Five takeaways from UWF's historic first Division I win
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As UWF football head coach Kaleb Nobles slid into the Argos postgame press conference, he decided to turn the table on the media members.
“So what do y’all want to talk about?” Nobles sarcastically quipped.
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He already knew the answer.
Ten years after Nobles was the starting quarterback in the Argos inaugural football season, he led the program to another historic first. UWF started its NCAA Division I era with a 34-31 win over No. 16 Southern Illinois in front of a PenAir Field record crowd of 6,124.
“I think outside a lot of people we’re counting us out,” Nobles said. “I can tell you in our locker room we don’t think like that. Our job is to play great football and do things right off the field and our guys did that tonight.
Here are five takeaways from the win.
The standard remains the same
Entering the night as 20.5 point underdogs, Nobles knew there were people who as he put it expected his team to “start off DI fun and in a good way.”
But the Argos have never been wired like that. A program that went 81-30 in 10 years in Division II, advanced to the national championship in its second season before winning it all in its fourth season, isn’t at this level just to have fun.
Division II found out quickly that UWF expects to win and compete on every play. Southern Illinois was the first Division I team to find that out Thursday night.
“We’re fighters, we’re scrappers,” Nobles said. “We haven’t even played football 10 years. We’re supposed to win, supposed to show up and give our best. That’s what the message was to our guys throughout the week and the last couple weeks. Our guys showed the fight and the heart they had tonight.”
UWF plays “hard-nosed” game
Leading into the season opener, the Argos had one main goal. To make the Salukis play a hard-nosed game.
They thought that if they could make it a physical slugfest, all the tough practices in the morning and the northwest Florida humidity would make a difference.
UWF accomplished that goal for much of Thursday night. The Argos ran for 226 yards, including 88 from Ty’ray Davis in his first collegiate start and 71 from last year’s leading rusher, TJ Lane.
On defense, UWF flew to the ball and never seemed to get tired, even when the Argos offense struggled to sustain drives late in the third and throughout the fourth quarter.
As Southern Illinois trimmed a 27-9 lead to 27-24 in the fourth quarter, both sides of the ball continued to make plays.
First, it was Eli Webb recovering a fumble with 6:22 left. Then the offense capped off a six-play drive with Luc Carroll’s 22-yard catch and run for a touchdown and 34-24 lead with 4:45 left, redeeming itself after two second half fumbles led to Salukis touchdowns. Then when SIU tried to put together a game-winning drive, they only got one first down before a David Law-Mortimer interception ended the game.
“That was a tough hard-nosed game,” Nobles said. “And that’s how you got to prepare for those games right there.”
Defense shines in first half, makes big plays when needed in second half
The final stats don’t tell the whole story of UWF’s defensive performance.
The Argos may have given up some size to Southern Illinois up front, but matched their speed at the line of scrimmage and made life tough for both Salukis quarterbacks.
Senior DJ Williams, a preseason All-American, left the game in the second quarter and didn’t return. He completed three of eight passes for 19 yards and ran for 46 yards, mostly on scrambles.
His backup, Jake Curry, completed just 14 of 30 passes for 168 yards, two touchdowns, three interceptions and ran for 21 yards and a touchdown. His second interception was returned for a 44-yard touchdown by A’khoury Lyde and his third to Law-Mortimer sealed the win.
It all started with trying to make the Salukis one-dimensional, according to redshirt senior defensive lineman Byron Puryear.
“Stop DJ Williams, stop the run and then have fun,” Puryear said. “Once we get him one-dimensional we can do our thing but we have to stop the run first. That’s the goal every game.
UWF played sound, physical defense for much of the first three quarters before tiring late under the Salukis up-tempo offense. Before the game turned into a mad dash to the finish line, the Argos limited SIU to three first half field goals.
They eventually allowed 403 yards, including 216 on the ground. But the Argos still forced two of their four turnovers in the final frame and held SIU to just seven of 18 on third down.
Davis gets the nod at QB
Davis took the road less traveled to the Argos starting quarterback job.
The redshirt sophomore waited his turn under Marcus Stokes, who is now the starting QB at Memphis, instead of transferring to another school to play. Three of UWF’s six quarterbacks on their roster previously played on Division I teams.
But Davis showed what he could do Thursday night as a dual threat. He completed seven of 17 passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 88 yards and a touchdown.
With under two minutes left in the first quarter, Davis took a designed run around the right side and ran up field for a 45-yard touchdown, the program’s first in Division I. He was just as comfortable making plays as putting his receivers in position to make them too. Both of his touchdown passes were quick hitters where the receiver made a play to get to the end zone.
The Argos look to have plenty of weapons, with Davis as the conductor.
“I feel like the offense around me helps me,” Davis said. “And it also makes it easier for me to do my job. I didn’t have to do too much. Just dish it out to our special guys and let them make plays.”
On to the next
When asked what statement his team made to the rest of the FCS, Nobles didn’t take the bait.
Instead he emphasized worrying about whether his team was locked what’s next, which is a road trip to Central Arkansas for the program’s United Athletc Conference opener. The Bears finished 3-9 in 2025 and opened 2026 with a 36-24 win over No. 22 Tennessee-Martin on Aug. 25.
A Thursday game gives the Argos a bit more time to recover and revel in this moment, with Nobles saying the typical 24-hour rule for celebrating victories may turn into the 48-hour rule.
UWF will lift Friday morning but will be off Saturday. By the time Sunday comes, this history-making win will be in the rearview mirror.
“On to the next one,” Nobles said. “Just worry about us. We ain’t worried about anybody else.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Five takeaways from UWF's historic first Division I win