The Falcons weren’t going to bow down to anyone: Not on this stage. Not with these stakes. Not with where they came from.

North Central was 45-1 over its previous 46 games entering Sunday’s Division-III national championship game in Canton, Ohio. Wisconsin-River Falls coach Matt Walker surmised the bulk of those 45 games were won before a snap was played, as opponents melted at the mere site of the NC logo plastered to the side of the Cardinals’ helmets.

That’s not really the Falcons’ style.

Sunday was. In a battle of wills, it was North Central who eventually relented, with the dynastic Cardinals jarred loose from their typically steady stance atop the nation’s highest perch.

Wisconsin-River Falls coach Matt Walker receives a bath from his players at the end of the Falcons’ 24-14 win over North Central in the Division-III football national championship game in Canton, Ohio on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 (Courtesy of Josh Padilla)

After stumbling out of the gates, the Falcons out-scored North Central 21-0 over the game’s final 35 minutes en route to a 24-14 victory that secured the program’s first national title and completed a remarkable turnaround.

The night, Walker said, reflected the journey.

“It wasn’t going our way early. It wasn’t easy early,” he said, “and this group just sort of hung in there.”

Wisconsin-River Falls was born in the mud, in more ways than one. Prior to this season, the Falcons hadn’t been to the playoffs since the mid-1990s. They were 23-67 over Walker’s first nine seasons at the helm.

It wasn’t until the coach vowed to up his aggression to levels not previously seen in 2020 that Wisconsin-River Falls finally elevated itself out of a lethargic state of losing.

“I stopped caring what everyone thought. We were just going to do it our way,” Walker said. “It’s an easy thing to say. It’s a cool thing to say. It gets clicks and it’s trendy and awesome, but a lot of people still get conservative, and you do think about what other people think, what other coaches think and what dads will think. I finally said, ‘I just do not care.’”

Walker got bold. He moved his offensive coordinator Jake Wissing to defensive coordinator, a side of the ball completely new to him. Joe Matheson, who was just 28 years old at the start of the 2021 campaign, was elevated to offensive coordinator.

The Falcons would deploy the fastest offense in football, which snapped the ball at a rate not approached by any other team in the nation. They’d go for it on fourth down as frequently as possible.

Ever since then, it’s been full go for the Falcons – 100 miles per hour, right at the throats of their opponents, through success and failure. He doubled down in the middle of the 2025 season.

After Wisconsin-River Falls dropped its WIAC opener – a 21-17 loss to Wisconsin-Oshkosh in early October – the head coach reiterated aggression. All week, he vowed that on the Falcons’ first play from scrimmage the following game against Wisconsin-Platteville, they would “throw it as far as we can to Blake Rohrer.”

It resulted in an 80-yard touchdown pass.

“We were off and running from that point,” Walker said.

Win or lose, you would play their brand of football.

There would be no compromise on the approach, not even under the brightest lights of a nationally-televised title tilt.

You won’t knock out a heavyweight from a flat-footed posture.

Walker’s mantra leading into Sunday’s affair against the best team in the country was the Falcons would be “unapologetically aggressive in all phases of the game.”

“Whether we got beat 100-0, or won the football game,” he said. “It looked foolish at times, but we never wavered from that approach. We were aggressive as heck. And even when we didn’t convert it a lot in some of the aggressive plays, we stayed true to that plan.”

Indeed, the Falcons went 0 for 3 on fourth down attempts on Sunday, all of which came inside the North Central red zone.

Wisconsin-River Falls had the ball at the North Central 18-yard line with a 10-point advantage and fewer than four minutes to play. Rather than drain clock, the Falcons went pass, pass, pass, with three straight incompletions resulting in a turnover on downs.

The play calls drew criticism from the broadcast.

But the results didn’t matter. The consistent message did – circumstance would not dictate decisions. The Falcons were in all-out attack mode from start to finish.

“We told the guys today … we were never going to flinch,” Walker said. “If we miss a pressure and they score – don’t care, no flinching. If you miss the first 15 throws of the game – don’t care, no flinch. If we do the fake punt, fake field goal we had cooked up and didn’t use today and don’t get it – don’t care, weren’t going to flinch.”

It was clear, from the second quarter on, that Wisconsin-River Falls would be the aggressor who dictated the game’s terms. And fortune usually favors the bold.

“That’s the best football team we played, but they still were uncomfortable,” Walker said, “because no one plays them like that.”

On either side of the ball.

Donovan McNeal housed a 48-yard run on the fourth play from scrimmage to give North Central an early 7-0 lead. Cardinals quarterback Garret Wilson was perfect through the air for much of the first half.

A pair of turnovers – a fumble recovery by Gage Timm and an interception on the final play of the half by safety Taylor Sussner – inside the Falcons’ 10 yard line were required to keep Wisconsin-River Falls within four at the break against an offense that was moving the ball fluidly.

But the script was flipped over the final two frames, as Wissing ramped up the pressure via heavy-blitz packages that knocked North Central entirely out of its offensive rhythm.

“We were bringing a little more exotic pressures late, some more internal pressures with (Gage), and he was walking up to the edge,” Walker said. “We were trying it all, because we weren’t early in the football game, and we went fully into the rolodex in the second half.”

Unapologetic aggression.

The play of the game came early in the fourth quarter, with the Falcons leading by three and North Central possessing the ball at its own 37 yard line. Wilson dropped back to pass, but his attempt was knocked out of the sky by defensive lineman Jack Olson, who corralled the loose ball for an interception he returned to the Cardinals’ 12 yard line.

While Wisconsin-River Falls’ record-breaking offense captured the headlines all season, it was the defense that shined brightest on the game’s biggest stage. North Central entered the game with the nation’s highest-scoring offense (49.4 points per game). The Falcons shut the Cardinals out over the game’s final 41 minutes.

“When they were running the football on us a little bit early, I’m sure everyone in the crowd, everyone with a Falcon logo on was a little bit worried,” Walker said. “And all these guys did was get tough and nasty and made plays. And every time we needed a big turnover, they got it.”

Wisconsin-River Falls quarterback Kaleb Blaha runs in one of his two touchdowns during the Falcons’ 24-14 win over North Central in the Division-III football national championship game in Canton, Ohio on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 (Courtesy of Josh Padilla)

On the very next play following Olson’s interception, Wisconsin-River Falls quarterback Kaleb Blaha rumbled in for his second rushing touchdown of the affair.

The Division-III Player of the Year ran for 128 yards on the ground, while also throwing for 291 and another score, a 16-yard, first-half scoring strike to Blake Rohrer. Blaha, who arrived in River Falls as primarily a running quarterback, finished his senior year with 4,971 passing yards, breaking Joe Burrow’s single-season record across all NCAA levels.

“When I finally saw it on the scoreboard,” Blaha said, “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty cool.’”

But that’s not why he came back to Wisconsin-River Falls for one final run this fall after receiving a medical redshirt. He did so to win a national championship, something his head coach convinced him was possible years ago.

“I did have a vision of it,” Walker said, “but it is sort of still a surreal feeling to know we accomplished it.”

And they did it their way.

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