Ramiz Ahmed of the Birmingham Stallions has been a kicker in professional football long enough that he understands the itinerant nature of the job for so many chasing their dreams

“When they called me, they said, ‘We’ve got you guaranteed for a week,’” Ahmed said. “And so I packed a bag for the rest of the season. It’s just something that you got to be prepared for. You never know what’s going to happen in the kicking game or in football in general, so I was prepared for whatever. If they wanted to send me home after a week, I could just check the bag on my way home again, so I’d rather be prepared for it then not prepared.”

It turns out, Ahmed is going to be with the Stallions for more than a week, starting with Birmingham’s game against the Houston Roughnecks at 6 p.m. CDT Saturday at Rice Stadium in Houston.

Ahmed joined the Stallions last week with regular kicker Chris Blewitt out with a leg injury.

Ahmed made a 46-yard field goal with four seconds to play to keep the Stallions unbeaten in the United Football League with a 20-18 victory over the D.C. Defenders on April 20 at Protective Stadium in Birmingham.

Ahmed also connected from 46 yards on the final snap of the second quarter to give Birmingham an 11-6 halftime lead, then added field goals of 32 and 27 yards in the second half as the Stallions stayed the UFL’s only undefeated team four weeks into the season and extended their winning streak to 11 games.

“A lot of great individual efforts,” Birmingham coach Skip Holtz said, “obviously, none more than our kicker, Ramiz, and the job that he was able to do, especially as a pretty much rent-a-kicker for the week. When you look at the way the rules are put together, Chris Blewitt had an injury, so you’re allowed to bring a kicker in for a week and then make a decision if you want to keep him or not.

“When we got back after the game, the significance of Blewitt’s injury to his quad, it’s going to be a substantial injury, it’s going to be a six- to eight-week injury, so we went ahead and made the transition to make him our permanent kicker. So he was kind of on trial this weekend, but I thought he did excellent.

“Let’s hope he can continue to kick that well as we go through the rest of the season.”

Unlike in the NFL, where Ahmed likely would have been brought in for a tryout with other kickers, the Stallions had to make their pick for a replacement kicker without working out any.

“They have to kind of get somebody in quick,” Ahmed said, “and so they got to be pretty sure about the guy, so they called me, which I’m very thankful for the opportunity. …

“It’s something that you just got to be ready for if you want to do this at the highest level, and that is something that I’d like to do and I know that I can do and I’d love to get back to and keep going. You just got to be ready for any situation that’s thrown in front of you.”

A Las Vegas native who kicked for Nevada in college, Ahmed was the Pittsburgh Maulers kicker in the USFL in 2022, which led him to the practice squad of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers later that year.

Ahmed handled the kickoffs in a 31-28 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Nov. 13, 2022, as a practice-squad elevation. He was supposed to give Mason Crosby a break again against the Minnesota Vikings on Jan. 1, 2023. But Ahmed suffered a groin strain during warmups, and he didn’t play during 2023.

Ahmed said he didn’t consider that he wouldn’t get another opportunity.

“I had just one focus in mind and that was to get healthy and get myself back kicking at the level I know I can kick at,” Ahmed said. “And so whether or not I get an opportunity or if my career’s done, I don’t know, unless I feel that I need to think about that, I just put it on the back-burner.”

Houston gave Birmingham its most recent loss – a 27-20 setback in the USFL on May 13, 2023, when the franchise was called the Gamblers. FOX will televise Saturday night’s game.

“The big aspect is we’re 4-0 and that we’ve come together with so many new faces and that we’ve jelled and we’ve found a way to win four games,” Holtz said. “It certainly hasn’t been perfect every game on offense and perfect every game on defense, but I do feel like we’re getting better. …

“The challenge that we have to keep going with is we have to keep getting better fundamentally and we have to keep improving. We cannot be result-oriented as far as wins and losses because as soon as you start feeling like, ‘Wow, we’re pretty good. Look at us, we’ve won four games’ – that was a two-point football game and the kick doesn’t go through and you lose. You’re that close.

“We’ve just got to keep getting better.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.