Inside the MEAC · recap

Norfolk State scored nine touchdowns and the offense got five

Norfolk State beat Virginia-Lynchburg 62-0 at Dick Price Stadium on Saturday. We said on Wednesday that the margin would not tell you anything, and it does not.

Virginia-Lynchburg is 0-5 and has now been outscored 261-10 this season. They turned the ball over six times on Saturday. There is no lesson in beating them by nine touchdowns.

Two things happened anyway that are worth keeping.

The special teams scored twice

Seven days earlier, Robert Morris blocked a field goal and returned it 100 yards, and Marco Peery's 52-yard attempt at the gun was no good, and Norfolk State lost by two having outgained the Colonials by 125.

On Saturday, Christian James returned a punt 63 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter. In the third, Quintin Goins blocked a punt and James picked it up and ran the nine yards for another. The same unit that cost them a football game in Moon Township scored two touchdowns by itself.

Add the two interception returns, Nasir Bashir from 12 yards and Kaleb Broadbent from 39, and four of Norfolk State's nine touchdowns were not scored by the offense.

That is the sort of thing that happens against an opponent giving the ball away six times, and it is also the unit answering a question we raised on Wednesday. We wrote that Saturday was a free afternoon to make sure the operation was clean before it cost a conference game. It was more than clean.

The ball security was not

We also wrote this, on Wednesday, about the clean game at Robert Morris: "Now it has to survive a game nobody is nervous about, which is exactly the kind of game where a team gets careless."

Norfolk State turned it over twice.

That is not a disaster and it did not cost them anything, and it is also precisely the thing we flagged. The zero against Robert Morris was the first clean sheet of the season. It lasted one week. Deljay Bailey threw one of the interceptions in relief, which is the context, and the honest reading is that the answer is still not settled going into the only part of the schedule that counts.

The rest of it

Norfolk State ran for 299 yards and gained 471. Jalyn Daniels had 87 on nine carries and scored twice, once on an 18-yard run and once on a seven-yard catch from Da'Jean Golmond. Shamar Vick went 29 yards for another and Kam'Ryn Thomas 24 for a third.

Golmond was 8-of-9 for 91 yards. He did not need to be anything else.

One streak ended. Brevin Caldwell led the team in receiving with two catches for 35 yards, which stops Elyjah Mitchell's run of six consecutive games as Norfolk State's leading receiver. In a game decided by halftime that is a footnote rather than a development.

Now the season starts

Norfolk State is 4-3 and has not played a MEAC game. They are off next Saturday, and then they open the conference season at South Carolina State on October 24.

Everything to this point has been preparation, some of it against FBS teams and some of it against opponents like this one. The record says 4-3 and it describes nothing that is about to happen.