After Opening Month of Wins, The 2025 JMU Football Season Narrows On Its Biggest Game

I think it’s time for a little football season reset.

As the calendar flips to October, JMU Football is 3-1 and looking to build on a 1-0 start in conference play. The first stepping stone on that path is this Saturday, when southern Dukes from all over will gather in Atlanta and take over Georgia State’s modest homefield advantage at Center Parc Stadium.

In his media availability on Monday, Bob Chesney was quite complimentary of Georgia State’s roster and talent, as is the norm for coaches these days.

“Look at that roster. Just look at their sizes, look at their speeds, look at their lengths. Look at their bodies” Chesney said. “The teams they’ve played – one of them (Memphis) is one of the best in the Group of 5. The other two [No. 4 Ole Miss and No. 16 Vanderbilt] are just juggernauts. That’s who they’ve played. They played Memphis as tight as anybody all year.”

That’s a nice bit of necessary politicking by Chesney, who knows that a team of 20-year-olds need to be focused on every opponent, every week, and it’s never wise to give the other team locker room material.

As a certified blog boy, I’m under no such obligation, so let’s just be candid about Georgia State. Whatever raw talent they might have on the roster, this is a team that can’t stop much on defense – especially on the ground. They’re 124th in EPA/play allowed, 132nd in defensive success rate, 136th – dead last in FBS – in EPA/rush allowed.

Georgia State is the second straight team from the state of Georgia that’s likely to give up giant yardage totals to JMU’s ground game. With Ayo Adeyi and Jobi Malary expected back this week, the Dukes can name their yardage total. 200? 300? 400? The only variable is how many run plays Dean Kennedy wants to call. 

How confident am I about the matchup? For the first time this year, I put JMU in my Week 6 best bets column over at ye old day job. And that point spread ain’t small.

How about next week? Louisiana’s Week 7 trip to the Valley was expected to be a major showdown after the Cajuns were picked to win the Sun Belt West in the preseason. 

Instead, Louisiana is 2-3 with losses to Rice and Eastern Michigan. Their game against FCS McNeese was a one-score affair at the start of the fourth quarter, and they needed double overtime to slip past Marshall last weekend. (If you’re an analytics fan, Louisiana ranks 123rd in adjusted EPA/play.)

I wrote in August that the success of the 2025 season could largely hinge on early results against Liberty and Georgia Southern. But like the Cajuns, neither Liberty nor Southern were nearly as good as anticipated. I don’t think anyone wearing purple is sad that the Liberty fans have been silenced, at least in the short term, but the Southern game turned out to be a dud. Clay Helton could be a Hot Seat candidate if they don’t pick up a few wins in the coming weeks.

Instead, with a month of football in the books and a much clearer picture about what the Sun Belt looks like in 2025, there is one game that has become a crucial roadblock this season: Oct. 18 vs. Old Dominion. 

After a month of results, it’s become clear that JMU and ODU are the class of the Sun Belt East. Marshall’s championship team transferred to Southern Miss; App State is way down; Coastal Carolina’s glory days are long behind it. Short of widespread injuries or other chaos, one of the Sun Belt’s two Virginia teams should be playing in the Sun Belt Championship Game.

That’s not to say that losses can’t happen elsewhere. After a long period of dominance stretching from 2016 through the end of the Cignetti era, one thing that certain pockets of the JMU fan base sometimes misunderstand is that even a good team can play a bad game – or an unlucky game – against an inferior opponent. It’s an oblong ball; sometimes, it takes funny bounces. Undefeated conference runs are rare.

JMU could lose another home game to a rival like App State. It could lose on Tuesday night in central time to a very good Texas State team. It could lose on the road at Marshall to a Herd team that will have nearly a year of experience by the time it draws JMU. 

But Old Dominion is the obstacle this year. James Madison ranks 26th nationally with an opponent-adjusted EPA/play of +0.20. ODU ranks… 27th, at +0.18. No other Sun Belt team is higher than 50th. 

JMU must handle business this weekend against Georgia State. It’s the kind of game that a good team should win by quietly executing its game plan. The same goes for next week’s game against Louisiana, and most of the other conference games that JMU will play this year. 

But circle Oct. 18 on your calendars now, because that is the game. If JMU wins, it should exit Week 8 still undefeated in conference play, while also dealing a head-to-head loss to its chief rival. If that were to happen, it would be, in effect, a 1.5-game divisional lead over ODU.

So start making your travel plans now. The chief goal this season must be for JMU Football to win its first official Sun Belt title, and the path to do that runs squarely through a Week 8 game against our in-state conference rival.

Oct. 18 is as good a day as any to set a new attendance record.