Dukes Have Historically Bad Defensive Day in Soul-Crushing Loss to Richmond
Always and forever proud to be a Duke!
So today is a true reminder that Rob and I aren’t pros, we’re just Dukes fans. And like Dukes everywhere, those we saw in the ‘Burg and those rooting everywhere, we bled way more than our normal share of purple this weekend and we are absolutely exhausted, cooked, and d-u-n done. In related news, we’re old. For that reason, we apologize in advance that this post won’t be quite as epic as this weekend’s event warrant. But there’s no getting around that yesterday was one of the best, most thrilling experiences we’ve ever had and also one of the most heartbreaking. But I’m pretty sure years from now most of us will remember Gameday and what it meant to show off the place we all love so much to the entire country more than one loss. But this one stings.
The Good
James Madison University and Dukes everywhere – Gameday and the game itself are really two different things. And while the dreadful outcomes of the latter may define the rest of this season in potentially painful ways, the former is something that means so much to all Dukes (football fans or not) and will probably have lasting positive impacts we can’t even imagine for years to come. Anyone who watched the coverage from the Quad, from Thursday’s bus arrival through Friday’s College Football Live (which was incredible – way to go students) and right through the Saturday morning sh*tshow (in a great way) had to feel proud that we as a group truly showed the love and spirit that make JMU mean so much to so many. While our hardcore readers may be pissed we’re not more down about the game, and while we have to concede that were it not for Gameday, this post would justifiably be a “sky is falling” one, the fact of the matter is Gameday happened and it will resonate louder and longer than any game, player or season ever could. HUGE thank you to everyone that made it happen including but not limited to Lee Fitting and the entire Gameday crew, Jeff Bourne, Kevin Warner, Everett Withers and the Alpha Dogs, and everyone at JMU and JMU Athletics that had the good sense to turn this week over creatively and operationally to folks like Taylor Dewey who truly got what the event was, what it could be at JMU, what it means long-term, and were plugged into the fanbase enough to add the special touches that made it truly memorable. And most of all, thanks to JMU Nation. You were all kinds of turnt up for this and all of your individual contributions added up to something that collectively was as special as anything us two old guys can ever remember for JMU.
Bryan Schor – Get to know this name Dukes fans. The backup QB that we all assumed could never replaced our beloved Vad Lee sure did a hell of a job making sure the offense didn’t miss a beat in leading the last two touchdown drives (well really a drive and a half, but that TD run on the first one was impressive). So quit worrying about more transfers for next year and get on board the SchorStar right now. Nothing is over by any stretch this year and with Nova and UD’s continued suckitude and a bye still to come for Schor to get even more work in, the schedule is still pillowy soft enough that solid positioning for the playoffs is still very much in play.
The crowd! – Bridgeforth was the most electric we’ve ever seen it in the New BFS era. Only the App. St. ’08 game can possibly come close and obviously that couldn’t match a crowd of over 26,000 we had yesterday. Packed from start to finish (great work students on believing, and staying, to the end) and jacked up throughout, it was a fantastic experience despite the fact the Dukes literally never stopped the Ticks from scoring.
The Bad
Injuries – After making it through the season’s first half with almost no injuries to note, the Dukes incurred a season’s worth in one game. And were it not for an historically awful defensive performance, these would clearly be in the Ugly section. Thrilling young KR/DB Charles Tutt broke his leg. WR/KR John Miller sustained what appeared to be a serious neck/back injury that required him to be sent to UVA hospital, though we’re overjoyed to hear he was moving all his limbs later that night. And of course, Vad Lee, who in just two years had become one of the best loved Dukes ever and someone we were all so happy to have representing JMU. Nothing has been confirmed as of this writing (Sunday 10 p.m.), but word is his college career is likely over after suffering a serious foot/ankle injury in the second half (though he appeared to be limping even before the play where he really went down. We’ll be thinking of all three of these young men as they look to recover from this horrific night.
The Ugly
The Dukes made literally two defensive stops all night which led to the their two very short-lived leads in the opening half. That’s not good. Not good at all. The stats are staggering. 59 points, over 700 yards of offense, and an individual runner and receiver each over 200 yards. Quit blaming any individual players or coaches for this one, because that is a collective failure that MUST be corrected for the Dukes to have any chance of preventing the most promising season ever of turning into a death spiral of pinball game stats. This game was a reminder of how big “big plays” themselves are and it’s clear that last year’s 55-20 was more a reflection of a few game-changing plays than JMU’s actual ability to stop UR.And there’s certainly no rest for the weary as the Dukes travel to face William & Mary’s two-headed rushing attack next week.
Just to end on a couple positive note though, despite another bad matchup on paper, we’ve got a feeling the Dukes D will be so embarrassed that they’ll rally big-time next week and we’re thinking the offense joins ranks around Schor in a hurry. Given how emotionally exhausted we were by the second half of this one, we can only wonder if quite a few Dukes’ players were completely overwhelmed after all the hype and craziness of last week. And if they can find a way next week, the bye week will be very well-timed afterwards.
Finally, those of us that have been around a bit remember that the ’04 team, with momentum building for a big season, suffered a crushing loss at home to William & Mary around this point in the season only to get another shot at them all the way down the road in the semi-finals. We can only dream that happens this year even if it requires a late December trip to the high school stadium known as Bridgeforth East.
Always proud to be a Duke!
Good thing is that our offense is primarily run based, so a backup QB shouldn’t set us back too much. Schor looked good the time he was in, but he could have made some better decisions; like the time he almost got sacked and threw it away, there was a guy open he could have thrown it too. He looks good though, and has good legs. I have faith that he knows how to run things.
And you gotta say, JMU is breaking all kinds of program records this year
Hope some folks got over to the bookstore and saw Coach C. Awesome guy who got more from his players than any coach for whom I’ve ever played or worked.
I watched the archive replay before church yesterday — I probably should’ve gone to confession before mass…
Great:
The entire JMU community and fan base for Thursday through noon on Saturday
Student body and the rest of a sold out crowd for sticking with it until the bitter end – I didn’t watch most of the 4th quarter. Hope the team’s performance didn’t permanently sour the student body…
Good: that the game wasn’t on ESPN nationally
Bad: Coach Talley might be right
Field goal at the end of the half
Ugly:
Physical beating
Special — sigh — teams; why do we continue to kick to the corner only to routinely NOT pin them inside the 20. Kick it through the end zone
Matador Defense — foolishly bought into this unit again this year only to watch it fold like a cheap 8×8 canopy in a brisk wind.
Here’s the menu to beat the Dukes: power formations using only two receivers; don’t need to spread them out, because they don’t tackle well and are unable to get pressure of any type on the QB blitzing or not.
@Todd: Disagree about 2004. The only similarity to that W&M loss is that it was at home. That was a fairly low-scoring 3-point game lost on a long field goal at the gun. It turned on Justin Rascati’s fumble (when he reached out with the ball across the O-line to try to get a first down and the defense stripped it) and a great quarterback in Lange Campbell. The Dukes didn’t get dominated from start to finish that day like they did on Saturday.
Very unfortunate, the season unfolding the way it did Saturday night in BFS. The place was rocking for sure, seemed deflated when 2 when out with the injury. You could read his face as he limped to the locker room, he looked done to me for the season. It was a nice run, hopefully the staff focuses on defense in the off-season and the remainder of what’s left of this season. Either we don’t have the personnel for the coverage called, or the secondary was just getting outright torched. More than likely, a little of both. EW might need to be a little more hands on with the D in the off-season. It was a great day, atmosphere was second to none, but couldn’t help but think during the 2 hour ride home Saturday night that we were done.
Hats off to the students who not only showed up but stayed. Schor will alright with some work he has a great arm and will lead the offense. the major problem is the defense who looked soft and unable to make tackles. The secondary has never been there they just stink the place up. The game day was great and the crowd was great. Just hope we can get by W&M and win won. I have to admit with the way the defense played not sure that is going to happen. But as EW said we got our ass kicked. Still I bleed purple and will continue to root our Dukes on. I am sorry that Vad went out this way as he is a great one and deserves better. GO DUKES!
yep – Withers said it best, we got our ass kicked.
Hopefully this was the wake-up call, ass kicking the team needs to right the ship. No need to freak out, it happens to the best of us and Richmond was the bigger, stronger team Saturday.
Perspective: Richmond has 36 seniors and we have 10. Richmond’s O is comprised of experience players while our D is full of young talent, we will respond well. Diggs and Brown are both 5th year seniors – you are supposed to run around freshmen and they took advantage of Tutt, Robinson and Oliver who all struggled.
Our team got pushed around and EW and staff know it – just look at last year’s and this year’s recruiting class. We know we need to get better at the LOS and we will continue to bring in talent and develop them.
I apologize if this comes out with an overly negative tone – it is not my intention. The last thing I want to do is add more insult to injury, but I feel like something must be said as it is pertains to the changing culture of our FOOTBALL PROGRAM (caps are important for later). Sorry for the long post.
I will preface my forthcoming statements with this: Saturday was absolutely unbelievable. (Thursday and Friday were too, but I can’t say so on a first hand account. Great job students.) Obviously it was something that none of us have ever experienced as JMU fans. Alumni, students, faculty and members of the community exceeded my expectations of the GameDay festivities. We were loud, proud and our signs were creative as hell. In addition, I was extremely happy with the attendance of the game. From what i could see almost all the seats were filled and students got in trouble for standing on the stairs because they couldn’t find seats. As i went to relieve myself at halftime, i looked up at the student section on the old stands and saw all the students sitting. Patiently waiting for the second half. I looked at my buddy who was with me and said “When’s the last time you saw that?” He said, “never.” What an incredible sight to see. The stadium was just as loud, if not louder during the second hal than it was during the first. A true JMU football fan’s dream come true.
Here’s where I become a Debby Downer: JMU mislead the entire country about the culture of its football program. That being said, it DID NOT mislead the entire country about the adoration that the students, alumni, faculty and community members have for the UNIVERSITY. This is important because GameDay is about FOOTBALL and most of the people reading this post are here because they are die-hard FOOTBALL fans and care about the FOOTBALL culture. When I was telling my dad about all the hype for GameDay and showing him pictures of Thursday’s bus welcoming, he said, “I don’t get it. The stands are always so empty when you’re watching the games on TV.” While GameDay coming to campus was the greatest thing to happen to JMU, what will the long lasting effects be to our football culture? What will the scene be like at Bridgeforth for the Nova game if we are 7-3? What if we’re 9-1? To KW’s point above, has getting embarrassed on homecoming and after all the GameDay hype permanently damaged student’s excitement about the team? I doubt it, but it certainly didn’t help. Is all the excitement for students over for this season now that there’s “nothing” to look forward to (For die hard fans, this season is still very much alive and well,and there is still much to look forward to)? I can’t help but wonder if the excitement was a little bit superficial and was just a chance for us to get on TV and show the world that we love to party and can rally when called upon.
To supplement my point: Everett Withers has done an amazing job transforming the face of JMU Football. There hasn’t been this much excitement around the team since 2008. One of the things he has implemented is at the end of each game, the players walk over to the student section in the endzone and they, accompanied by the MRD’s, sing the alma mater in appreciation for the fans. Most people (understandably) started trickling out of the stadium when Richmond scored their final touchdown making it a 10-point game after we really needed a defensive stop to get the ball back. Then people really started to pour out after the fumble recovery on the ensuing kick off was confirmed. Yes, the game was over. The players shook hands with Richmond and then made their way over to the MRDs for the alma mater. This was the time when the players needed us the most. I was absolutely heartbroken to watch students continue to leave as the players were arriving to sing. It was even harder to watch students continue to leave IN THE MIDDLE of them singing (this is ultimately what lead me to feel the need to write this). It got to the point where i could count on 2 hands the amount of people still there by the time they finished. Win or lose, this was absolutely unacceptable in my opinion. I know a lot of people were still left in other parts of the stands. This is not directed to you, but to those who blatantly kept walking and ignored the team as they were singing. Its true that some of the students kept leaving because they are unfamiliar with the tradition and they just truly didn’t know what was going on. But generally speaking, if the players had the balls to go over to the stands after that loss, then we should have had the balls to stand there to support them. Obviously the culture will not immediately change just because GameDay was there, but we have to do better than that.
Only good can come out of this weekend. It was unforgettable to say the least and i’m immensely proud at how the JMU fanbase responded. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that the vast majority of people who attended the game had a hell of a time, even considering the loss. I sure did. Hopefully GameDay coming to JMU was the greatest thing to ever happen BECAUSE it made everyone realize that we can be a big football school with big tailgates and that football games can be fun even in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
I think Nick has a right to feel disappointed. But look, in the early 2000s when we were a top team every year, there was a miles-long waiting list for tickets. Safe to say that BFS had the most people watching an FCS game anywhere this weekend. I think it just takes re-establishing a culture of winning, and also establishing/publicizing new traditions such as the players joining the other students in singing the alma mater. We’re a program in transition. Let’s see what happens.
Re: the game, we knew that with the exception of SMU we had a cupcake schedule until now and that the schedule was back-loaded. This is when the season really started. It’s possible that we never really had a defense that could make stops against top-flight competition. We’ll see what we have next week at Zable, but this may have been more of a dose of reality than anything.
this is typical JMU football — gaudy stats against lower tier teams and lay an egg against an upper tier team. Spent too much time focusing on GameDay and not enough on the Spiders — Withers and his silly white helmets (ugly) furthered the lack of focus. Dukes will lose to W&M this week, limp into the playoffs and lose in first round on the road. Same old story.
Winning = crickets in the crowd
Losing = geniuses in the crowd
I was almost angry enough to get rid of my tickets to the W&M game, but came back in from the ledge. It’s unlikely the Dukes would go undefeated this season, but I think all the hype made things seem that much worse.
The fact that the special teams continue to be a problem means they may want to sit some of those freshmen that aren’t doing their jobs. A couple weeks ago it was a fake punt when nobody noticed the quarterback stayed on the field instead of inserting a punter. This week, it was an obvious situation where the kicking team had nothing to lose by trying an onside kick and nobody looked prepared.
The defense has been very bad at times this season, and I have no idea why they couldn’t stop the run. For all the talk about Gage Steele and the fact he did lead the team in tackles, I rarely saw him in any meaningful play on Saturday.
To put things in perspective, Everette Withers has done a great job and been a real leader of the football program. I hope that after this season JMU will find a men’s basketball coach that can do the same thing for that program. When I was at JMU this was a basketball school and has now become an embarrassment.
Nick, speaking as a student, there really is a growing adoration for the football team among the students who normally aren’t fans. We’re still talking about that game and the rest of the season. I think ESPN coming to campus was the spark that we needed to kickstart a change in the culture. With that said, don’t expect a sellout for Villanova. It’s the first Saturday of the Thanksgiving break and a lot of students have to go home and it’s really hard to schedule around it. I was in that situation last year, where I had to take a bus back that left Friday. Thankfully I’m no longer in that situation, but it helped me understand that there is a good reason for a low turnout over Thanksgiving break.
Let me summarize this game:
“Richmond racks up 700 yards and 56 points, sending two Dukes to the hospital and ending the career of another.”
That is oddly fitting. From Rocco calling onside kicks to their line just running over us… that was a historic a**-beating. Even though the score was kind of close, that was probably the most severe whipping of a “legit” defense that I have ever witnessed.
I would actually take their pads away and make them earn them back.
At the risk of being the old man from Gran Torino (“Get off my lawn”), I have to say that going back and watching them jump around like idiots on ESPN because they got new (hideous) white helmets really pisses me off. Maybe they should have been thinking about something else… like tackling. Or just standing in someone’s way to slow them down. Or playing any kind of defense at all.
I have to disagree with the comparison to W&M in ’04. Bill & Gary kicked a 110yd FG as time expired that bounced off the bar and somehow went in. Richmond just flat out kicked the 2015 Dukes a**es. Not at all the same.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? We will know in 6 days.
Rob or TD who ever was driving the twitter ship Sat. I was right in line with your “Where the F is Jimmy Moreland” comment.
Actually it was a bad game and U of R is better than many like to give them credit for. I live near their stadium and take the kids from time to time because well its like a high school game and it takes 2 min to get to. They have looked solid all year. I would love to get another crack in the playoffs at them. At home or bridgeforth east…Our D can’t be that bad 2x and neither can their offense.
We did drop 48 on them. We go for a few 4th downs instead of punting or make 3 plays at some point on D and we win the game by a touch down. That’s easily could have happend.
I love JMU football, JMU basketball, JMU field hockey, etc. Mostly, I love JMU. There is so much to be proud of from this weekend and this year. I refuse to be brought down by reading some of these responses.
Don’t get me wrong. I died a hundred times Saturday afternoon. I yelled at the tv so many times my grandson looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t believe that we didn’t go for an onside kick with 4 minutes left, down 3, after not stopping Richmond all day. I feel really bad for Miller, Tutt, and Lee.
But, I will not blame the players for getting caught up in the hype. They are 18-22 year olds playing a game. Most of us are much older and we got caught up in it. They should be having fun. Enjoying the moment. Most of them will never have another moment like it. Did they lack focus. Probably, but half of us had trouble working this week because we kept checking the web to see what was happening at our school.
It is a bummer that they lost. But, as badly as they played on defense, they were only down 3 with 4 minutes to go. Will we win the rest of our games and win another National Championship? It will definitely be harder now, but not totally out of the question. But this team has brought me a lot of excitement already this year. Brought me back to campus more times in the last 2 year than the previous 5 years. For that I am grateful. I am still hopeful (disclaimer…I am a Cubs fan, so hope is in my DNA).
This program is moving in the right direction. I am excited to see where we go from here.
I keep going back and forth on whether if i was the head coach, if my team would have been involved in the gameday melee.
even sam ponder was saying during the segment, “i’ve never had the team behind me, maybe we should be focusing on the game…”
i thought the idea of letting the players see it, and doing the the duke dog walk on quad was good, but the whole helmet thing with the players on tv, it was like just too much hype 4-5 hours before kick-off. they needed that hype like 4-5 minutes before the game… similar to the first time they gave the purple chrome helmets, right before the game…. the hype died down, and then diffused…. from a kinesiology point of view… the human body is a funny thing… and that much adrenaline of being on tv, reaction to the helmet/gameday, it actually might of wore them out – hours before the game even kicked off.
Anyone who says “they are just 18-22 year olds playing a game” has never played major college football. It is more like a job, where every day you fight to keep from getting fired.
Not to mention that if my grandpa could storm the beaches of France as a 19 year old, these “kids” can get their sh*t together before a game.
7-0 to 7-4, season over. Stop the chatter of championships and playoffs, it isn’t happening this year or anytime soon. It’s time to move on to basketball and more mediocrity.