Inside the MEAC · preview

Norfolk State is 3-3 and the season has not started

Virginia-Lynchburg comes to Dick Price Stadium on Saturday at 0-4.

Hampton beat them 45-0 in the opener. Morgan State beat them 55-0. Bethune-Cookman beat them 62-3 on homecoming, running the ball 72 times for 530 yards in the highest-scoring game that program has played since 2018.

And on September 3 they lost 37-7 to Roanoke College, which plays Division III and only brought its football program back to varsity in 2025.

Four games, outscored 199-10.

So let us be straight about what this is

This is a buy game. Norfolk State will win it and the margin will not tell you anything, the same way the 56-0 over Winston-Salem State in the opener did not tell you anything.

We wrote that about Chicago State two weeks ago and it stayed true, and it is worth saying again rather than dressing Saturday up as a measurement. The honest framing is that Norfolk State has two weeks left before the season actually starts.

The season actually starts on October 24

The Spartans are 3-3 and have not played a MEAC game yet. South Carolina State is the opener, on the road, on the 24th, with a bye week in between.

So Saturday is the last live reps before that, and the two things worth watching are the two things that have defined this team.

Ball security. We spent five weeks asking whether Norfolk State could stop giving it away. Six turnovers in the two FBS games, three more against Chicago State, and then at Robert Morris they did not turn it over once. That is the answer we were waiting for. Now it has to survive a game nobody is nervous about, which is exactly the kind of game where a team gets careless.

Special teams. Robert Morris blocked a field goal and ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown, and Marco Peery's 52-yard attempt at the gun was no good. Norfolk State outgained the Colonials by 125 yards and lost by two anyway. Saturday is a free afternoon to make sure the operation on that unit is clean before it costs a conference game.

What has been working

Da'Jean Golmond threw for 371 yards and three touchdowns at Robert Morris without an interception, and caught a six-yard touchdown from Brevin Caldwell in the same game. That is a quarterback playing well inside a 3-3 record.

Elyjah Mitchell has led Norfolk State in receiving in six consecutive games.

Kickoff is 2pm Saturday at Dick Price Stadium. Delaware State comes to Norfolk on October 31, except that game is being played at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, and we will have a lot more about that closer to the date.