Inside the Sun Belt · preview

Old Dominion keeps warming up in the third quarter

The number is 76. In a game Old Dominion trailed 34-6 at halftime, the quarterback the Monarchs named five days before the season opened ripped off a 76-yard touchdown run. It is the most interesting thing this team has done in two weeks, and it happened while they were losing by four touchdowns.

East Carolina at Old Dominion, Saturday, 6 p.m., S.B. Ballard Stadium. The Monarchs are 1-1, the Pirates are 0-2, and neither number means what it looks like.

Quinn Henicle keeps answering questions nobody asked

Before the derby we wrote that a new quarterback running a new coordinator's offense behind ten new starters was a lot of first-time things at once. Henicle then threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more against Norfolk State, and we said plainly that the caution had aged badly.

Two weeks in, he has three rushing touchdowns. At Virginia Tech he found Leon Haughton Jr. for seven yards in the third quarter and broke the 76-yarder in the fourth. The quarterback nobody outside the building could evaluate in August is now the most dangerous runner on his own team, and that is both a compliment and a warning.

The problem lives in the first half

Virginia Tech led 17-0 after a quarter and 34-6 at the break. Ethan Grunkemeyer threw for 327 yards and two scores and ran for another, and by the time Old Dominion found any rhythm the result was filed. A 44-21 final reads respectably. Fifteen of the Monarchs' points arrived after the game stopped being one.

So what is this team? Two games in, Old Dominion has played a level below and a level above and nothing in between. The FCS opponent got handled. The ACC opponent did the handling. Saturday is the first time all year the Monarchs face somebody built like they are.

East Carolina is better than 0-2

The Pirates opened at Alabama and lost 28-10 in front of 100,077 people in Tuscaloosa. Then they lost to Appalachian State by three. Read those two results without the record attached and you get a competent team that drew a brutal opening and lost a coin flip. Read the record alone and you get a punchline.

Nothing about 0-2 is comfortable, and a team arriving in Norfolk needing a win to save its September is a harder guest than a comfortable one. Desperation is not a scouting report, but it shows up on third down.

What to watch

Whether Old Dominion starts on time. Two weeks of evidence say this team warms up somewhere around the third quarter, and that is a survivable habit against Norfolk State and a fatal one against a peer.

Whether Henicle's legs are the plan or the escape hatch. Three rushing touchdowns in two games is production. It can also mean the pocket keeps collapsing and he is the only one solving it, which is a different and worse story.

And the crowd. Ballard on a September Saturday with an 0-2 visitor and a home team that got embarrassed on the road is exactly the setting where a season either steadies or starts sliding.

The Breakdown will be at Ballard Stadium on Saturday. Recap Sunday, written from the building.