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JMU defeated ECU 34-14 in Greenville, NC last night. It was the Dukes’ 13th straight win overall and second in a row against an AAC opponent. The FCS vs. FBS element might lead to some assuming it was an upset. It wasn’t though. JMU is just a better team than ECU. The Dukes outplayed and out-coached the Pirates in all phases. Here’s the good, bad, and ugly from the win.<\/p>\n
The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n Rushing Attack – With all due to respect to former JMU stud running back Khalid Abdulllah, he wasn’t missed last night. That’s because Cardon (or is it CJ?) Johnson went straight beast mode. After missing the playoffs due to injury, Cardon came back with a vengeance yesterday. He ran for 265 yards and 2 TDs. He popped off an 85 yard touchdown on the first play of the second half, and added an 80 yard touchdown for good measure. Marcus Marshall had a 70 yard touchdown of his own and the Dukes managed 422 yards on the ground. Not bad for a team replacing one side of its offensive line and its leading rusher from 2016.<\/p>\n Offensive Line – See above, but these guys deserve a mention of their own. The o-line was one of the big question marks heading into this season. There were a few breakdowns with pass blocking, but overall, the guys pretty much overpowered their FBS opponents. They opened up a few holes you could drive a truck through and consistently owned the line of scrimmage. And shout out to freshman Liam Fornadel and redshirt freshman Zaire Bethea who both rotated in and played well.<\/p>\n Halftime Adjustments – The Dukes didn’t play very well in the opening half. They carried a 7-0 lead into the break, but failed to take advantage of several opportunities. ECU was very much in the game. Coach Houston and his crew righted the ship at halftime though and the Dukes took control after the break. You have to think that with a better first half and a full complement of players, JMU could have won by much more.<\/p>\n Defense When it Mattered – We’ll have more about the defense later, but the squad made the plays it needed to. Every time ECU started to get some momentum, the Dukes came up with a stop. And holding an FBS team with 85 scholarships to 14 points (7 of which were in garbage time) is pretty impressive. Also good, picking the ball off three times.<\/p>\n Bryan Schor – This kid is special. Last night he showed us once again that he has complete command of the offense. He played with complete poise, like he always does, and never seemed to get rattled. He’s not a burner, but he used his feet very well to extend plays and did a great job of scrambling for quick yards when things broke down. Just another efficient night for the Dukes signal caller.<\/p>\n The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n Penalties – Oh, the penalties. Cry all you want about the refs, but the fact is that JMU had 14 penalties for 172 yards. It’s stunning that ECU couldn’t take advantage of them. Better teams (and JMU will play better teams this year) will pounce if given that many free yards. We love the aggressive coverage that sometimes lead to pass interference calls, but JMU needs to clean things up in the secondary.<\/p>\n ECU Passing “Attack” – We don’t want to pour salt on the wounds, but it takes a special kind of awful passing game to not capitalize on a situation where the refs basically threw a foul every time the receivers got breathed on. ECU’s receivers dropped several easy ones and both of ECU’s QBs missed wide open receivers consistently. The Dukes won’t be so lucky against better passing offenses.<\/p>\n The Ugly<\/strong><\/p>\n ESPN3 Broadcast – That was some hot garbage. If this game breakdown is even less informative that usual (and that’s saying something), it’s because I was forced to listen to huge chunks of the game when ESPN3’s stream dropped. When it was working, it was high quality. But then it just dropped for much of the second and third quarters. Fans were stuck staring at a error message or at commercials, which still worked just fine for some reason. It was a huge disappointment for those of us who couldn’t make the trip to Greenville.<\/p>\n