{"id":12077,"date":"2025-09-19T11:26:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=12077"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:26:08","slug":"jmu-at-liberty-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=12077","title":{"rendered":"JMU at Liberty Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Basics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matchup: JMU (1-1, 0-0 Sun Belt) at Liberty (1-2, 0-1 Conference USA)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kickoff: 3:30 p.m. ET, Williams Stadium in Lynchburg, VA<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadcast: ESPNU<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day Job Numbers: JMU -8.5, ML -325; O\/U 46.5<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 2014, Liberty fans enjoyed a playoff victory when JMU was down. They haven’t forgotten it since.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How We Got Here<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Things To Know<\/strong> About Liberty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn’t It Nice to Reconnect With Old Friends?<\/em> This week, Liberty helpfully shared some highlights<\/a> from its last game against JMU \u2014 presumably to remind everyone what happens when the Flames play those poor, godless heathens from the public school up north.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you weren\u2019t 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201cWe got \u2018em then, and we\u2019ll get \u2018em now!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like thinking you\u2019re qualified for a Silicon Valley job in 2025 because you knew how to rip tracks off Limewire in 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Challenging Time for Liberty <\/em>\u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t believe me? Okay. The Sun Belt\u2019s current membership accounts for half of all FCS national championships from 1985 to 2010. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No shade to Western Kentucky, though. Everybody in HBurg loves you guys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberty was rewarded for this 13-0 championship season with a Fiesta bowl berth against Oregon at the end of the year \u2014 you know, a real <\/em>team, that’s actually good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oregon\u2019s 45-6 win was such a pornographic beatdown that viewership was eventually banned on campus in Lynchburg.\u00a0Watching the highlights was ruled to be an honor code violation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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