I hate to start this out with a statement like this, but believe it or not I don’t know a ton about Fordham football. All I know is we get to turn the page from the Illinois game where we lost to the team who was projected last in our division.
Every time we have a team on our schedule like Fordham, it reminds me of this play from back in 2012 against Idaho State:
Teams like these are so bad… look at the score, watch the left tackle get absolutely destroyed, our DE on the bottom just completely owns his guy, and then the QB throws it to his WR who gets obliterated by our DB.
Fordham should be more of the same. This game isn’t even close to being competitive and probably needs to be at least a 28-35 point win. We will see all sorts of things about how we “got right” against them and “looked much better”. I’m fine with that, we need a game like this after what just happened. But how we do Saturday has no indication of where we are as a team.
Fordham returns the offensive conference player of the year at QB and apparently threw for over 1,000 yards in just 3 games this spring, Tim Demorat. They have some options at RB and WR, so their skill and QB actually could hold up ok against us. But never fail in these situations, along the line is where things get dicey for these lesser teams. You’ll see our DL handle their OL easily, so everything they want to do will be really tough for them. You see how inept Nebraska looks offensively sometimes, it’s because our line can’t get a push. You’ll see that from Fordham offensively on Saturday.
On defense, they actually have the Patriot league defensive player of the year returning as well, linebacker Ryan Greenhagen. But… that’s about all they have. Since 2018 when Joe Conlin the head coach showed up to Fordham, offense really hasn’t been the issue. It has been a porous defense. They do run an even front so hopefully that doesn’t throw us for a loop this week. But Holy Cross was carving them up running the ball, so I think we will have all the success in the world doing that. We won’t need Martinez to throw except just to pad some stats. And that will be music to Frost and Martinez’s ears. I expect us to score early and often, and also expect Fordham to do a bit of the same as well.
Parker Gabriel had a good preview earlier this week where he referenced we may actually be going against a team with worse special teams than us this week as well. They are awful… freaking terribly bad. And their defense/special teams being bad will have us way out on top here.
I expect us to win something like 55-17 and get a lot of experience for our depth. Not a ton to write about here with an FCS team, but there you go.
I would expect what your putting down as well.. I “HOPE” that all of these players and coaches get their YIPS out of their systems with this game. Don’t we deserve it? I’m tired of hearing about the Devaney curse.. ha
Thank you for the preview. Personally, I am interested in the play calling in this game. I’m guessing/hoping that we will be able to be as vanilla as we would like to be. What I’m interested in is how many designed QB runs we will see. I’m really hoping we can see more of a downhill running game like we did in Rutgers. Do we have a running back in a similar mode to Ozigbo and Mills? Or are we trotting out third down backs. I hope Stepp and Yant can be that bell cow.
If we do win by +28 what do you think we will see in our QB rotation? Do Smothers, Masker and HH all play?
I think you’ll see the playcalling work pretty well. They are just an inferior defense, it will be like going against our scout team.
I also think this is the game they circled of the 4 for Haarberg to get in and preserve his redshirt, so i’ll be curious how that goes. Smothers you don’t have to preserve a redshirt but as of now I think he’s #2, so he needs reps as well. Masker probably is the most well rounded right now between all 3 with offensive knowledge. This will be a good one for us to see what we have for depth. Everyone will look good!
Yesterday, I saw Buffalo nearly exterminate Wagner, 69-7. It was like the high school bully tormenting some grade school
kid. Rather sad.
I hope & believe we will handily defeat Fordham, yes. I hope all our players get in time on the field. And I hope we will treat the Fordham folks as guests. Many of them have never been in Lincoln before and perhaps never will again.
And Buffalo looked quite capable, as much as I could tell against such an outclassed opponent. We better take them seriously.
We are 14 point favorites against Buffalo which I can’t believe. But they lost their head caoch and a ton of talent.
“They do run an even front so hopefully that doesn’t throw us for a loop this week.”
Gasoline cans and matches galore on that burn.