St. Louis coach Anthony Becht hopes to see a primarily Battlehawks blue audience at Protective Stadium on Saturday afternoon when his club visits Birmingham for a United Football League game against the Stallions.
What gave the coach the impression that this is even a remote possibility?
According to Stallions coach Skip Holtz, St. Louis boasts a quarterback “who is very familiar to people in Alabama.”
The quarterback is AJ McCarron, who led the Crimson Tide to BCS national championships in 2011 and 2012, before winning the Maxwell Award and finishing second in the Heisman Trophy race in 2013.
Becht does not restrict the Battlehawks’ appeal in Alabama to McCarron. Brandon Silvers, St. Louis’ backup quarterback, started four seasons at Troy. Both quarterbacks were Alabama prep stars, with McCarron attending St. Paul’s Episcopal in Mobile and Silvers at Gulf Shores.
“We’re asking them to buy as many tickets as possible and get as much blue in the stands as we can,” Becht said. “… We’re trying to amp it up and get as many AJ McCarron Alabama fans as we can on the other side of the stadium.”
McCarron agreed Saturday’s contest could be called a homecoming game.
“I guess just because it’s playing back in Bama for the first time,” McCarron said. “But it’s just another game. That’s all I want it to be.”
It’ll be McCarron’s first contest in Alabama since Nov. 30, 2013, when the Crimson Tide lost to Auburn 34-28 in the Kick Six Game. He’ll be playing in the Birmingham area for the first time since Nov. 16, 2007, when St. Paul’s Episcopal won 44-15 at Jess Lanier in Bessemer in a second-round game on the way to the AHSAA Class 5A championship.
McCarron is aware he’ll have friends and fans in the stands, but he’s tried to avoid the hoopla.
“I just know that a bunch of people are coming,” McCarron said. “I don’t know who. I don’t pay attention to it. It’s not my job. If anybody hits me up, they get ignored, to be honest with you. During the season, I don’t reach out. I try to limit who I talk to just so I can stay focused. I don’t have anything to do with tickets. It’s not my deal. …
“My biggest thing is I like having a schedule. I like keeping the same routine, keeping the same schedule, so it’s not going to be anything special. … I appreciate all the support and love, but I want to just stay to this normal routine and not do anything out of the ordinary.”
After playing at Alabama, McCarron joined the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. He also played with the Oakland Raiders and Houston Texans before sustaining a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during a preseason game with the Atlanta Falcons that put him on injured reserve for the entire 2021 season.
Out of football after the injury, McCarron got back on the field with the Battlehawks in the XFL revival in 2023. After leading the league in touchdown passes, McCarron returned to the NFL with the Bengals, but he still came back to St. Louis this spring.
“We selected AJ and recruited AJ for a reason last year,” Becht said. “We looked at over a hundred quarterbacks, and we really did our due diligence on what we wanted, what exactly is the key component to being successful. … Let’s get a quarterback that can really operate within the framework once the play comes in. Now you got the line of scrimmage, now your visuals, what you see, and then being able to get it out to the right guy on time. Quarterback-wise, no question: The true element of playing the position, there’s no one better than him at this point in this league in the last two years.”
