Back When: The legend of Joe Webb

Joe Webb was not on the roster, not on the coaching staff, did not have a title or a headset or a reason to be standing where he was standing. But there he was — credential swinging from his neck, dreads and a green shirt, planted on the sideline at Protective Stadium as UAB lined up against No. 22 Memphis in the 2025 Battle for the Bones.

When the Blazers scored, Webb's head snapped back and his arms went wide and he screamed like a man who just threw the touchdown himself. Players in helmets celebrated around him. Webb looked like he might rush the field. He had done it before.

Sixteen years earlier, on a Saturday at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Joe Webb did something the Tigers couldn't stop and the cameras couldn't forget.

UAB came in at 4-5, desperate for a win that would keep bowl hopes alive for the first time since 2004. Memphis had held the Battle for the Bones trophy for two straight years. The Tigers were 2-7, playing out the final home game for Tommy West, their lame-duck head coach in his ninth season. They were bad, but they were emotional, and they had a plan.

Memphis loaded the box, rushed safeties and linebackers and dared the senior quarterback — the same man who'd rushed for more than 120 yards in each of his previous five games — to beat them through the air.

Webb went 18-of-25 for 378 yards, a career high, with three touchdown passes. He threw scoring strikes of 26 and 12 yards to Frantrell Forrest and 77 yards to Nick Adams, whose reception was his first official touchdown as a Blazer after two previous scores had been wiped out by penalties.

"They were stacking the box a lot and rushing the safeties and linebackers," Webb told the Birmingham News. "They were underestimating our throwing ability."

"He's a good player," West told the Commercial Appeal. "He's got that breakaway speed. The kid's 6-5, 230, and can run like a deer."

The moment everyone remembers didn't come through the air. Early in the first quarter, Webb took off on a 15-yard touchdown run and somewhere between the line of scrimmage and the end zone, he ran clean out of both shoes.

The Birmingham News ran the photo the next morning: Joe Webb, stocking feet, ball in hand, crossing the goal line. The caption: "UAB quarterback Joe Webb runs out of his shoes en route to the end zone for a first-quarter touchdown against Memphis on Saturday."

The image became the shorthand for what Joe Webb was — a quarterback running so hard he left his shoes on the turf, at a program most of the country had never heard of, in a rivalry that mattered to the people who were there.

UAB won 31-21. Webb finished with a season-low 52 rushing yards on 21 carries, and it didn't matter. The defense forced two fumbles inside the UAB 3-yard line — Brandon Carlisle stripping Carlos Singleton to preserve a 21-7 halftime lead, Marquis Coleman prying the ball loose from Duke Calhoun inches short of a Memphis touchdown in the third quarter. Bryant Turner recorded both of UAB's sacks.

In the visiting locker room, the 100-pound bronzed rack of ribs sat in the middle of the celebration. Players lined up to take pictures with it. Tried to lift it. Struggled.

"It's good to see it again and to hold it again," Webb told the Birmingham News. "For us to get it my senior year is a great feeling. I couldn't hug it too much because it's too heavy. I tried to pass it over to the linemen so they could hug it."

Coach Neil Callaway watched his players and kept it simple.

"It's great to have it back," Callaway told the Birmingham News. "The players enjoy it, and they're in the locker room taking pictures with it and trying to pick it up."

Before Webb was a quarterback, he was a receiver. In 2007, he started nine games at wide receiver while a guy named Sam Hunt — yes, that Sam Hunt, the future platinum-selling country artist — played quarterback. Webb caught 30 passes for 459 yards and three touchdowns that year, including a six-catch, 98-yard, one-touchdown performance against Michigan State and a six-catch, 89-yard, one-touchdown game against Florida State the following week. Back to back, against Big Ten and ACC defenses, as a sophomore.

When Hunt's arm gave way to a guitar, Webb moved to quarterback full-time in 2008.

He passed for 2,367 yards and rushed for 1,021 that season — the first of back-to-back years with 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards. He and Nevada's Colin Kaepernick were the only NCAA quarterbacks to do it in consecutive seasons — and they did it at the same time.

In 2009, Webb outgained Kaepernick in both passing yards (2,299 to 2,052) and rushing yards (1,427 to 1,183). He accounted for 73 percent of UAB's total offense. He led the nation with 53 runs of 10 or more yards. He was named Conference USA Offensive Player of the Year — the first Blazer to earn the honor.

He was doing it at a program nobody was watching.

Webb wasn't invited to the NFL Combine. So he tested at UAB on March 11, 2010, in front of NFL scouts who left with numbers they couldn't explain. He ran a 4.43-second 40-yard dash. He posted a 42.5-inch vertical jump — higher than any wide receiver at the Combine that year. His broad jump of 11 feet, 5.5 inches beat the top Combine mark by five and a half inches. His 20-yard shuttle beat the top Combine time by a full tenth of a second. He put up 21 reps on the bench press, best among wide receivers at the Combine.

UAB Athletics ran one headline: "Off The Charts."

Then there was the video. Before the draft, at a training facility in Atlanta, someone filmed Webb clearing seven blocking bags stacked on top of each other. The gym erupted. The clip went viral. More people learned about Joe Webb from that video than from anything he'd done on a football field at UAB.

The Minnesota Vikings selected him in the sixth round, 199th overall. He was invited to the Senior Bowl as a wide receiver, where he caught a pass from Tim Tebow. But the Vikings saw him throwing in camp and changed their minds. Brad Childress "saw him throwing the ball around and he was like, 'Hey, wait a minute, man. This guy's pretty good. Let's give him a chance,'" as the Vikings' documentary later recounted.

The next 11 years played out in that space — too good at quarterback to move to receiver, too athletic at receiver to leave on the sideline.

Webb's NFL career spanned five teams and 11 seasons: the Vikings, Carolina Panthers, Buffalo Bills, Houston Texans and New York Giants. He started four games at quarterback. He converted to wide receiver. He became a core special teams player and kick returner. In 2015, he led Pro Bowl fan voting in the special teams category — a testament to the cult-like following he carried from Birmingham to the pros.

His most famous NFL moment came on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia in December 2010. A blizzard had postponed the Sunday night game — the NFL's first Tuesday game since 1946. Brett Favre was inactive with a concussion. His 297-game consecutive start streak had already ended two weeks earlier. Webb, the sixth-round rookie, got the call. The Vikings were 14.5-point underdogs against Michael Vick and the Eagles.

"My pipes don't bust under pressure, man," Webb said in the Vikings' documentary. "I rather be in a pressure situation than a comfortable situation."

Vikings 24, Eagles 14.

He returned a kick in Super Bowl 50 for the Panthers — the third UAB player to reach a Super Bowl, after Josh Evans and Dainon Sidney. During Super Bowl week, his old UAB teammates started texting.

"When I was at UAB, with my UAB brothers, we used to sit in the dorm room and watch the Super Bowl," Webb told Conference USA's website. "A lot of those guys texted me and said 'I remember when we used to watch it in the dorm room and now you're about to play in it.' Man, it feels good."

He held the NFL record for most tackles by a quarterback — 24, all on special teams. He was the kind of player teammates talked about the way they usually talk about stars.

"Very few teammates over my 11-year career had the pull that Joe did," one former teammate said in the Vikings' documentary, "in that way to where everybody wanted him to have that success."

Another put it more simply: "He's the antithesis. He's the guy who's like, 'What do you need?' Cuz I'll try and help any way I can. That's to me why a guy like him last so long."

"I just didn't know which direction to go," Webb said in the Vikings' documentary "The Joe Webb Energy." "I was seeking every day, man, what should I do? What's my next challenge? What's my next part of life? That was one of the toughest things that you ever go through in life. When you've done something for so long, I'm talking like 20 plus years and all of a sudden it stops. I need to figure out who I am as a person."

He tried boxing — his pro debut was a heavyweight bout against Ryan King of Huntsville at Bartow Arena, UAB's own building, in August 2023. Even doing something completely different, he ended up back in Birmingham, back at UAB. The boxing didn't last. Jackson-Olin High School, in his home community of Ensley, needed a head football coach. The Mustangs had burned through four coaches in four years and lost 16 of their last 18 games.

Webb walked in and found three kids at workouts.

"It's my job to change the way they look at coaches," Webb said in the documentary. "By me coming in and letting them know that, hey, I am here. I am committed. I'm committed to make this program right. I'm not going nowhere till that happens."

He hit the hallways. "Hey, you want to play football? Hey, you want to play football?" He turned three into 70.

"I took this job to make a difference in the area that I came from," Webb said in the documentary. "This area in Birmingham, we ranked number four in murder capital. We're number four. A lot of these kids, their situations at home, they are pretty much the adult. This is at 14, 15, 16 years old."

Frantrell Forrest — the same Forrest who caught seven passes for 129 yards and two touchdowns in the Memphis game — is on staff with Webb at Jackson-Olin. Same two men, same city, coaching kids from the same neighborhoods they came from.

"Coach Webb inspired me, keep pursuing my dreams," one Jackson-Olin player said in the documentary, "just knowing that somebody from where I'm from has did it before."

Webb has never been far from UAB.

"UAB is my heart," Webb said during Super Bowl week in 2016. "I've been part of UAB since I was a little kid."

He meant it literally. He grew up going to UAB football games in Birmingham, watching Dan Burks and Corey White and Roddy White and Darrell Hackney. Watson Brown recruited him. UAB gave him a shot. He never forgot it.

When the university shut down football after the 2014 season, Webb showed up for the Sons of UAB flag football games that kept the spirit alive. He was an active NFL player with the Panthers at the time, still trying to break through in his own career, and he was front and center in the fight to bring the program back. UAB football was where kids like him got a shot, and without it, they didn't have one.

In 2016, with the program still on hiatus, Webb threw a game-winning touchdown to Roddy White in a flag football game — the two biggest names the program had ever produced, and they couldn't stay away. Webb still shows up at basketball games against Memphis to lead cheers in the student section and talk trash to the Tigers. He still shows up at football games against Memphis to stand on the sideline and live every snap.

"Have you ever seen Joe frown?" someone asked in the Vikings' documentary.

Nobody could answer yes.

On a Saturday last fall, UAB upset No. 22 Memphis 31-24 in the Battle for the Bones. It was Ryder Burton's first career start at quarterback. He completed 20 of 27 passes for 251 yards and three touchdowns. Solomon Beebe broke a program record with an 81-yard rushing touchdown. UAB outgained Memphis 470 to 362.

After the game, in the UAB locker room, Joe Webb — green polo, gold chain, dreads — pulled Ryder Burton in for the handshake. Burton, still in his gray game jersey with a "B" cap on backwards, had just done what Webb used to do: beat Memphis.

Webb didn't need a microphone or a ceremony. He pulled Burton in for the handshake and blended back into the sideline.

"Wins and losses," Webb said in the documentary. "Just two columns. It's got a column for wins, a column for a loss. But where's your column for life? Do you win in life?"

He broke his wrist in the second snap against West End at Wenonah and played the rest of the game one-handed. He ran out of his shoes at the Liberty Bowl. He beat Michael Vick in a blizzard as a sixth-round rookie. He climbed into a boxing ring at Bartow Arena on the same campus where he once played quarterback. He walked into three kids at Jackson-Olin and built a program. He stood on the sideline at Protective Stadium and screamed for touchdowns that weren't his. Every chapter is a different version of the same answer.