JMU at Liberty Preview

The Basics

Matchup: JMU (1-1, 0-0 Sun Belt) at Liberty (1-2, 0-1 Conference USA)

Kickoff: 3:30 p.m. ET, Williams Stadium in Lynchburg, VA

Weather: 80 and Sunny. If you were hoping for a little late-September breeze, you’d better wait another week for conference play. This one might still be sweaty.

Broadcast: ESPNU

Day Job Numbers: JMU -8.5, ML -325; O/U 46.5

This number has mostly moved toward Liberty throughout the week, leading to a deluge of questions about the line movement flooding my DMs on social media. If you’re interested, I wrote about why I think that’s happening on Thursday night on Twitter.

How We Got Here

As has become common in recent years, JMU football served a two-game appetizer to open the season. In Week 1, the Dukes dismantled old FCS foe Weber State, which made its third trip to Bridgeforth since 2017.

In Week 2, the Dukes played a Friday night game at Louisville, where they acquitted themselves with aplomb despite heavy frustrations on offense. Bob Chesney’s two-quarterback system kept Louisville off-balance early, but the constant shuffling and lack of rhythm eventually stalled out the offense, allowing Louisville the time they needed to connect on a few home run plays and win a competitive game.

The usual cranks appeared after the game, declaring that the staff need to be fired. Back in reality, though, JMU had delivered a quintessential game between a P4 power and a G6 upstart — a close loss filled with promise, but marred by self-inflicted wounds.

Some fans will dwell on what could have been at Louisville. But with a defense that ranks No. 6 nationally in defensive success rate and EPA/rush allowed, it’s clear there are a lot of wins coming in the near future.

As a critical portion of JMU’s schedule gets underway, the ceiling for this season remains quite high. If JMU can stay reasonably healthy and play a middle-of-the-road, opportunistic brand of offense, a 12-1 record capped by a Sun Belt championship is on the table.

Three Things To Know About Liberty

Isn’t It Nice to Reconnect With Old Friends? This week, Liberty helpfully shared some highlights from its last game against JMU — presumably to remind everyone what happens when the Flames play those poor, godless heathens from the public school up north. 

If you weren’t around in 2014, Liberty ended a six-game losing streak to JMU when it scored a first-round playoff win in Harrisonburg during Year 1 of the Withers interregnum. This was largely thanks to JMU’s embarrassing inability to get off the field in the fourth quarter. Liberty notched the winning touchdown at the end of a 17-play, 85-yard drive that lasted 11 minutes and change. They vacuumed up an entire quarter of the game with one possession that, I will admit, still haunts my nightmares. It was like losing to evangelical Iowa. 

Of course, the problem with a *certain* brand of very online Liberty fan is that they think these two games are remotely related. Perhaps some do not understand the depth of JMU’s program growth between the early 2010s and now. “We got ‘em then, and we’ll get ‘em now!” 

It’s like thinking you’re qualified for a Silicon Valley job in 2025 because you knew how to rip tracks off Limewire in 2003.

A Challenging Time for Liberty – Liberty plays in Conference USA, which is quite a lot like a store brand version of the Sun Belt. Both conferences are heavily comprised of former FCS programs, but the difference is that the Sun Belt got the former FCS programs that were actually… you know. Good.

Don’t believe me? Okay. The Sun Belt’s current membership accounts for half of all FCS national championships from 1985 to 2010.

Let’s be kind and say that Conference USA appears to be more focused on growing the game. That’s why they added newcomers like Kennesaw State and Missouri State to an already forgettable lineup of mostly irrelevant programs. 

No shade to Western Kentucky, though. Everybody in HBurg loves you guys.

Against this roster of conference nobodies, a well-funded program like Liberty has been quite successful. The quintessential example is 2023, where a good Liberty team whacked nearly all of its conference opponents by double digits. (In a sign of things to come, one of the only teams to give Liberty a real game was KC Keeler’s Sam Houston team, in its first season at the FBS level. Liberty hung on late for a 21-16 win over the Kats.)

Liberty was rewarded for this 13-0 championship season with a Fiesta bowl berth against Oregon at the end of the year — you know, a real team, that’s actually good.

Oregon’s 45-6 win was such a pornographic beatdown that viewership was eventually banned on campus in Lynchburg. Watching the highlights was ruled to be an honor code violation.

That’s all pretext so that I can say this: In recent years, Liberty has typically been a decent team. Good enough to rack up wins in Conference USA, anyway. But around the middle of last year, something started withering inside of this program, and it’s getting uglier by the day.

Liberty fans will probably be the first to tell you that JMU isn’t getting their best punch this weekend. It’ll sound like a lot of excuse-making, but it’s also just true. They’re 3-6 against FBS opponents since Oct. 15 of last year.

New Jersey, Same Potential for Beatdown – Spare a thought for Liberty quarterback Ethan Vasko. This poor kid has spent the last two years getting his brains beaten in by JMU at Coastal Carolina. He transferred out of the conference to join former Coastal head coach, Jamey Chadwell… only to discover JMU is on Liberty’s schedule for 2025. Oof.

Vasko’s 2024 Stats against JMU: 5-for-18 for 84 yards and 1 TD/2 INT. Coastal Carolina lost in Harrisonburg, 39-7.

In 2023, Vasko had a better box score, passing for 254 yards and a score. (He ran in a second touchdown.) But Coastal still got mugged to end the year, losing 56-14 on senior day.

It could be another rough Saturday for Vasko, playing against yet another great JMU defense. The only consolation might be that, regardless of how ugly the game gets, Liberty fans will remain loyal in the stands. After all, if we know one thing about Liberty fans, it’s that they like to watch.

How JMU Can Win

Lead with defense and just run the freaking ball.

Head coach Bob Chesney appears committed to running some version of a 2-Quarterback system, and I don’t think he’s going to change his mind based on anything I write in a blog post. But it’s worth pointing out that Liberty’s run defense has been quite bad so far this season. At +0.16 EPA/rush allowed, advanced analytics currently rate Liberty as one of the 15 worst run defenses in FBS football.

The JMU offense doesn’t need need to find a new identity in this game. It doesn’t even need to lock in on a single quarterback. It just needs to take the short fields and positive positions it’s given by the defense and execute sensible plays. Run it between the tackles. Run QB power. Run bootlegs and play fakes.

JMU does not have to reinvent modern offense with a defense this good. It can completely control this game by terrorizing Vasko (again) and taking advantage of Liberty’s weak front with its excellent group of running backs.

JMUSB Beer of the Week

Fog Light Baltic Porter by Three Roads Brewing in Lynchburg. I like to drink locally at regional road games, when possible, and Three Roads is a cool spot with some good pours.

It’s not as available throughout all of Virginia, so you Falls Church folks will probably have to get off your ass and drive a couple hours south before you’ll start to see it bottled in convenience stores and corner marts. Check in places like Charlottesville or Lexington, or even farther south. It’s definitely all over Lynchburg, if you can’t make it to their taproom.

Also: weirdly available in Easton, Maryland, according to their webpage.

Official JMUSB Prediction

JMU 34, Liberty 7. JMU gets off to a slow start on offense, but the talent and competence differential becomes too much for the Flames to overcome by the end of the first half. JMU rolls into conference play at 2-1.