Inside the Sun Belt · preview

James Madison's 3-0 has an 87-3 hiding in it

James Madison comes to Norfolk on Saturday at 3-0, having outscored its opponents 133-29. That's the number that will be on the graphic.

Take the FCS team out and it's 46-26.

The 87-3 is doing a lot of work

The Dukes beat Wagner 87-3 at home on September 12. That's an FCS opponent, and the result says more about the gap between divisions than it does about James Madison. It also accounts for 65 percent of the Dukes' scoring this season. Every per-game number attached to this team has that afternoon buried inside it.

The two games against FBS opponents look like this. They beat Liberty 20-13 in the opener with 291 total yards and 118 through the air. Then they went to San Diego State and won 26-13 on 417 yards and 4-of-13 on third down.

That's a good football team. It's not the team the scoring average describes, and Old Dominion should be reading it that way.

They played in San Diego on Saturday night

James Madison kicked off at San Diego State at 10pm Eastern. They had a long flight back from California, and now they come to Norfolk.

Nobody wins a football game because the other team had a long flight. But it happened to them this week and it didn't happen to Old Dominion, and small edges count in a game like this.

Billy Napier's first year, and a quarterback who isn't the starter

James Madison hired Billy Napier in December. Three games in, he's 3-0, and he's doing it with the backup.

JC Evans won the job out of camp and got hurt in the Liberty opener. Napier has him day-to-day and he's missed two straight, which means Camden Coleman has started the last two. Coleman transferred in from Richmond, where he went 13-1 as the starter, and he has gotten better every week: 11-of-17 for 170 against Wagner, then 19-of-27 for 246 and two touchdowns at San Diego State.

So the backup is a guy with 399 career college pass attempts who used to win a lot of games in the CAA. Old Dominion should plan for Coleman, and it shouldn't treat facing the backup as good news.

Old Dominion's offense scored ten points last week

The Monarchs lost 20-17 to East Carolina. Seventeen points sounds survivable until you look at where they came from: a 38-yard Nathanial Eichner field goal, an 18-yard Quinn Henicle touchdown run, and a 23-yard fumble return by Daevon Iles. The defense scored a third of the points. The offense produced ten.

Henicle finished 8-of-20 for 94 yards and an interception. Ninety-two of those yards came before halftime, which means Old Dominion threw for two yards in the entire second half of a three-point game.

The quarter-by-quarter for the season says the same thing a different way:

• Norfolk State: 7, 10, 14, 0
• at Virginia Tech: 3, 3, 7, 8
• East Carolina: 0, 17, 0, 0

Against Virginia Tech they were down 34-6 at halftime and the eight came late. Against East Carolina all seventeen arrived in the second quarter and nothing arrived in the other three. This offense doesn't score in stretches, it scores in one burst and then goes quiet.

The run game is the exception, and it's their best offensive weapon. Devin Roche had 102 yards on 18 carries against the Pirates and Old Dominion ran for 180 as a team. They can move it on the ground. What they cannot currently do is throw it when the defense knows they have to.

About the series, and a thing we got wrong

Old Dominion has never beaten James Madison since both schools joined the Sun Belt. The four meetings: 37-3 in 2022, 30-27 in 2023, 35-32 in 2024, 63-27 last October in Harrisonburg.

Two of those were one-score games. There's an obvious column to write here about how the record overstates the gap.

We wrote that column three weeks ago. Before the Norfolk derby we pointed out that Old Dominion led Norfolk State 4-0 but that two of the meetings were one-score, and we said the game would be closer than the labels suggested. It finished 31-10 and we said so in the recap.

So we're not running it back. A 0-4 series that includes a 37-3 and a 63-27 isn't secretly even, and picking out the close ones is how you talk yourself into a number you want to believe.

Saturday is also the Sun Belt opener for both teams, and it's the football leg of the Royal Rivalry, the all-sports challenge the two schools formalized in 2022. The conference record starts at 0-0 for everybody.

What a good night looks like

James Madison is better and should win. The path where Old Dominion doesn't lose involves three things, all of them measurable by halftime.

Run it and keep running it. Roche and Henicle on the ground is what has worked against FBS competition, and it also keeps a tired defense on the field.

Score in more than one quarter. Seventeen points in a single burst has now lost them a game they were in. Two scoring quarters and this is a different game.

Make Coleman throw it 35 times. He's been good, but he's also been handed leads and a run game, and Old Dominion's best version of this is a close game in the fourth quarter where a first-year head coach has to ask his backup to win it on the road.

Kickoff is 6pm at S.B. Ballard Stadium on ESPN+. Recap Sunday.