JMU vs. Richmond College Gameday Open Thread
Get up and Start Wearing Purple Dukes fans. It’s the Gameday with College Gameday. The time is 5:43 AM and I’m on may way out the door to drive to the ‘burg to meet Todd. Hopefully we’ll meet a lot of you there. For those of you sticking around to watch the event on tv, please feel free to share thoughts, pics of signs, etc in the comments. Consider this your official Gameday Gameday open thread for all pre-game, in-game, and post-game chatter. Keep rootin’!
2nd Homecoming in a row that we’ve had a helmet reveal! Withers is the man. He knows how to motivate players and what kids today love.
What a beautiful site. Proud to be a Duke.
I had to leave. Who did everyone pick in the JMU game? Picture of corso with the duke dog head?
And that, folks, is how to crush a GameDay.
Well….that was a sh*tty way to start the game. Gotta be the fugly helmets.
I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see the introduction of the forward pass at JMU.
UR is abusing the gap in the zone between the LBs and Safeties. IDK if we can wait undil halftime to make an adjustment there.
So far JMU’s defensive MVP is Richmond’s WR’s. A couple of turnovers by our defense would be helpful.
I understand that it puts a load on the defense to be on the field so much, but we’re getting absolutely embarrassed by Richmond’s offense. Especially since Everett is supposed to be a defensive-minded coach? This is a little embarrassing…
I move for a ban on helmet reveals on homecoming. Baaaaaaad karma. Messed with the win streak.
The defense has been scary bad at times this season but hasn’t had a whole game in which their flaws were exposed.
This was perhaps the worst defensive “effort” I’ve seen by a JMU team since the Alex Wood era.
And special teams once again looked clueless.
Oh, and I agree on the helmet thing. Might as well give them away to a kids charity now. They stink of failure.
We only gave up 700+ yards and help them to I think 0 stops when their team did not drop wide open balls. Based on our team I am no longer accepting the “Withers is a defensive coach” statement. He clearly is an offensive mastermind who needs a defensive mind to come in and help out.
*held them
Frustrating is an understatement. We’re still a very good football team, but damn does it sting to lose to Richmond, given how much national hype we’ve gotten this year.
It sounds stupid to gripe about the helmets but I mean…do the players really need extra motivation on a day like today? Top 15 opponent, College Gameday, rivalry game, Homecoming. There shouldn’t be a need to energize the players.
To be clear, our defense is the reason we lost. But the helmets seem like a example of the team maybe losing focus a little bit. Silver lining: there’s still plenty of time to change that.
Any update on Vad or Miller?
Tough loss but I’m ok with it. Not really but I’m hoping we use it as motivation to finish the season off strong. Similar to the ’04 squad that lost to W&M on a last second FG. We all know how that season turned out! College Game Day was awesome. It was still a great week to be a JMU alum. Let’s Go Dukes!
Great atmosphere on thebQuad and at the game but the defense stunk. But I think Richmond’s offensive line was the difference. They allowed little pass rush which gave UR QB lots of time and that got their receivers open. And the UR running back was by our line by the time they could get off of UR blocks. Not sure where you all got the idea that Withers is a good defensive coach. One of the reasons he is at JMU is that they were about to fire him as defensive coordinator at Ohio State because his defense was so bad there. Back in Columbus, they were not sorry to see him go at all. Our gain at JMU, I think but no one at Ohio State would give positive remarks about Withers as a defensive coach.
Defense. Wins. Football games.
I can’t even put up 700 yards of offense in a video game.
…and those hideous white helmets should be confiscated and destroyed, never to be seen again.
I want to bring up something that nobody seems to be talking about: We had a solid 25k in the stadium near the end of the game. That was crazy
I will simply quote the great Crash Davis on the helmet: “Never f**k with a winning streak.”
Richmond broke our defense, broke our winning streak, broke our homecoming day, and broke 3 of our best … I hope we can face them one more time, in the playoffs.
I wonder why our Defensive Coordinator(s) did not assign a linebacker to follow J Green. He ran through our D-Line over & over & over … it was awful!
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Good:
Fan Support – the much maligned (on this blog at least) student body showed up BIG this weekend, both killing it at CGD and at the game, they were cheering when I had given up (see below). Combined with the loyal Alumni, the “purple hairs” and the “gray hairs’ were an amazing display of Dukes fan support all day long, unbelievable scene on the Quad that I will never forget.
Vad Lee – IS superman. He carried us single handed to keep this game close – I have no idea how serious his injury is but hope it isn’t bad because he is a VAD MAN! We couldn’t run the ball and they dared Vad to beat them, and he did, again and again and again until he had to leave for injury. Be glad that this kid is on our team, he is an amazing talent and his sheer will carried kept us in this game.
Brian Schor – when Vad went down I was the first one with my head in my hands, until I heard cheering and looked up to watch Brian Schor continue to push our prolific offense forward, he was awesome in relief and gave us a chance to stay in the game.
The Bad:
Special Teams – continue to be an issue as they have been all season long. It has been the coverage that has bothered me previously and it was mediocre at best on Saturday, minus the onside kick that they didnt’ even react to (they were busy running downfield). But the receiving special teams was even worse, misjudging kicks and generally just not producing.
The Ugly:
Defense – can you say EXPOSED? Our defense was horrendous, we couldn’t stop the Spiders and were it not for 2-3 dropped balls by them, it would have been MUCH worse. We couldn’t stop the run, we couldn’t stop the pass and if there were any other offensive things they could do, I am sure we couldn’t stop that ether. When the SMU team puts 45 on us, you think “well they are FBS and their offense is pretty good”….uh not so much, our defense was literally HAPLESS all day and night vs. the Spiders.
LINE PLAY – as anyone knows, games are won and lost up front and we got our asses whipped on both the offensive and defensive lines all night long. When you lose the battle in the trenches, you are in for a long night and we were.
COACHING – I am a HUGE Everett Withers fan, didn’t start out that way but he has earned it. Love the guy, L-O-V-E him. But he got outcoached vs. Richmond and if he was being honest he would admit that. Their gameplan was flawless and they executed it very well. We had no answers for anything they did. The onside kick was just a recognition of tendencies in situations, perfectly executed and we weren’t even close to the ball. The extra point dance thing where they got 2 was another embarrassing “taking advantage’ of something they had seen on film and they made us look silly. Why we would elect to DEFER when we won the coin toss was a big question for me. We had a GREAT day at JMU, CGD has been a huge success, the stadium was full, the fans were frenzied, why not put our high powered offense on the field first? We would have definitely scored a touchdown and gone up 7-0 which would have set an entirely different tone than our porous defense allowing them to waltz down the field quickly and take some air out of the stadium. I have no idea why we wouldn’t put our best unit on the field first (barring special teams that is) – our Offense has been and was dominant. I mean they scored 49 points and LOST, not their fault (although I will say that Vad Lee was most of that). What was most disappointing was that I felt that unlike the previous regime, the Withers era has been EXCELLENT at halftime adjustments. I thought for sure we would solve that play-action throw it to #12 on 1st down play that Richomond ran like 47 times for a first down every time…….but I didn’t see any adjustments at halftime, they did the same exact thing in the second half that they did in the first. Bottom line is as stated above, we were out-coached for the first time this year, no doubt about it.
Here is the issue with this Good, Bad and Ugly, our Ugly was evident to every other team out there. I have no idea how you go from that game to thinking you can beat Villanova, W&M, not to mention any playoff game should we make the playoffs. Our defense was so bad that they have teams salivating and if Vad is out for an extended period of time (I haven’t checked his injury status apologies) we will have a very hard time down the stretch.
So we are hoping for 48-45 shootouts where we score last I guess…..I certainly am.
lookie here