Inside the MEAC · recap

Norfolk State changed quarterbacks and gained 623 yards

Norfolk State won 43-20 in Bridgeview on Saturday night, and the first thing to say about it is that the quarterback was different.

Da'Jean Golmond started. Deljay Bailey, who has started all season and who Michael Vick named the starter back in August, carried the ball once for four yards and did not attempt a pass. Norfolk State has not said why.

Golmond had the best offensive night any Spartan has had this year

He went 21-of-31 for 265 yards and two touchdowns with one interception, and added 91 yards and a score on ten carries. That's 356 yards of offense from the quarterback position in a game Norfolk State controlled.

The Spartans finished with 623 total yards. For context, their previous high was 457 against Winston-Salem State in the opener, and they had 424 in the Battle of the Bay. This was a different number entirely.

The run game did most of it: 358 yards on 46 carries. Jalyn Daniels had 136 and two touchdowns, one of them a 95-yard run in the fourth quarter. Jason Wonodi touched it once and went 76 yards for a score, which is the second straight week he has scored on a play most players never get. Elyjah Mitchell caught six for 87 and is now the leading receiver in five consecutive games.

They also turned it over three times

We wrote on Friday that the question for these three weeks wasn't whether Norfolk State would win them. It was whether the clean game against Hampton was a turning point or a matchup, and that ball security against teams they should beat is what turns one good night into a habit.

Three giveaways against a program playing the fifth game in its history is not that habit. It isn't the disaster the six turnovers against Old Dominion and Virginia were either, and it did not cost them anything on Saturday. But the answer to Friday's question is still open, and now there are two weeks left to answer it before South Carolina State.

Chicago State also got a 50-yard punt return touchdown from Adrian Bowers in the third quarter, which cut a 29-7 lead to 29-20 and made the middle of the game closer than the final score suggests. Norfolk State answered with the Daniels runs and closed it out.

The shape of the night

Chicago State scored first, on a 30-yard Ashton Pannell touchdown pass ten seconds into the game. Norfolk State then scored 29 in a row.

Golmond ran one in from ten, hit Rocco Ciocca from 22 and ran the two-point conversion, found Brevin Caldwell from 55, and Wonodi broke his 76-yarder. That stretch covered about twenty minutes of football and settled the result.

Chicago State got 13 straight either side of halftime to reach 29-20 before Daniels put it away. The Cougars finished with 284 yards and 53 on the ground on 21 carries, and Pannell threw it 40 times for 198.

A note on the preview

We spent Friday writing about a quarterback who didn't play, and about whether Deljay Bailey could repeat what he did against Hampton. Worth owning: the thing we said to watch was not the thing that happened.

What we did get right is the frame. We wrote that the interesting question was how Norfolk State would handle being the better team for once. They fell behind in the first minute, gave up a special teams touchdown, turned it over three times, and still won by 23 because the talent gap was large enough to absorb all of it. That's a fair description of a team beating a first-year program, and it doesn't tell you much about October.

What's next

Norfolk State is 3-2. Robert Morris comes next Saturday, then Virginia-Lynchburg on October 10, and then the MEAC opens on the road at South Carolina State on October 24. South Carolina State is 3-0 and ranked in the FCS coaches poll.

Two more weeks to find out whether Golmond is the answer or an experiment, and whether this team can go a month without giving the ball away.