going to have the utmost confidence that I can play and beat anybody in the country,” Burton said. “That’s just the type of competitor I am.”

UAB will be picked near the bottom of the American in 2026. Burton probably won’t rank high on any preseason quarterback lists. But the Memphis film is sitting right there for anyone willing to look. A quarterback with the swagger of a starter and the self-awareness to call himself a broken clock. A new cast of portal talent assembled around him. A coach he’d follow anywhere.

“Why not us?” Burton said after the Memphis win. “Why not me? I really carry that with me everywhere I go. That you can line me up against anybody. And at the end of the day, that guy’s going to say he, yeah, he tied his shoes up. Like, I’m going to bring it.”

He wants to pack Protective Stadium this fall. He’s begging for it.

“Let’s pack out Protective, please. I beg,” Burton said this spring. “That’d be my biggest thing. I’m a sucker for crowd environment. I really am. I think it’s one of the biggest advantages you can hold at home. And I know that people from this area, they love football.”

They do. And if Burton plays in the fall the way he carried himself this spring — vocal, demanding, prepared and absolutely certain he belongs — some of those fans might just start believing what the people inside the building already know.

The broken clock wasn’t broken. It was just waiting for its time.