James Madison at Old Dominion

[GannonFan]

You know why Delaware fans are on here talking about us? Because their own team is currently irrelevant in the CAA. They won't be making the playoffs and they will be watching first year CAA team ODU in the playoffs.

It hurts them quite a bit. Football is literally all they have at Delaware. Without that, they are nothing, and ODU has already passed them in football in only our first freaking year in the CAA.

ODU record against UD: 0-1. Oh, and all of our fall sports have qualified for the CAA tournaments - even mighty ODU hasn't done that.

[bluehenbillk]

Congrats to ODU (well except for Vanilla Ice) on knocking off the Dirty Dukes on Saturday. I'm sure there is panic in H-Burg since Saturday on two fronts - missing the playoffs & the reality that ODU has moved right alongside their own program.

[mcveyrl]

My two cents here.

First off, ODU deserved to win the game. Heinicke is the real deal. If he plays like that for four years, the CAA's in trouble. There's no doubt in my mind that if he were slightly less elusive, we would've won big. Just look at the 4th and 2 play they scored on, he should've, by all rights, been popped by V. Nelson as soon as he picked the ball up, but he just shimmied out of the way. And in the second half we would have him bottled up and he was gone. And what opened that up was the fact that he's a great passer. We couldn't really afford to spy anybody because we needed them in coverage.

Second, those that are comparing ODU's injuries of several weeks to our injuries during the game is insane. There's a huge difference in "gameplanning" for injuries (i.e, first team reps for the fill-ins, designing plays for certain weaknesses, etc.) and losing four offensive starters in, literally, the middle of the game. Do you guys have any idea how valuable it is for an o-line to work together on plays? I can almost guarantee you that the combination of linemen that were on the field in the fourth quarter had almost never practiced together before, there's just not enough time in the week. It's not why we lost the game, but it made a difference - particularly late.

Third, to me, the swing in the game came before the injuries and within about 2 "game" minutes of each other. At the end of the first half we had 3rd and 1 from the 2 with about a minute left. We ran out of the Wildcat. I HATE running a shotgun play inside the other team's five and especially when you only need a yard! Then, we ran a sweep out of that formation! In my opinion a terrible call. Lineup in the I and let your line do its thing (this was before 2 of the 3 injuries). But give credit to ODU for snuffing it out.

Then, to start the second half, Kerby Long tried to field a ball that was curling out of bounds. It hit him in the hands and rolled out at the 5. His feet were on the yard markers when he touched it. Just let it go. We start the second half at our own five instead of the forty and our play options are obviously limited. Three and out - first time the O was stopped. Again, give ODU credit for making the plays to go three and out.

Now these are big "ifs", but if we score a touchdown at the end of the second half we're up 10 and if we get the ball at the forty, there's no question we're in a better position to score again or at least don't give ODU great field position. Those two plays completely changed the momentum in my mind.

It was a fun game to be at and I'm looking forward to this becoming a good, legitimate, end of the year rivalry.

[93henfan]

You know why Delaware fans are on here talking about us? Because their own team is currently irrelevant in the CAA. They won't be making the playoffs and they will be watching first year CAA team ODU in the playoffs.

It hurts them quite a bit. Football is literally all they have at Delaware. Without that, they are nothing, and ODU has already passed them in football in only our first freaking year in the CAA.

ODU record against UD: 0-1. Oh, and all of our fall sports have qualified for the CAA tournaments - even mighty ODU hasn't done that.

Yeah, it's pretty comical to claim you've surpassed a team that kicked your ass.

[mcveyrl]

Congrats to ODU (well except for Vanilla Ice) on knocking off the Dirty Dukes on Saturday. I'm sure there is panic in H-Burg since Saturday on two fronts - missing the playoffs & the reality that ODU has moved right alongside their own program.

Meh, I think we can still get in at 7-4, so 2 out of 3 (granted two tough Northeast road games) is doable if we can get our isht together after these injuries. If we can't, there's no point in worrying about the playoffs because we wouldn't go far anyway.

As far as ODU, it's not like we didn't know they were going to be a program to deal with, it just happened faster than most expected and that includes the entire CAA.

[Monarch Nation]

As far as ODU, it's not like we didn't know they were going to be a program to deal with, it just happened faster than most expected and that includes the entire CAA.

It's happened faster than we expected too. I'm glad, because I didn't want Monarch Football to be accused of watering down the league.

[mcveyrl]

I'm glad, because I didn't want Monarch Football to be accused of watering down the league.

No, that's apparently what Georgia State is for...

[93henfan]

I'm glad, because I didn't want Monarch Football to be accused of watering down the league.

No, that's apparently what Georgia State is for...

Ever notice that GaState is always the first FCS score shown on ESPN's bottom line? I think ESPN picked the wrong rags to riches team to adopt.

[State Line Liquors]

Nice program win for the Monarchs. Establishing themselves in year one of the CAA as the peer or better of any other FCS program in Virginia.

Also, the Monarchs are a playoff bound team regardless of how the remaining 2 games play out. The W&M game I expect to be hard fought, and the UR game should most likely be a W. 9 wins?? That earns you at least 1 home playoff game for sure. And all that matters is getting in the playoffs...after that, anything can happen and you've got a punchers chance.

[CAA Flagship]

My two cents here.

I don't disagree with anything you said. But lost in the "what ifs" are the fact that JMU managed to do something that almost never happens to ODU, and that is to get a receiver wide open behind our secondary. The first was in the second quarter along the sideline. The receiver had to stop for what seemed like forever to wait for the poorly underthrown pass to reach him. This allowed us time to catch up and make the tackle. JMU scored 2 plays later so no points were lost. The second was the last drive of the game where the pass was overthrown by 5 yards to a receiver streaking down the sidelines who was 5 yards behind the cornerback. Our defense has a "bend but don't break" mentality but JMU managed to get behind our secondary twice.

JMU's offense in the 1st half ran similar to what UD did to us which was underneath passes. The only way we managed to stop JMU was for them to run out of real estate. Once you got into the red zone, we didn't have to worry about the deep ball and could focus on the shorter plays (thus the two FG's).

Our defense is the worst of the three (O, D, and special teams). Certainly the JMU injuries, and probably some ODU adjustments, contributed to the shutout in the second half. But I feel that we were in clock management mode on our last drive, which under other circumstances, could have resulted in points. We opted to go for the death blow on 4th and 11 instead of kicking a field goal from the JMU 28.


That last drive included a questionable pass interference call that was crucial to the game. I could not tell if it was interference watching it live, and the replays didn't give the full picture. But the replay did show the ODU bench immediately call for a flag almost before the ball hit the turf. That was a big call cause there was about 5 minuts left to play.

[mcveyrl]

My two cents here.

I don't disagree with anything you said. But lost in the "what ifs" are the fact that JMU managed to do something that almost never happens to ODU, and that is to get a receiver wide open behind our secondary. The first was in the second quarter along the sideline. The receiver had to stop for what seemed like forever to wait for the poorly underthrown pass to reach him. This allowed us time to catch up and make the tackle. JMU scored 2 plays later so no points were lost. The second was the last drive of the game where the pass was overthrown by 5 yards to a receiver streaking down the sidelines who was 5 yards behind the cornerback. Our defense has a "bend but don't break" mentality but JMU managed to get behind our secondary twice.

JMU's offense in the 1st half ran similar to what UD did to us which was underneath passes. The only way we managed to stop JMU was for them to run out of real estate. Once you got into the red zone, we didn't have to worry about the deep ball and could focus on the shorter plays (thus the two FG's).

Our defense is the worst of the three (O, D, and special teams). Certainly the JMU injuries, and probably some ODU adjustments, contributed to the shutout in the second half. But I feel that we were in clock management mode on our last drive, which under other circumstances, could have resulted in points. We opted to go for the death blow on 4th and 11 instead of kicking a field goal from the JMU 28.


That last drive included a questionable pass interference call that was crucial to the game. I could not tell if it was interference watching it live, and the replays didn't give the full picture. But the replay did show the ODU bench immediately call for a flag almost before the ball hit the turf. That was a big call cause there was about 5 minuts left to play.

The refs weren't great either way. Yea, the pass to Long that was just out of reach was huge. If that hits him in stride he's in the end zone. The bottom line is ODU made less mistakes and executed better and that's why they won.

[CAA Flagship]

Nice program win for the Monarchs. Establishing themselves in year one of the CAA as the peer or better of any other FCS program in Virginia.

Also, the Monarchs are a playoff bound team regardless of how the remaining 2 games play out. The W&M game I expect to be hard fought, and the UR game should most likely be a W. 9 wins?? That earns you at least 1 home playoff game for sure. And all that matters is getting in the playoffs...after that, anything can happen and you've got a punchers chance.

Here is an interesting situation. If we finish 9-2, do we get a bye in the first round? I think it is very possible. But that would mean we would have 2 weeks off because our regular season bye comes the last week of the regular season. I'm sure conventional wisdom says you take the bye in the playoffs no matter what. But will the team be flat with a three week break between games? Anyone run into this before?

[bluehenbillk]

One observation I had from the game is I can't understand for the life of me why ODU's pass coverage hasn't got any better. I'd consider JMU definitely in the lower half of the league as a passing offense & they had a lot of guys running free in the secondary.

If Edwards could've hit more of those guys it's a different game, but throwing the ball downfield is taking JMU out of their element.

One more question: what was the crowd noise level like? You can't always get an accurate depiction from watching on TV & it seemed much quieter on TV than I expected.

[bluehenbillk]

Nice program win for the Monarchs. Establishing themselves in year one of the CAA as the peer or better of any other FCS program in Virginia.

Also, the Monarchs are a playoff bound team regardless of how the remaining 2 games play out. The W&M game I expect to be hard fought, and the UR game should most likely be a W. 9 wins?? That earns you at least 1 home playoff game for sure. And all that matters is getting in the playoffs...after that, anything can happen and you've got a punchers chance.

Here is an interesting situation. If we finish 9-2, do we get a bye in the first round? I think it is very possible. But that would mean we would have 2 weeks off because our regular season bye comes the last week of the regular season. I'm sure conventional wisdom says you take the bye in the playoffs no matter what. But will the team be flat with a three week break between games? Anyone run into this before?

If ODU wins out & goes 9-2 I'd think you're pretty safe for not playing an opening round game. The 8 teams playing in the 1st round are going to be the winners of the NEC, Big South & MEAC and then any 7-4 teams. I'd be stunned if a 9-2 CAA team was playing T-giving weekend.

[93henfan]

One more question: what was the crowd noise level like? You can't always get an accurate depiction from watching on TV & it seemed much quieter on TV than I expected.

The weather sucked. I wouldn't gauge crowd noise in the clam based on that game. Lot's of empty seats, just like our game at Towson that was billed as a sellout to be and only drew 8K.

[mcveyrl]

One more question: what was the crowd noise level like? You can't always get an accurate depiction from watching on TV & it seemed much quieter on TV than I expected.

The weather sucked. I wouldn't gauge crowd noise in the clam based on that game. Lot's of empty seats, just like our game at Towson that was billed as a sellout to be and only drew 8K.

This. It was REALLY cold. If you weren't a die hard, there had to be something really exciting to get you out of your seat.

[Grizalltheway]

The weather sucked. I wouldn't gauge crowd noise in the clam based on that game. Lot's of empty seats, just like our game at Towson that was billed as a sellout to be and only drew 8K.

This. It was REALLY cold. If you weren't a die hard, there had to be something really exciting to get you out of your seat.

[State Line Liquors]

Nice program win for the Monarchs. Establishing themselves in year one of the CAA as the peer or better of any other FCS program in Virginia.

Also, the Monarchs are a playoff bound team regardless of how the remaining 2 games play out. The W&M game I expect to be hard fought, and the UR game should most likely be a W. 9 wins?? That earns you at least 1 home playoff game for sure. And all that matters is getting in the playoffs...after that, anything can happen and you've got a punchers chance.

Here is an interesting situation. If we finish 9-2, do we get a bye in the first round? I think it is very possible. But that would mean we would have 2 weeks off because our regular season bye comes the last week of the regular season. I'm sure conventional wisdom says you take the bye in the playoffs no matter what. But will the team be flat with a three week break between games? Anyone run into this before?

*edit first paragraph. Complete brain fart on my first try. You def. won't be playing Thanksgiv weekend at 9-2. I was thinking only the top 5 don't play in the '1st round'.


I get your point about the 2 week (I guess technically closer to 3 week) layoff being a potential pitfall. As a fan, with a good team, I'd have been super irritated if my team was on a hot streak and had a long layoff like that between games. Unless there's a ton of injured, I see little benefit to it.

[CAA Flagship]

Here is an interesting situation. If we finish 9-2, do we get a bye in the first round? I think it is very possible. But that would mean we would have 2 weeks off because our regular season bye comes the last week of the regular season. I'm sure conventional wisdom says you take the bye in the playoffs no matter what. But will the team be flat with a three week break between games? Anyone run into this before?

*edit first paragraph. Complete brain fart on my first try. You def. won't be playing Thanksgiv weekend at 9-2. I was thinking only the top 5 don't play in the '1st round'.

I get your point about the 2 week (I guess technically closer to 3 week) layoff being a potential pitfall. As a fan, with a good team, I'd have been super irritated if my team was on a hot streak and had a long layoff like that between games. Unless there's a ton of injured, I see little benefit to it.

We can certainly use the time to get healthier, but 3 weeks between games may cause us to go stale. If we win the last 2 games, that would be 4 wins in a row. And considering how good we played against Towson, that would be 7 good games in a row dating back to the Delaware game. My fear is that the long layoff would kill momentum.

[89Hen]

It has been my experience that if you have no argument, you key in on spelling mistakes and typos.

You are correct, except it is a pet peeve of mine when somebody goes out of their way to call somebody an idiot and completely misspells the key word.

Congrats to 8 out of 10 ODU fans.

[CAA Flagship]

It has been my experience that if you have no argument, you key in on spelling mistakes and typos.

You are correct, except it is a pet peeve of mine when somebody goes out of their way to call somebody an idiot and completely misspells the key word.

Congrats to 8 out of 10 ODU fans.

I hope I'm an 80%er.

[89Hen]

You are correct, except it is a pet peeve of mine when somebody goes out of their way to call somebody an idiot and completely misspells the key word.

Congrats to 8 out of 10 ODU fans.

I hope I'm an 80%er.

[mcveyrl]

This. It was REALLY cold. If you weren't a die hard, there had to be something really exciting to get you out of your seat.

Do you have some sort of alert that pops up anytime somebody mentions weather on here? Or do you guys just have your account set up to auto respond to any temperature related comment? I looked but couldn't find the "Please remind people it's cold in Montana if they mention temperature" box to check.

[green&gold75]

My two cents here.

First off, ODU deserved to win the game. Heinicke is the real deal. If he plays like that for four years, the CAA's in trouble. There's no doubt in my mind that if he were slightly less elusive, we would've won big. Just look at the 4th and 2 play they scored on, he should've, by all rights, been popped by V. Nelson as soon as he picked the ball up, but he just shimmied out of the way. And in the second half we would have him bottled up and he was gone. And what opened that up was the fact that he's a great passer. We couldn't really afford to spy anybody because we needed them in coverage.

Second, those that are comparing ODU's injuries of several weeks to our injuries during the game is insane. There's a huge difference in "gameplanning" for injuries (i.e, first team reps for the fill-ins, designing plays for certain weaknesses, etc.) and losing four offensive starters in, literally, the middle of the game. Do you guys have any idea how valuable it is for an o-line to work together on plays? I can almost guarantee you that the combination of linemen that were on the field in the fourth quarter had almost never practiced together before, there's just not enough time in the week. It's not why we lost the game, but it made a difference - particularly late.

Third, to me, the swing in the game came before the injuries and within about 2 "game" minutes of each other. At the end of the first half we had 3rd and 1 from the 2 with about a minute left. We ran out of the Wildcat. I HATE running a shotgun play inside the other team's five and especially when you only need a yard! Then, we ran a sweep out of that formation! In my opinion a terrible call. Lineup in the I and let your line do its thing (this was before 2 of the 3 injuries). But give credit to ODU for snuffing it out.

Then, to start the second half, Kerby Long tried to field a ball that was curling out of bounds. It hit him in the hands and rolled out at the 5. His feet were on the yard markers when he touched it. Just let it go. We start the second half at our own five instead of the forty and our play options are obviously limited. Three and out - first time the O was stopped. Again, give ODU credit for making the plays to go three and out.Now these are big "ifs", but if we score a touchdown at the end of the second half we're up 10 and if we get the ball at the forty, there's no question we're in a better position to score again or at least don't give ODU great field position. Those two plays completely changed the momentum in my mind.

It was a fun game to be at and I'm looking forward to this becoming a good, legitimate, end of the year rivalry.

I had a bad feeling for JMU when I watched that play. Felt bad for Long though - got open on deep routes twice later but got underthrown, then way overthrown.

[Grizalltheway]

Do you have some sort of alert that pops up anytime somebody mentions weather on here? Or do you guys just have your account set up to auto respond to any temperature related comment? I looked but couldn't find the "Please remind people it's cold in Montana if they mention temperature" box to check.

Huh? Did you say something? My hearing is still shot from the game on Saturday.