The 2026 UFL season kicks off in just a week! The DC Defenders are looking to repeat as the UFL Champion. Their journey to winning a second UFL Championship starts with the 2025 UFL Championship Game MVP Jordan Ta’amu. I had the pleasure of asking some questions to Ta’amu about his upcoming season during yesterday’s UFL media outing.
Ta’amu highlights the return of the 2025 coaching staff
Last year the DC Defenders had some bad luck with coaches. They saw head coach Reggie Barlow leave for Tennessee State University a week before the 2025 UFL kicked off. Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams would then follow Barlow during week 3 of the season. While the team was still able to win the title last year, I felt compelled to ask Ta’amu his thoughts on having no coaching drama this offseason and he was very relieved about it.
“It made it a lot easier a lot easier transition for sure and I was so happy that coach Shannon (Harris) got hired back as head coach and I knew he was bringing Fred Kaiss and Blake Williams. – Just having that familiarization and also just having them back to run it back again was a blessing – and being able to build off what we had last year.”
Thoughts on previous players returning to the team
Seeing the ‘big three’ of the coaching staff return was a blessing for Ta’amu. Many people have assumed that it was a blessing for most of the team as well. Throughout the offseason process it has always looked like the Defenders were going to bring back the most number of players from last season of any team. I asked Ta’amu if this hunch the community had was true.
“Oh yeah, it was a huge thing we built a culture and built a family that’s so hard to break and guys wanted to come back to play for Shannon (Harris) and play for the DC Defenders, especially with the season that we had last year we wanted to bring back all the guys but unfortunately we couldn’t just – cause of the draft and how all that was – kind of portrayed out, but at the end of the day I’m just happy that we got most of our guys back – for this year.”
Who are you looking forward to playing this season?
This is great news for Defenders fans as this shows how close the team is together. The talk of losing some players to the draft is an important Ta’amu brough up. Arguably the two biggest names the Defenders lost through the draft process were WR Chris Rowland and LB Anthony Hines III who were both All-UFL team members last year. The talk of why players returned to the team led me to asking Ta’amu who he is most looking forward to playing this season.
“I mean, I like all the teams. I’m excited to play Birmingham. I think that will be a good matchup you know, against quarterback Matt Corral and then against – their head coach (AJ McCarron) – I want to play him as a coach so that’d be cool – you know battling him on the field and then now as a coach I think that will be a fun game.”
The DC doorman
Ta’amu looking forward to playing against coach AJ is not too surprising given their history. McCarron was essentially Ta’amu’s replacement in St. Louis as Ta’amu was their QB in 2020 but was on the Defenders in 2023. The two would both be starting QBs for their teams in 2023 and 2024 where we truly saw the rise of the DC vs STL rivalry. Since he said that he was most looking forward to playing the Stallions, I would respond to his answer by bringing up last year and the ‘DC Doormen’ incident between the two teams last year.
“That was a good start off gift, it fired up our players for sure. – Coach Harris got us going there.”
Goals for this season
That incident last year was one of the more memorable moments of the 2025 UFL season. In many ways that incident helped propel the team to become the 2025 UFL Champions. With that being said, I had to ask what goals Ta’amu has for this season.
“I wrote down three main goals – for myself is to win Offensive Player of the Year, win MVP, and then win that championship back-to-back. I mean why not us? You know we worked hard to get to where we are, and we have that advantage this year, so we got to take full advantage of every situation that we get. – My goal going into this year to is to also clean up the mistakes we had last year and to make this year even more better.”
Ta’amu’s goals are lofty, but definitely achievable. Last year we saw Michigan Panthers QB Bryce Perkins win nearly pull those goals off. Perkins won both the 2025 OPOY and MVP awards but lost the championship to Ta’amu. We will see if DC can use their advantages to win a second straight title starting next Friday.
With Perkins currently not in the league, the title of top QB is Ta’amu’s to lose. Ta’amu is building a case to be the best spring QB of the modern era. I would thank Ta’amu and the UFL for setting up this media availability.
