Inside the MEAC · recap

Jayden Sauray had five carries all season before homecoming

The first time Jayden Sauray ran 94 yards for a touchdown, it was the only snap of a Delaware State drive that began at its own 6, and it took thirteen seconds. The second one came in the fourth quarter, the only snap of a drive that began at the same yard line, and it took seventeen.

Delaware State 34, Franklin Pierce 0. We were in the press box and on the field for it.

What homecoming looked like

The campus was flooded from the morning on: a parade, tailgates, Greek organizations out celebrating, and a lot of people in Dover for the weekend rather than for sixty minutes of football.

Inside Alumni Stadium the band played a full halftime show and the cheerleaders worked the crowd all afternoon. The announced crowd of 3,566 was the largest of Delaware State's four home dates this season.

Wednesday's preview said that a homecoming crowd watching a slow start against a Division II team is a crowd that gets quiet fast. Delaware State led 7-0 with 6:13 left in the first quarter.

The quarterback we did not write about

The preview said the quarterback picture was the thing to watch, and it named Ui Ale and Noah Brannock, because those were the two who had split the job in the 28-3 loss at UAlbany. We wrote that the job needed settling, "not necessarily by naming one, but by getting through an afternoon where the offense looks like it belongs to somebody."

Ale did not play. Brannock did not throw a pass. Delaware State's offense belonged to a senior named Jayden Sauray, and this is what Sauray had done in the first six games of the season: five carries for 21 yards, and zero completions on three attempts across two appearances.

Saturday he carried 17 times for 292 yards and three touchdowns, averaging 17.2 yards a carry, and went 15 of 29 through the air for 130. That is 422 yards of offense from a player who had 21 all year.

Delaware State has not said why Ale did not play. We can speculate, but we will see how this plays out over their upcoming bye week. Is Jayden the new starter?

What we got wrong on Wednesday

The preview was built on Franklin Pierce being better than the schedule made them look. The Ravens came in 3-1 with three straight wins by scores of 56-28, 35-28 and 35-24, their only loss was by nine at Division I Marist, and Delaware State's most recent Division II opponent, Bowie State, had lost by only 21-6 in this same stadium.

We wrote that the margin mattered, and that "a close one would tell you more about Delaware State than a comfortable one would."

It was 34-0, and we had that wrong. Franklin Pierce crossed midfield three times in sixty minutes and scored on none of them.

1 play. 94 yards. Twice.

Dillon Hubbard punted 56 yards and put it out of bounds at the Delaware State 6 with 6:26 left in the first quarter. Thirteen seconds later it was 7-0. One play, 94 yards.

Sauray's third touchdown came with 8:06 left in the fourth, one play after Delaware State took over on downs at its own 6. One play, 94 yards, seventeen seconds.

Those two carries account for 188 of his 292 yards, and together they used half a minute of game clock. His other 15 carries went for 104 yards.

The one in between was a 42-yard run with 8:33 left in the third, on a four-play, 65-yard drive that took 1:41. Kobe Boykin scored the other Delaware State touchdown from eleven yards out, capping the only long march of the day: ten plays, 70 yards, straight out of the second-half kickoff.

First and one at the 1

Franklin Pierce's longest drive of the game started at their own 35 with 1:51 left in the third quarter and did not end until 8:23 of the fourth. Sixteen plays, 59 yards, eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds, and it got them first and one at the Delaware State 1 when Giovanni Winters found Dylan Smith for 18 yards.

From there: an incomplete pass into the end zone, a timeout, Jaden Griffin tackled for a two-yard loss by Geovanny Fabian, a three-yard loss on a run Franklin Pierce never got a player's name on, another timeout, and fourth and six from the 6. Winters threw for Joseph Mugovero and the ball fell at the goal line.

Seventeen seconds later Delaware State led 34-0.

That was the second time the Ravens had been inside the Delaware State 15 and come away with nothing. In the first quarter a 22-yard Delaware State punt from its own 11 handed them the ball at the Hornets' 33, and Anthony Johnson ran it to the 15. They got to the 13, then the 11, and Adoni Santos missed a 27-yard field goal on the first play of the second quarter.

The half ended the same way. With thirteen seconds left and the ball at the Delaware State 46, Kevin Leal threw for the end zone and Makhi Connor intercepted it two yards from the goal line.

419 yards on the ground, one week after 29

The preview's instruction was two words long. Run it. Twenty-nine rushing yards at UAlbany was the number that explained the three points Delaware State scored there.

Saturday: 49 carries, 419 yards, four rushing touchdowns, 582 yards of total offense and 7.3 a play. Franklin Pierce finished with 203 yards, 100 of them on 30 rushing attempts, and punted eight times.

They were also willing to run it on fourth down. Leading 7-0 in the second quarter, Delaware State faced fourth and seven at midfield, ran it, and Nathan Stewart went 28 yards to the Franklin Pierce 22. That was his only carry of the afternoon. Three incompletions later Patrick Fisher-Butler kicked a 40-yarder for 10-0.

The oddity in the box score is time of possession. Delaware State held the ball 27:36 and Franklin Pierce 26:16, a difference of eighty seconds, in a game decided by 379 yards. That is what happens when your scoring drives run thirteen seconds, seventeen seconds, 1:41 and 3:42.

The first shutout since 2022

Delaware State had not held an opponent scoreless since September 3, 2022, when it beat Lincoln of Pennsylvania. That game also finished 34-0.

Ten penalties for 121 yards

This was not a clean afternoon, and the home team was the less disciplined of the two. Delaware State was penalized ten times for 121 yards against nine for 84 by Franklin Pierce, and three of the ten were personal fouls.

One of them cost field position directly. An unnecessary roughness in the first quarter pushed Delaware State from its own 22 back to its own 11 on fourth down, the punt from there went 22 yards, and that is the one that gave Franklin Pierce the ball at the Delaware State 33.

Two more landed on the strangest drive of the day. Ethan Brown punted nine yards to the Delaware State 49 late in the second quarter. From there Delaware State ran thirteen plays, gained minus three yards, and kicked a 50-yard field goal at the end of it. In between: a fourth-down incompletion that a Franklin Pierce personal foul turned into a first down at the 17, a completion that lost nine yards, a sack that lost fifteen, a completion that lost eighteen, a fifteen-yard unsportsmanlike conduct that created second and 42, a 32-yard completion on the next snap, and a second fifteen-yard unsportsmanlike that wiped it out. Four minutes and three seconds of that, and the scoreboard read 13-0.

Franklin Pierce's front also had the better of Sauray whenever he threw. The Ravens sacked him five times. Darian Lopez-Sullivan intercepted him at the Franklin Pierce 28 to end Delaware State's opening drive, which had covered 62 yards from the Hornets' own 10.

Where it leaves them

Delaware State is 4-3. At Alumni Stadium they are 4-0. Away from it they are 0-3, by 22-15 at William & Mary, 59-17 at South Florida and 28-3 at UAlbany.

DeSean Jackson said on Tuesday, after the UAlbany game, that his team "didn't show up and play Delaware State football, the worst since I've been here," that his guys "weren't ready to play and it showed," and that "our record on the road right now is 0-3, and it's terrible." Four days later his team ran for 419 yards and pitched a shutout.

None of it counts in the league yet. The MEAC opener is North Carolina Central at Alumni Stadium on Friday October 23 at 5pm, on ESPN2. Our MEAC preview in August picked the Eagles second in the conference and asked who would be throwing to preseason Offensive Player of the Year Chance Peterson. On Saturday they lost 17-14 at home to a William & Mary team that had dropped four in a row.

All 47 photographs from this game