History and human interest stories oozed from the Superdome on Monday night.
Most of them were due to the Saints, who hosted the rival Falcons in “Domecoming,” a commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the facility’s reopening after Hurricane Katrina.
There was Steve Gleason and the rest of the 2006 team, the memories of the storm and everything the building and the city have come to represent.
Hawaii has some connections to the Superdome.
There was the 2008 Sugar Bowl.
And now, after Monday, there is Jeff Ulbrich.
University of Hawaii football fans revere him as a hero of one of the greatest turnarounds in college football history.
If NFL fans around the country didn’t know about him before Monday, they probably do now.
Ulbrich is Atlanta’s defensive coordinator, and defense is the biggest reason the Falcons have won their past two games. Even without both its young starting defensive standouts, Atlanta held New Orleans to 50 rushing yards in a 45-24 victory Monday. And the Falcons dominated against the Packers’ offense last week in a 35-14 win.
For Warriors fans, though, Ulbrich’s story goes back nearly 30 years.
He came to Hawaii on a recruiting trip in 1997 and met Cristina, his future wife. Two years later, he was the middle linebacker and defensive leader of one of the most storied teams in UH history.
The 1999 Warriors went 9-4 and won the WAC championship after going 0-12 the year before. Ulbrich had 169 tackles, still a Hawaii single-season record.
Many tend to remember that team for the debut of coach June Jones and the run-and-shoot offense. But early in the season, Ulbrich and the rest of the defense keyed low-scoring wins as the offense developed.
The 1999 season helped change how people viewed Hawaii football. Timmy Chang was still setting national high school records at Saint Louis, but he said it was that turnaround that led to him choosing to play at UH.
Ulbrich went on to the NFL, where he played 10 seasons with his hometown San Francisco 49ers. Then came coaching stops with Seattle, UCLA, Atlanta and the New York Jets, where he eventually became interim head coach.
As in any long career, there are good times and strange turns. There was the Jets job. There was the draft-day prank involving his son and Shedeur Sanders.
And then, tragedy.
Cristina, Ulbrich’s wife and mother of their three children, was 48 when she died of cancer in July. Condolences and fond remembrances came from just about every team Ulbrich had played or coached for.
There is no record of Ulbrich speaking publicly about his loss, but during Monday’s broadcast, sportscaster Joe Buck related that Ulbrich “seriously considered taking the entire year off” but returned to work, encouraged by how the Falcons organization, coaches and players rallied around him.
Ulbrich was retained after the head coaching change from Raheem Morris to Kevin Stefanski in January, at the suggestion of owner Arthur Blank. Ulbrich had also served as a Falcons assistant from 2015 to 2020.
“That guy is a huge part of what we got going right now,” linebacker Bralen Trice said of Ulbrich. “Without him, we’ve got nothing. He brings the heart, mind, fist. He lives by that and drives us to live by that.”
On Monday night, Ulbrich’s defense elevated his name back to near the top of potential future NFL head coaches.
When the Falcons talk about their defensive coordinator, it’s not about X’s and O’s. They talk about family. Linebacker Divine Deablo described him to the Associated Press as a big brother or father figure.
Deablo said it best after he hugged Ulbrich when the coach returned to training camp.
“Everybody just wants to play for ’Brich.’”
