Inside the MEAC · preview

Delaware State scored three points last week and Franklin Pierce is 3-1

Homecoming is the one Saturday a year a program gets a full house without having to earn it that week, and Delaware State has drawn a nonconference opponent from Division II to play in front of it.

That is the part everybody will read off the schedule. Here is the part that is not on the schedule.

Franklin Pierce has won three straight

The Ravens are 3-1 and 2-0 in the Northeast-10. They have won three in a row and they have not been close to quiet doing it: 56-28 at Saint Anselm, 35-28 at home against Bentley, and 35-24 at American International last Saturday.

Their one loss was the opener, 27-18 at Marist, which is a Division I program in the Pioneer Football League. They lost that game by nine.

This is the first meeting between the two schools, so there is no history to lean on and no previous result to tell you what the gap is supposed to look like.

Delaware State's last Division II opponent

On September 12 the Hornets played Bowie State at Alumni Stadium and won 21-6.

Twenty-one to six. That is a win and it is not a statement, and it is the most recent evidence available about how this team handles an opponent a level down. Anybody expecting Saturday to be a scrimmage should sit with that number first.

And then there is last week

Delaware State went to UAlbany on Saturday and lost 28-3.

The Hornets finished with 192 yards of total offense. They ran for 29. Their points came on a 45-yard Patrick Fisher-Butler field goal in the first quarter and they did not score again. UAlbany did not overwhelm them either, gaining 226 yards themselves, which is the part that should bother Dover most: this was not a team getting run off the field, it was a team that could not get out of its own end.

The quarterback picture is the thing to watch. Two weeks ago Ui Ale took Delaware State 95 yards in the last five minutes against Towson and ran in the winner himself with 42 seconds left. At UAlbany he went 11-of-21 for 78 yards with an interception and split the job with Noah Brannock, who went 3-of-12 for 85.

One of those afternoons is who he is. Homecoming will say which.

What a good day looks like

Score in the first quarter. Delaware State has now gone two of its last three games without reaching double figures until late, and a homecoming crowd that watches a slow start against a Division II team is a crowd that gets quiet fast.

Run it. Twenty-nine yards at UAlbany is the number that explains the three points, and Franklin Pierce has given up 28, 28 and 24 in its three wins, so there are points available if the Hornets can stay on schedule.

Settle the quarterback. Not necessarily by naming one, but by getting through an afternoon where the offense looks like it belongs to somebody.

So what happens Saturday

Delaware State should win this. They are a Division I program at home in front of their biggest crowd of the year against a Northeast-10 team making a long trip.

But Franklin Pierce is 3-1, Bowie State only lost by 15 in this stadium three weeks ago, and the Hornets have scored three points in their most recent game. Those three facts do not predict an upset. They do predict that the margin matters, and that a close one would tell you more about Delaware State than a comfortable one would.

Kickoff is 1pm Saturday at Alumni Stadium. We will be there, in the press box and on the field, and the photographs will follow.