In the waning moments of a 58-34 win over the Michigan Panthers in the United Football League championship on Saturday, DC Defenders linebacker Andre Mintze shared a moment with general manager Von Hutchins. The pair have spent the last three years together, since the team’s inception in the XFL, before it merged with the USFL to form the UFL last year.
“Thank you for letting me be a part of this,” Mintze told Hutchins at America’s Center in St. Louis in a video captured by Pro Football Newsroom. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
Mintze added by phone later: “Being a part of winning this championship has been full circle for me, along with a few of my teammates. We were on that team in 2023 that lost the XFL championship, and it has haunted us ever since. … To be able to make it back to the big game and win in spectacular fashion is a blessing.”
Ten years after helping Imhotep Charter become the first Public League school to win a state title, Philly natives Mintze and Yasir Durant were key players in the Defenders’ march to the title. Mintze was the team’s leader in sacks with 6½, while Durant, an offensive tackle, was one of seven Defenders named to the All-UFL team, recognizing the spring league’s best players.
“I think I had phenomenal season,” Durant said by phone. “[There’s] still definitely things that I can get better at, things I can improve. … As the season progressed, like as each game went on, I’ve gotten better and better and learned from my mistakes. The whole season was kind of just a learning process for me, and I was fortunate enough to earn All-UFL. But if it wasn’t for my teammates, my coaches, training staff, I wouldn’t be able to get that honor.”
Durant admitted that he didn’t always think football would be in his plans, and his path to playing in Division I briefly was delayed. He signed his national letter of intent to play at San Diego State out of high school because that was the first school “that believed in me,” he said.
“Being a young kid, I was a knucklehead and didn’t do well in school,” he said, which led him to attending Arizona Western Community College in Yuma for a semester before moving on to Missouri in 2017. He says Imhotep’s football coach then, Albie Crosby, “pushed me to be who I am today.”
“That semester that I was [at Arizona Western], was some of the best months of my life, just off of reflecting and sitting back and seeing all my friends and teammates at their colleges,” said Durant, 27. “It taught me patience. [It] lit a new fire under me.”
Mintze, who played six games for the NFL’s Denver Broncos in 2021, called Durant “the best tackle in the league,” and the tackle credits his teammate for pushing him to another level.
“That’s my dog, that’s my guy, my brother, and I feel like, jokingly, I can’t get rid of him for some reason,” Durant said with a laugh. “We always get to be with each other in some type of way. [In] high school, us competing on the same team with each other, going against each other every day, and then us going to college, and me [at Missouri] having to play [Vanderbilt] every year, and those battles and those competitions. And then, fast-forward to us being on the same UFL team.
“A big part of my success this year was going against him and practicing against him. … We want to see each other succeed. I want to see him be the best version of him that he can be, and he wants to see me be the best version of me.”
Added Mintze: “To go against him every single day of practice, I think it’s a blessing. It’s a privilege. And for that to just happen to be my brother and friend that I knew since I was about 16 years old, it’s like [a] cherry on top. I consider him extended family.”
Like Mintze in 2021, Durant went undrafted in 2020, and landed with the Kansas City Chiefs, who ended up losing in Super Bowl LV later that season. Durant started one game in Kansas City and one for the New England Patriots the following season. He spent time on the New Orleans Saints practice squad in 2022 and was cut from the Broncos in 2023 before eventually landing with the Defenders in the UFL last year.
But Durant’s 2-year-old daughter, Bella, and his fiancée, he says, have been his driving force to continue chasing his football dream. He wants his daughter “to be proud of the things that I’ve done” and to show he will “keep chasing my dreams, keep pushing, no matter how hard it gets or … how down I might get.
“I know that I’m a good player,” he added. “I know that I am one of the best. So I think that just my mindset keeps me going and keeps me motivated and keeps me keep wanting to keep giving this a shot. I know I belong in the NFL, and I’m just going to keep working to do that.”
