Hi, I'm Jay Harris and you are listening to the monarchist podcast. Hope you enjoy it.
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Monarchs Monarch Nation, the Monarchists are back from Harrisonburg Old Dominion loses 30 to 27. Tough game, but we're here to talk about it. Gary, Aaron, how y'all doing today?
Man, I am doing well, a little tired, still I think a little, a little disappointed in the outcome last night, but good, good showing, good trip, a lot of ODU fans up in 402 last night.
And I'm surprisingly awake, the bus ride home from Harrisonburg. I'll tell you, our bus driver was probably the one of the best bus drivers in the world. I don't know how he got us there and the amount of time and the way back safely. Maybe it's because I fell asleep for a couple of minutes, but you know, it was a great game last night and I'm, I'm more positive about this team than ever.
we talked about the keys of the game before last week. I knew we needed to run the ball well against their stout. Run defense. And I think we can all come away with saying we absolutely did last night. So credit to the offensive line Keyshawn wicks, there's Calloway and OB Sonny all played extremely well and were productive and gave us a shot here.
and Mike, we talked about this in the preview. I think you'd said that Jamie was limiting folks to was a 1. 2 yards per carry.
Yeah, that's right.
All right. So this week, you know, I am going to do a little errand math. I am going to take the 20 yards, the negative 20 yards off a grant for the sacks. Okay. Cause we're talking about being able to run the ball. We take those 20 away. We rush the ball 34 times for 158 yards. That's 4. 65 yards per carry. That is definitely an efficient and effective running game. We were able to run the ball against JMU last night.
I thought we did a good job of using the past to open the run as well. Cause Jamie stacked the box a lot and we were able to get those quick pop passes out to wide receiver in the stacks. I, and that was just as good as a run cause we're getting. four or five, six yards a clip. And we're going into, you know, second, second and medium or second and short.
I think that helped kind of relieve some pressure, especially as you saw later in the third quarter where Jamie, you couldn't really crowd the box as much. And they were, they were having to change up their defense. And that was the drive that we had those huge gashing runs down the field. So kind of a good way to balance it when Jamie was stuffing the run to get those little five yard quick hitters on the outside that operate just as well as a run.
And we've talked about it all season quarterback play. We, last week, I think Gary was ready for. grant to take control over this offense. And he did that last week against app. And he further cemented his role as QB one against Jamie this weekend. 26 for 36, 277 yards, two touchdowns. He operated the offense pretty well did really great with those outs to the receivers, those short and intermediate throws. And he hits Dom Dutton for a pretty big touchdown.
Yeah, I like the way he's responded from being benched in the commerce game, sitting out Marshall, then coming back in and Southern Miss he definitely seems more in tune with the offense and he's, he's just, he's doing his job like he's operating the offense for the most part, making the right reads. We'll, we'll talk about some of those later runs later in the show. But, yeah.
He's definitely taken some steps forward compared to where he was earlier in the season and kind of fell off a little bit. But he's in my mind, no, no doubt QB one right now. And you know, he was under pressure pretty much the entire game when he was dropping back, he had to move a lot in the pocket, he had to make some big plays. He had a really great escape on a busted shovel pass near the goal line.
Just, just kind of making, making big plays and, and running the offense the way you're supposed to, that's all we need. And we were right there in it at the end.
And then if we're going to wrap up on offense, gotta go to the receivers. I thought this was Isaiah Page's best game in college so far. He was the reason why our passing offense was so successful throughout the night, in my opinion. 10 targets, 9 catches, 59 yards, 40 yards after the catch. He helped us continually get those hitch throws throughout the night that helped make us. Continue to move the ball on JMU.
he was so close a couple of times to bust in one of those for a touchdown. It took like a shoestring tackle or grabbing a jersey or something to reel him back in. Cause a couple of those had some potential to not just be the quick hitter. The quick hitter turn and run up the field. They just, they were just able to grab him or get a finger on him to bring him down. But yeah, fantastic night from Isaiah Page. Glad to have him back and healthy on our offense.
Yeah, I think Isaiah uses this as a springboard. He can take a lot of confidence out of his performance last night. Obviously there was one opportunity there that he'd like to have back. But you get targeted 10 times, you get nine catches and 40 yards after the catch. He had a phenomenal night. And I think that we're seeing you know, growth right in front of our eyes and You know, going into the rest of the season, we're gonna need them to be able to do that.
While we're on the receivers, we gotta mention Javon Harvey, Romello, Murphy. They both also turned in productive nights. Six, six catches for Javon, 65 yards and a TD. Romello, five catches for 70 yards. Overall, a pretty good night for our receiving core. But the defense I want to start here with saying. Continually, all season long, fourth quarter, when we need them to get this, get stops, they've done it. They did it against Wake. They did it against AAP.
They did it against Southern Miss. They did it against JMU when we needed them to get a stop so our offense could have a chance to score and win. They keep doing it every game, and credit to them.
They, they, they did a really good job, especially in the fourth quarter. I feel like we, we didn't bring a lot of pressure in the first three quarters of this game. It was essentially a three man rush with our front three Jason Henderson and kind of the spiral on the cloud. And they were, they were given up some shots that you wouldn't expect, you know, kind of dropping seven guys in coverage with the spy. They started bringing more pressure there in that fourth quarter.
And that really changed the game and changed the momentum on the defensive side of the ball. We saw safeties flying in there. We saw linebackers flying in there. Kind of push JMU back a little bit. And, you know, we, we shut JMU out in the fourth quarter when they really could have used the touchdown to kind of salt the game away, but they were never able to get it. The defense bowed up.
I thought we had some really great defensive play calling there in the fourth quarter to tee up some of those blitzes and, you know, the, those three guys, we were kind of rotating three in three out up front but they were facing double teams the entire night. And it's really hard to get pressure against an offensive line as talented as JMU's when it's just three guys rushing. But they, they stepped up in a big way and gave the offense a couple of chances to go down, try and tie or win the game.
Alright, so, obviously we lost this game. And, there's... A number of things we could point to, to push the blame on where, where this game was lost. I'm going to let Gary kick us off here. Put the pressure on him to see what he thinks.
Well, there's no one play that lost us this game by any means. It was kind of a couple of little plays here and there, a couple of things here and there, and they stack up over time and you end up losing. We've, we've seen that throughout the season in some of our games, but I go right to the start of the game. JMU comes out, hits a big pass play, but then we end up getting an interception and the offense is cruising down the field.
Had a great play design to, to hit Javon Harvey in the corner of the end zone for a touchdown ball is overthrown. We have to settle for three. It's four points that we just left off the board right there. Second drive of the game, we're coming down, we end up in a third and one, and we are unable to convert on third or fourth down, and we get zero points out of that drive. We could have kicked a field goal, but You know, 1, you expect your offense to be able to pick up 1 run or 1, 1 yard.
So, okay, I don't question the play calling there to go for it by any means. I do question running it into the teeth of JMU's basically 8 man front on that. I don't know if that is an RPO play, where Grant's making a read off of a player and JMU is intentionally deceiving Grant on that. I don't know if it's, hey, it's a run up the middle no matter what.
I don't know exactly how that communication works, and I don't think we'll ever get an answer out of ODU because no one's going to throw anyone under the bus. But I mean, everyone in the building could see that JMU had... A guy's in the box. It's single coverage on any receivers and they were sending it right up the middle because that's where we were going to run the ball to and it's, it's tough to tough to watch that, especially from altitude. You could see it just kind of coming.
I think those two drives are really important and how the rest of this game flowed because we were essentially playing catch up from there on getting down and down to scores. It really again, don't know if it's yeah. On the quarterback offensive coordinator, but we we have to do something a little bit different there on either third down or fourth down in that one yard situation out of the pistol
You know, I agree with everything that Gary had to say. And you guys schematically understand much better than I do because I never played. But in those situations where it, it's, it's clear that like the entire team, the entire defense is just stacked in there, crowded, ready to go. And we've got a receiver out wide on both sides. Common sense says to me is why are you going to try to just jam it right through there?
We, I mean, we did it multiple times last night and we've got really good receivers. Like I trust Javon Harvey. Implicitly to beat his guy one on one whether we're going in the end zone there or going with just like a you know He's got that choice right to break it off really quick on a slant inside Right in front of grant's face so he can see him very easily. But then again That I haven't played so I don't know i'm just i'm just a fan. But it was very hard to watch
And aaron I was I was kind of thinking the same thing too. Just seeing the the defensive back alignment I mean they were playing Three to five yards off the receivers, but clear clear single coverage now with the blitz they were bringing and how wide we set up Would grant have had the time to throw that slant across the middle? I don't know but I would love to have seen that on the third and one. So that way, if it is incomplete, you can still go for it on fourth down.
I think maybe you soften that pass rush or that, that, that kind of push that they have with the seven, eight guys coming up the middle. You at least make them think like, Hey, they might throw, maybe we keep a linebacker back to cover this in the zone. But I was thinking the same thing. You've got those receivers out there. I know that they're fast, especially like an Isaiah page. You get him on a quick slant across the middle, he's, he's there.
But you know, that could result in a sack too, but it just has to be something I think a little different. And with the, with the read option, when you're bringing that many guys on defense, there are ways to deceive the quarterback. If you know who the quarterback is reading off of, and you basically freeze that person because they're going to be unblocked. If the defensive end freezes, the quarterback's handing it off to the running back.
If he's coming in to go after the running back, the quarterback keeps it. So you bring that much pressure, you can afford to have that unblocked guy freeze and force that handoff. And I think that's what happened there on, on those plays. And they did it throughout the night. But there's, there's gotta be that pass option there, at least a quick hitter where that guy is freezing.
Now this happened in the first quarter, so without talking to Kevin, we don't really know what was going through his mind on these play calls. He could have been thinking about setting up a play later in the game because it is a chess match. You never know, but Yeah, there's a lot of it's easy to just Say, hey, that was a mistake in hindsight, but when you're in the heat of the moment, you never know
Yeah, it definitely is. And I think there's also a pride moment there too, of we have two downs. Can we really not run for one yard? I think that that goes into it as well. So it's easy for us sitting up in the rafters in
That's true.
one.
And if it is an RPO for the quarterback he had that keeper almost open almost all night and We didn't really see it. So maybe in Kevin's mind, that could have been a key. We don't know. Alright. First play coming out of the halftime. Kickoff. We fair catch it and muff the kick. We get it down inside the five and we end up giving up a safety. This is a critical moment in the game in a three point game, kind of swings momentum. It would have given us a chance. If we get that fair catch, catch it.
We start off at the 25 who knows what happens with that drive. Maybe we have a chance to punch them in the mouth and start. Pushing JMU on their heels a little bit earlier, but that's a tough safety to take there, but he was put in a really tough position as well
Yeah. You kind of set your drive up for failure when you're that far back, especially. You know, coming out of of halftime, I felt like we had a lot of really good momentum going into the half like we play well in those final couple of minutes. And, you know, we were all kind of thinking, all right, well, you know, we're down. I think we're down four at halftime and. We're getting the ball and we had not played our best.
We left points out there and just felt like, all right, well, we get the ball, we're going to go drive. And worst case, you know, if you, even if you do go three and at least you're flipping the field with a punt or something that was, that was a killer because it kind of put us in that catch up mode again for the entire second half.
Even worse you take the safety you give them good field position on the next Possession and then they score on that one, right
Yeah, to go up 23 to 10.
Pretty big swing there
Yeah, it was tough, but I'll give our offense credit, though. Every time JMU punched us in the mouth with a touchdown drive, the offense was able to come out there and answer with one of their own. I think we feel very differently about this game if the offense doesn't bounce back like that. You know, if we end up getting down... two scores again, and then it becomes three scores. It's kind of, it's not where you want to be. And we feel a lot differently about how this game ended.
So, you know, kudos to the offense for, for getting it together and coming back and then giving the defense a chance to give them the ball back again.
And we mentioned the running backs earlier But it deserves credit again here because in the third quarter is where they had most of their success They're able to get outside of the tackles and bust some pretty big runs on James Madison. That was the quarter that really showed we can run the ball on anybody in this league.
We ran tempo very effectively on the offensive side of the ball. We forced JMU on two occasions to call one of those basketball style timeouts to stop a run. I mean, that was, that's great.
I know we've done it once before this season, but to do it twice against a team like JMU on the road, like in their building, we're running tempo on them was, was awesome to Jamie's credit though, those timeouts were well used because both of those timeouts killed the tempo, killed the momentum and eventually led to the ball going the other way. So it, the good thing about football is you only get a certain amount of time outs, you should try and save them.
But that is, that was definitely an effective strategy to finally. Slow us down and in some drives, but I love that we were running tempo like that Cuz we're not gonna face a defense like Jamie again the rest of
The more experience that Grant gets, the better that we're going to see that. The more often we're going to see that. I think he, and I wish my dog would stop barking. Hopefully you guys don't hear that.
But the more, the more that Grant, you know, is in those games and in those situations, you know, his ability to pick up on those things and see what's going on and catch the defenses where we want to be, we're either gonna, You know, it's either going to lead to big plays and opportunities or it's going to force teams to have to call those timeouts when they don't want to.
Alright. Fourth quarter there were a lot of questions online about some of our play calling. A lot of third and longs that we're calling for runs. I think it's a fair criticism, but at the same time, those are 4 down situations, and you're just trying to make that 4th down more reasonable. Because if you can get to a 4th and 5, it's a lot better than looking at 4th and 10. Sadly, some of those runs did not go anywhere, and we were still looking at 4th and 10.
Yeah, and in some of those like the I think of the third and 15 on that second to last drive I mean Jamie was almost selling out to protect the run there which is weird.
You think that they would be Dropping back in coverage expecting us to try to go get seven eight yards and cut it in half but they were really they were up at the line of scrimmage and again I don't know what kind of checks can be done there what's done from like an rpo standpoint We might have gotten five or six yards, I think but gotta get a little shoestring tackle.
But yeah, I It's tough to watch that and then see us hit Javon Harvey on a deep crosser for 30 yards, you know, at other points in the games and not even kind of attempt to make that play in a third and 15 when you really need to get the ball moving downfield.
Yeah, I think I would like to see grant had given two opportunities to hit a long pass. Just because of those odds of that happening are a lot better in two tries than one.
Yeah, and I gotta, I do give some credit to the way JMU came after us schematically is they basically took away the deep ball on one side of the field. They had two corners playing five to seven yards off the line of scrimmage with the safety directly over top. So essentially the deep ball on at least one side of the field was gone. When we were able to get the right person on the right side of the field in one on one coverage, that was Dutton, we hit him for, for a big pass.
We were just never, never able to really like, kind of recreate that later in the game. And also I don't, I don't know if Dutton got very many snaps after that touchdown catch.
He did not. I kind of keep an eye on him just because he's a fun player to watch. And after that touchdown, I don't think I counted more than like six or seven snaps. I think motion could be a good opportunity there. Throwing in some motion to move the receivers to get those matchups you're talking about. But it's not something we've really done with this new offense this season.
I would love to see motion out of the double stack, especially the success was over with the short passes. You put that back receiver in motion towards the line of scrimmage and have them run. seven yards across the line of scrimmage. I think you get a lot of good things to happen out of that. It's timing and it can get blown up. But in the back of my mind, all last night we were throwing those pop passes. I was like, at some point, Jamie was going to put that second DB up there.
That's going to be a pick six. And I was just fearing that the whole night never happened, which is great. But that Coastal is probably watching that film and thinking we're going to act like we're playing off and we're going to come jam at the last second and get a nice touchdown the other way.
Well, perhaps we'll see some of that. I mean, we've seen them move the running back out in motion a number of times, splitting him out, you know, wide or, or, or, you know, halfway between the line and the receivers that are out wide. So maybe, maybe we'll incorporate some of that of, you know, the, the second receiver that's in that double stack. I guess time will tell.
I will say though, I mean, overall, the offense played really well. I mean, I think we had 416 yards of offense against the defense that hadn't given up anything close to that all year. We ran the ball well, we actually had more plays than JMU which is the first time our offense has had more plays than our, our opponent all season long, averaging 5. 3 yards of play. The only turnover was there on that last play of the game, which is kind of, you know, Not really hurting you kind of turnover.
I mean the offense played pretty well They kept us in the game and gave the defense a chance to come back and give them the ball again We just missed on a couple plays like this offense is so close to being really really good Like we saw it in in good action. We've seen it you know kind of last couple games pick up and gain some momentum We just, you know, we, we talked about on the episode last week, it's like, can we make those one or two extra big plays to win the game?
And, and we weren't, we weren't able to in some of those, but we're so much better than where we were say, like week three, week four.
Yeah, I mean, we scored 27 points. You look at, you know, what JMU's done to a lot of teams and, you know, it played a very good game. Obviously, it wasn't good enough and, you know, it's A loss is a loss. being said, um, You know, looking forward, very positive about this team. You know, 4 4, 3 conference. Um, You know, we'll obviously preview Coastal. But, there's a lot for fans to be excited about with regards to this team. And, you know, don't...
You know, I saw some comments on Twitter that were basically like, We put all this effort into this, well first off, the whole Wii thing. You know, I always kind of chuckle at it Um, But you put all this effort in and you tried so hard and it's all for naught. Like, you know. And, I'm just going to come out and say, That's about the stupidest damn thing I ever heard in my life. This team a game. Uh, We came up a little bit short, but you know what? That shit's gonna know?
Um, But we have four games left in the regular season. And I'm saying that because I still think we're gonna get to 6 6 and go to a bowl. This team has given me a lot to look forward to. And I, I think I'm, I'm pretty confident that we're gonna get two more, at least.
So, a couple things. I know that tweet you're talking about coming from Barstow Old Dominion. Maybe these college students can learn they should not be tweeting drunk. Cause it just ends up looking dumb in the end. Secondly, I think it all really boils down to last night. We got three points off turnovers. We got two turnovers, three points. It's just not good enough. When you're turning over a team as good as James Madison we got to score more than those three.
And Gary highlighted that already, but I think that's really what the game boiled down to. I was riding up on the bus to Harrisonburg. I had confidence that we could play like this. But in the back of my head, I had memories of last season and how Awful that game was. And I'm so happy that when we left that stadium, we did not have to walk out like that again, night and day from last year, this team can play with anybody in the league. And we got, we control our own destiny moving forward.
Part of it's because of weird NCAA outdated bylaws, but I'll take it.
I'll let you guys answer this too. The JMU game last game, last year was like the bottom of last season. Like we were not competitive. We had guys who were out with air quotes injuries. It was just, it was a bad vibe and we were done after that game. Like we were not competitive really the rest of the season this year. Like we lost and as coach Ronnie said in the post game, there's no such thing as a moral victory. A loss is a loss. He was mad because we had him.
We had opportunities to go win this game. So it's a loss and it sucks and it stings and I keep thinking about all these plays and how much fun we'd be having with.
The the JMU fans right now but this is not a momentum killing loss for the season like last year's loss to JMU was like Coach Ronnie was fired up after the game in the locker room Like he was had had a pretty he's not a big post game speech guy He was after the JMU game and I think that this team knows that they're really good And they have so many opportunities in front of them and I feel like as a as a fan base We should still feel that energy. Like this doesn't kill our season.
If we would've gotten blown out 56 to seven, then yeah, we're, we're in, we're in some trouble. But everything we want to do this season is still there. Like everyone who is ahead of us in the standings or tie with us in standings remains on our schedule or we've already beaten them. So everything's right there. Like the path to six and six, seven to five, like there's not a terrible chance for us to just went out. I mean.
And I think that would be shocking to anyone who looked at ODU before the season and say that,
Absolutely. Last year was tough. We were. It was tough to see the future of where we were headed. But these past few weeks, you can kind of see the the tide changing. We saw that when coach Decker was hired. We got some momentum there. You got saw it with the spring recruiting, but now you're actually seeing it on the field and these results. We've said it all season, the three of us.
This is not last year's team, but now we're proving it and Last night sucked leaving with a loss, but looking forward, there's not one team on the schedule we can't beat. And that's worth its weight in gold compared to where we were last year.
Uh, Are you, like, can you hear me? Like, yeah, I can hear you through my fucking headphones. Cut that shit out. Please, Mike.
Alright, so, Coastal. Well, before we go to Coastal, do we want to talk about this? Oh.
the calls.
Alright. So, we asked for Old Dominion fans to call in and leave their thoughts on the game. We got two calls this week. Alright. So, the past couple weeks we've asked Old Dominion fans to call in, and leave their thoughts on the game, or any questions. This week we got two calls. Aaron, why don't you introduce those calls?
Alright, our first call was from Garrett. Garrett called us last week as well, because he's a and um, you know, he talks about how hard the guys played, but he's, he's got some criticism over some of the coaching decisions on how that went, so let's go ahead and play that call. Alright, the second call is from JR. JR, bit more positive. Um, He really enjoyed the game, thought it was a great game. And I think he shares some of the same sentiments that we do about the rest of the season.
Here's that call.
Alright, I'd like to thank both Garrick and J. R. for calling in. My first thought reading that The tush push is not going to happen in Old Dominion and Ricky has said that throughout that when they're taking all of their snaps in the shotgun, putting them under center is just as risky. It's riskier than just continuing how they actually operate 99 percent of the time. So, That won't change, and I do think we need to get better on fourth down, and there's a lot to be said there.
Because we have, we're one of the worst teams in the country at it right now. We have to find some more successful plays on fourth down, and there's no denying that.
I think if we switch to start going under center after not doing it at all in practice and at all in a game, we're just going to increase a pretty big risk of fumbling. You're basically changing your entire operation and you know, as if you've watched an NFL game today, the Eagles actually fumble on push, push down on the goal line and there are ways to beat it. It's just not something that we're able to do. You know, I, there's definitely some blame on the coaching staff for sure.
Like we, we've talked about already in this episode, like just kind of some weird play calling. And again, we don't know if that's the RPO or if that's something coming in from the sideline or what you can't put it all on the players that are on the coaches. I think the players get, get some of the blame because at the end of the day, they, they have to make plays. But I, I don't know if I can throw it on one side or another.
Too too heavily, but it was definitely good to meet garrick I happened to bump into him on the way to bob cochran's tailgate over in the combo lot thank you again bob for having us for a little bit over there Uh great to meet garrick and appreciate him calling him.
in all fairness to Garrick and his comments that We all know, and Ricky, like you said, Mike, Ricky has talked about this a number of times. You're not going to run every single play out of shotgun, and then all of a sudden in one situation, you're not going to run out of shotgun. It's just, for a lot of different reasons, and we don't have time to go into all of them.
But I think he's got some valid criticism with regards to decision making in some of the times of just kind of, you know, ramming our head into a brick wall of kind of this runs at certain points in the game, uh, with JMU completely stacking the box. We talked about this earlier in the call, but, you know, what I love, though, is Garrick and, you know, other folks who take the time to call in, they're passionate Old Dominion fans, and they wouldn't be calling in if they didn't care.
And they want win. And, um, the other thing is, He's not calling out any players. Just like Ricky said, hey, it's fair. If you're a fan and you have criticism, and you want to talk about the decisions that coaching, you know, coaches are making, whether we wrong, you know, um, and that's kind of how he's directing his opinions. And, you know, in the right way. So, I appreciate him giving us a call, and kind of putting it out there.
Yeah, thanks for calling in Garrick and JR. I love the enthusiasm, JR, and we completely agree that there's no reason why this team can't run the table. So, with that note, do we want to talk about the tailgate or do we just want to move on to Coastal?
No, I think we need to spend a minute or two talking about the tailgate, because it was phenomenal. We met some, some awesome folks that people should hear about.
So, first of all, me and Aaron took a ride on a bus with ODAF. Thank you to the staff at ODAF for inviting us. The bus was phenomenal and was a fantastic way to go to Harrisonburg. They took us straight to the alumni tailgate. Hosted by the OD Alumni Association and they put on a fantastic pregame party for us with great food, music drinks, and plenty of games. Got to meet some great OD alums there and had a blast.
Yeah, it was awesome, and the food was great too, which is like one of the most important things for me.
Yeah, and I went up the night before stayed up at mass and nutton hanging out with harry mcbryan, throughout the the night in the day saturday I got over to Harrisonburg a little bit before you all did on the, on the bus, made it over the combo lot to solve Bob Cochran and his crew introduced me to a new tailgate game that is almost kind of like beer pong. It's like a mix of hacky sack, beer pong and corn hole. That will be coming with us, I think, to the tailgate for coastal Carolina.
But appreciate Bob Cochran, his crew. They hosted us at Virginia tech as well. Love that crew. They're so much fun. It's a good mix of a lot of different people. Of course, met Garrick on the, on the walk over there. It was weird though. I was expecting a lot more trash talk from JMU fans, especially the way they, they talked to me on Twitter. I didn't get a whole lot other than a group of girls that I won't talk too much about my response to them.
Yeah, I didn't hear any trash talk, but they didn't even say anything really to us at all walking through the stadium. There was no welcome to GMU. Enjoy the game. Good luck. Or trash talk. It was nothing.
I will say, on the way out, I was walking with Gary, is we did come across, and that was after the but we did come across some nice folks who thanked us for coming, and uh, You know, we're very complimentary and saying it was a good game and wished us safe travels home. But that was after the game, so we We were already already a little bit beat down, I guess at that point.
Oh, yeah. Well, I know that the Jamie fans definitely got into their feelings when I shared a video of their student section with like two or three minutes ago in the third quarter of a six point game and half their student section had had cleared out. They were definitely in their feels on that. And I mean, I don't really blame the students for leaving early going to Halloween parties. There was a lot of interesting Halloween related things walking around both pregame and postgame.
But yeah, I didn't even trash him for it. I just put the video out and man got some, got, got all in their feelings. I love it. So easy.
you're gonna tout how great your fans are, you gotta take the heat when it's clear that not everyone is on board. Alright. Coastal Carolina is coming to town, and they just thrashed Marshall. to put it nicely. This team is operating at a very high rate right now, and we have a tough matchup ahead of us. The early line was released this morning or this afternoon. Coastal minus one and a half. That was circus line. I don't know what action says right now, but I think Gary is looking that up.
Minus two.
Last, yeah, last I saw his minus two. I imagine this will be closer to a pick them. The line may vary a little bit based on the status of Grayson McCall. He took an, a nasty, nasty hit a couple of weeks ago with a head injury. I was glad to see the next day that he was out of the hospital and he was okay. And he's going to be all right. But I don't know. what his status will be for football related activities. So the line may change a little bit if he gets back reinserted.
But just my opinion here, Jarrett Guest is who started for them against Marshall. For me, he actually runs their newer offense better than Grayson McCall did. Against Marshall on Saturday was 14 for 20 for 289 yards, three touchdowns and one pick. He also ran the ball. three times for 38 yards. Now, the offense they run is not too far off from what you've seen in the past. It kind of that modified triple option, but it's a little bit more RPO ish rather than that true triple option.
And I think Grayson McCall earlier on this year struggled to kind of grasp that and know all the finer points because he was so used to the offense before. He clearly had figured it out, operated, I think, really well at App State and it was going to be fine. But, but Jared, yes. I mean, if McCall's not a hundred percent. I would not be shocked to see Coastal just stay with, with Jared Guest here and, and come to Norfolk because I mean, Marsha, the wheels have fallen off for Marsha.
I don't know what in the world happens. Like we, we broke them after our game. I think it's the last game they won.
It was. They've lost now four straight. Looking at Coastal, there are some, their offense is fantastic, as it has been the last few years. But their defense offers us some opportunities here, and I'm already kind of salivating on what could happen. They don't get a lot of sacks, which, good for us, right? They're 131st in the country in total sacks. That's close to where we rank in sacks allowed, so. Finally, a a good matchup there for us.
Red zone efficiency, they're good, but they give up a lot of third downs. They give up a lot of first downs. They give up a lot of passing yards. Give a lot of yards for play. They aren't a great rushing defense, but they do turn over offenses quite a bit. That is the one thing. If we can protect the ball, we'll be able to move the ball all night on this team.
Yeah, agreed. I mean, I'm just going to come out and say, if we win the turnover battle, we win this game. We're going to be able to run the ball against them. We've been able to run the ball against everybody. At least we'll, we'll talk about since sees, since this team has kind of grasped this offense, right? It's clear that we're able to run the ball and everything is predicated on being able to do that. We've also seen that we can throw the ball.
So if a team just completely sells out, uh, to try to prevent that, even when teams have done that, we've still been able to run the ball, honestly. So we didn't win this week. But we also, you know, granted throw any picks. So this is like the third game in a row where we've been able to avoid those costly turnovers. And this defense isn't anything like what we just went against in JMU. So, kind of those three things again. We can run the ball. You know, not turn it over.
And not have those catastrophic
you're right on the turnovers. It's been really nice to not have those dragging us down. I think we've seen some good results from that. The other thing for for our offense going into this game, like there's gonna be opportunities. They somewhat have a similar mindset defensively that we do, where we're not gonna send a lot of pressure. We're gonna kind of keep everything in front. But going into the JMU game, ODU's offense was 129th in the country in finishing drives.
So getting points off of your drives, especially when you get on the opponent's side of the field. 129th, I did not get better in the game against JMU. So we need to be better when we cross the 50. We need to be better when we get into the red zone. And we're going to need all of that because Coastal will put up points. No matter how much I love our defense and think our defense can make stops.
They're gonna score just like JMU was able to score, but I think that our offense may have a little more time to breathe. Go through the right reads. We just got to make sure that they're the right reads the right passes and receivers run the right depth. And I think we'll be able to put up some points as well.
Now Coastal scored 34 points in this game, but they got four interceptions. I hope we
the wheels came off for Marshall. I mean, they bench cam Fancher after he was 11
mean you should put up
They went to Cole Pennington, who's Chad Pennington's son, that their fan base has been screaming for really all year. He was 12 for 23 for 77 yards with two picks. So I, I think. Coastal had the opportunity to make it to inflict some pain on their quarterback problems. I just wish we could have gotten Cam Fancher at that when we played him up at Huntington a few weeks ago.
Yeah, and I missed the fumble that.
Run the dang ball, Bert. Run the dang ball.
Our defense will need to play exceptional in this game, because as we've noted, they do have a pretty damn good offense. But there's one area of opportunity for us is our fantastic rush defense. This place playing a team that is not that amazing at running the ball. There's 71st in the country, which isn't terrible, but it's not good either matches up against our rush defense. So this is going to be a coastal team that's going to try to beat us through the year.
So our secondary and our patch rush are going to need to improve a little bit this week.
Make him one dimensional. That makes it easier. You make him one dimensional and force him to pass and we can send more pressure, especially from the secondary. We've had so much success this year. Blitzing, Sean Asbury, Terry Jones, Taj Rael. When those guys are able to... come in kind of on delayed blitz. We've had a lot of success, saw it last night, a lot of throwaways you know, a couple of rush throws, flushing from the pocket. Just want to, want to see more of that.
But the, the eye discipline against this offense is really, really important. We were great against it last year. in that weird game where we went down and beat the hell out of Coastal. We were great. We just stay with our assignments. We didn't bite on the fakes, stay disciplined, and we won the game. I think defensively, if we do that, we're gonna help ourselves out tremendously, especially as we get the third and fourth quarter.
lot. They ran the ball 40 times. admit, I didn't see this game. I didn't get a chance to, to, to watch it. So, one of the interesting things I see is Ethan Vasco had five carries. So, uh, I don't know if they were just mixing things up or if Guest Helmet came off a bunch or what, but they want to rush the ball. At least they did this past week. I would assume that they try to probably do the same thing this week. So, I think you're spot on with trying to make them one dimensional.
And they ran a lot of dudes last night. I remember looking at the box score on the way home and there was like eight dudes that had a carry. I mean, that's, that's pretty valuable for a team to be able to go different the ball, hand off the ball to
Yeah, they had seven guys, one of who's a quarterback. Um, Reese, Reese White had 11 carries. He's had the most carries. He averaged three yards of carry. But yeah, I mean, when you got a bunch of dudes that can come in and, you know, fill the role, it gives
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're best rushers in that game against Marshall were their quarterbacks and Vasco 5 for 37 Guests 3 for 38 and then like you talked about with Reese and kind of going down from there So this might be another game where Jason Anderson spends a lot of time spying the quarterback Which is good because you can limit big quarterback runs But it's bad because if you look at Jason Henderson's tackle totals yesterday, they're not what we have come to expect but honestly I I
don't necessarily think that's a a bad thing a little little less wear and tear on Jason Henderson down the stretch would be Very nice
Yeah, Gary, you're right. I mean, between Vasco and Guest, that was eight of the carries. And had, what, 73 yards? So, that's something we'll have to be wary of.
and you know damn well coastal is going to do everything they can to get vasco in the end zone against us You know that's coming
So you mentioned last year and how we throttled them. We were talking to Bruce Stewart last night after the game and he, he mentioned that's a good team down there in Conway and they have a lot of dudes coming back from that team that got throttled. I don't know how much you can put into the will to win, but there's going to be a lot of guys that are going to want some, some, some payback from that game.
They might be wanting to take some liberty frustrations out on us for some reason too.
Well, I'm sure, I'm sure Grayson will remember if he plays and, you know, CJ Beasley was certainly there.
Norfolk boy,
Yes, sir.
he's just going to want to put on a show for his family just for being back in his hometown. So he's definitely one to look out for in this game. Alright we're getting close to an hour here, so I think it's time to hit up predictions fellas. Aaron, as always, we give you first, dibs.
I'm feeling really good about this game. gonna be what leads the effort here. The defense is gonna do what it needs to do and, um, We're gonna win by touchdown. I don't know what the score is gonna be. I'm not even gonna make a prediction on the score, but we're gonna win by seven or more,
I was about to say, Ethan was 2 for 2 again against JMU.
but we will have some Ethan Sanchez field there. two for two field goals, three for three extra points, clearly striking the ball. So it's really nice going into the end of the season with confidence, uh, that that guy's going to be able to come through if you really need them.
I think we're going to be much more aggressive on the defensive side of the ball. I think we're going to have a lot more blitzes. A lot more plays created. Uh, I do think that'll leave us susceptible to a couple big plays, which seems like wants to do. Um, Offensively though, I think we're gonna have our way with Coastal's defense. I think we're gonna be able to run the ball and also take those deep shots.
I think it's the coming together of our offense and what we've expected to see, especially if Grant has some time back there. To really run through these routes properly and get on the right page. Uh, I really want to say that ODU is going to win this game by two or three touchdowns, but that's, that's not the type of team are So far Uh, so I'm going to say, uh, ODU is going to take this one, uh, 31 to 27.
I think that's a pretty good prediction right there, Gary. If we're just, if you didn't know anything about Old Dominion and you were just looking at what's available on. A typical action page. We are six and one against the spread all year. The spread is two points into Coastal's favor. If we beat that at worst we lose by one point. More likely we win the game. It'll probably be a close one because every game we play has been in close all season long.
And I want to reiterate this offense continues to grow each game. And it's been a joy to watch a few weeks ago. Everyone's asking for the short intermediate throws. We start to get them. We've been able to run the ball year and now we're starting to mix up the short and deep throws as we saw in Harrisonburg. So yeah, I like us to last week. I'm not going to put a score prediction on this because I don't know. I thought last week, I thought JMU would be a lower scoring game than it was.
I was wrong. I knew it would be close, but I got the, I have not been good on the overs and unders for Old Dominion this season, and I'm not going to try to get that right this week. I just predict an Old Dominion win, and it'll be a close one.
I've gotten the margin right twice in a row now, because I had us by seven over app and then lose by three against JMU. So I'm just going to pick ODU to win the rest of the way, if that's clairvoyant or something.
Well, you know, you know, one one group of folks who I guarantee is going to win this week. The kids of the 757 because we have our 4th annual choice for tots.
That we do. We'd love for all Monarch fans to join us this year on our Toys for Tots drive. There's going to be collection points up in 49th street. Look for the tanks. And there's going to be a collection site at our tailgate spots in the blue lot. We will have food and drinks and all of us will be there. So if you want to come and talk football hang out and chill before the game and bring some toys or some cash for the kids, come join us in the blue lot.
If you don't know where we are at, look for the tennis courts and just walk straight towards them. You won't run into us. You'll see all the toys. There will also be Marines or ROTC members from Old Dominion walking around the lots with ammo cans. So if you don't want to bring a toy, you just want to donate cash, you can do that. We will also be releasing a link later this week. If you want to donate digitally online please contribute. We want to make this a success.
Gary, what do you have to add?
I just want to say thank you first to footers who's going to be catering our tailgate on the house on Saturday. So thank you so much to footers for for hooking us up there. Also update from Major Monarch. We will have the F 18s fly over from VA 106 again. But that wasn't enough.
I think the army felt a little bit jealous that you had navy and marine corps and all that so the army is actually going to give us an additional helicopter flyover coming from the opposite direction as the team runs out So, get to the stadium early.
There's going to be some firepower coming overhead, you know getting everybody pumped up but definitely If you're a salty JMU fan that I tweeted a video of your student section, why don't you click the link and send 10 bucks to help out toys for tots. What was the goal? What was, how much did we hit last year
It was over 700 toys.
yeah, and like 5, 500 in cash donations. Um, and we're looking to smash that this week. So, I, I ask the question, but I do not think that the Marines will have card readers. So, unable to get out and purchase, uh, You know, new toys for the kids. Please stop by the ATM and bring cash just in case. They will have ammo cans, and they will be happy to take that cash, and they will go out and purchase toys for children in the 757.
New unwrapped toys are always preferable because there's, you know, only so many Marines, and their time is at a premium. But, all being said, It certainly ha happy to take cash. And as the, uh, resident Navy guy in the podcast, Gary, I just have to do a slight edit. The VFA 106. Don't want those guys to feel any sort of way. Oh, you did good.
My bad, my bad.
And shout out to Dan Wagoner for getting us started. On the right path here. He was our first donation. He dropped it off at the basketball exhibition the other night. Really nice to meet him and thank him for his contribution. I know we went through this whole episode without talking about Sunbelt Officiating, but I think people will be disappointed if we didn't mention it and close with how bad they are. Obviously, we can't blame the loss on officiating. We didn't make enough plays.
Jamie made just a little bit more than we did. They won the game, so we're not gonna blame officiating on losing games, but they were awful. And the weirdest thing last night that I thought was every time the ref said something, he made it sound. He almost introduced it as if he was about to say something else and then just kind of stopped. It was very strange.
he really seemed like he liked the sound of his own voice because very clear and obvious place. He's like the ruling on the field is. I don't know. That was, that was weird, but I think we're actually more likely to have Bigfoot walk across the 50 than for a Sunbelt ref to throw a defensive pass interference flag. Cause I mean, I I don't know what you got to do if you need a knife, club, what, but oof.
we had two, there were two significant ones last night that weren't called. That, oh, that's all I'll say. They weren't called. One team has two penalties called against them for 15 yards. Those, Those were, those, yeah. Those were, uh. And you know, it's very difficult for us to see from outer space where we were seated last night.
Um, But we reached out to folks who had the luxury of watching it on television at home and being able to, you know, slow things down and actually, you know, be much closer to the action, so to speak. And, yeah, officiating was not bueno.
I have a friend who's a VCU fan, was rooting for JMU, text me, LOL, that was a catch for the Javon Harvey one in the end zone. So if a VCU fan is rooting for JMU will tell me that's a bad call. I kind of have to take that for what it is.
Yeah, so on that note, Monarch fans, we know the officiating sucks. There's no nice way of saying it, but it didn't impact the end result. We could have won without, with or without good officiating.
Sorry. I got, I got one more plug. There's a lot of good content coming out on odumonarchist. com. Field hockey is going in as the two seed to the big East field hockey tournament. ODU women's soccer is going to be the two seed in the Sunbelt tournament. We'll have coverage on odumonarchist. com and a lot more coming up between basketball and the end of the fall sports championship season, football, all that good stuff. So check that out.
Also we'll have the link to Toys for Tots on the website along with a map to our tailgate for Saturday. I try.
on that now? Can't wait to see everybody on Saturday. It's gonna be a good day. Pray for good weather because that means we get the flyovers. We need good weather or we don't get flyovers. So, I can't wait to see y'all at Ballard, at the castle on Saturday for another Old Dominion win. Let's go Monarchs.
Go Monarchs. pack the place, bring toys.
Get to the castle. Go Monarchs.
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