“It is hard to continue to win,” Holtz said after the Stallions did just that on Sunday. “You put a target on your chest,
and everybody shoots for you and everybody’s circling that game and you are going to get everybody’s best effort.
But as I have told the team, the only thing better than playing against the Stallions is having the opportunity to
play for them and the pride that they take knowing that everybody’s going to take their best shot at us.
“There are stages of a championship that you have to go through as a football team. You have to learn how to compete,
then you learn how to win, then you have to learn how to handle winning,
and that is probably one of the hardest steps to take. But the championship culture really takes off when you learn
how to handle winning and your players take over the culture, and that is the buy-in factor in having leadership like the
guys (quarterback Adrian Martinez and linebacker Kyahva Tezino) on this stage right here, so many guys on this team,
that’s when for me I have the opportunity to be the duck that floats on top of the water and there’s a whole lot
of people with their feet that are pedaling like hell underneath to make this thing go.”