Inside the Patriot League · recap

A winless team ran for 428 yards on William & Mary

Seven beat teams played Saturday and five of them lost. Norfolk State taking the Battle of the Bay back and Old Dominion's three-point loss to East Carolina each got their own piece. The other four are below, and one of them is the worst result anybody on this beat has had all season.

Fordham 52, William & Mary 27

Fordham came to Williamsburg 0-3. Not 0-3 with some bad luck in it either: Colgate beat them 24-14, North Dakota State shut them out 38-0, Coastal Carolina beat them 45-7. Three games, 21 points scored, 107 allowed.

They scored 52 on Saturday. That's more than double their season total, collected in one night against a team that woke up ranked 21st in the FCS coaches poll.

The number that explains it is 428. Fordham ran the ball 46 times for 428 yards, 9.3 a carry, and never turned it over. Yohan-Li Louis had 203 of those yards on 15 carries and broke a 57-yarder in the fourth quarter when the thing was already decided. Jamell James scored three times on the ground from 5, 12 and 10 yards. Gunnar Smith threw 21 passes, completed 12, and three of them were touchdowns. When you're averaging 9.3 a carry you don't need the 22nd throw.

William & Mary was down 21-0 in the second quarter and 28-7 at halftime. Winston Watkins was fine, genuinely, 19-of-26 for 286 and two scores, and Andrew King ripped off a 67-yard touchdown run on the way to 122. It didn't matter. The Tribe lost two fumbles, ran for 3.4 a carry themselves, and had the ball for 25 minutes.

Now the part we need to own. We wrote after Lehigh that the offensive line "decides the ceiling" for this team. That was the wrong unit. Here is what William & Mary's defense has given up on the ground in four games:

• Villanova: 157 yards, 5.2 a carry
• Delaware State: 174 yards, 5.3 a carry
• Lehigh: 366 yards, 7.2 a carry
• Fordham: 428 yards, 9.3 a carry

That line goes one direction every single week. Lehigh running for 366 looked like a top-ten team being a top-ten team, so we filed it under "good team beat you" and pointed at the wrong side of the ball. Fordham removed that excuse. Harrison Johnson made 15 tackles Saturday, and a linebacker leading you in tackles by that margin is usually a sentence about the people in front of him.

The Tribe are 2-2 and they go to Duke on Saturday, which is an ACC team that is 3-0 and will have watched this tape.

Virginia Tech 35, Maryland 26

Virginia Tech joined this beat two weeks ago and this is the first time we've had a reason to write about them at length. They're 3-0, they won in College Park, and they did it in the least Virginia Tech way imaginable: by throwing it.

Ethan Grunkemeyer went 31-of-39 for 314 yards and three touchdowns, and added an 18-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. Luke Reynolds caught 12 of those passes for 107. Jeffrey Overton Jr. caught a 49-yard touchdown and ran in another from two. The Hokies held the ball for 36:39, ran up 445 yards, and never turned it over.

They led 35-14 in the third quarter and then stopped scoring, which made the last twenty minutes more interesting than they needed to be. Maryland's Malik Washington threw for 359 and three scores and the Terrapins got within nine, but they missed both two-point tries and never got the ball back with a chance.

Three-and-0 with a road win over a Big Ten team is a real start. The schedule tells you soon enough what it's worth.

West Virginia 38, Virginia 27

Virginia went to Charlotte ranked 25th and came home 2-1.

The Cavaliers led 14-7 after one quarter and never led again. Michael Hawkins Jr. accounted for five touchdowns by himself, throwing for 190 and two scores and running 18 times for 123 and three more. West Virginia ran for 247 as a team.

There's a callback in that we'd rather not have. When Virginia beat Norfolk State 59-3, the story was Beau Pribula running for 110 and a defense the Spartans couldn't move. Two weeks later a quarterback did the running to Virginia instead, and the defense that looked unsolvable in September gave up 437 yards without forcing a single turnover.

Pribula was 21-of-33 for 197 and two touchdowns and Xavier Brown broke a 47-yard touchdown run. Neither team gave the ball away, which usually flatters the loser and here just means Virginia got beaten straight up.

Delaware comes to Scott Stadium on Saturday.

South Florida 59, Delaware State 17

For 28 minutes this was a game. Delaware State trailed 21-17 with 1:18 left in the first half, in Tampa, against an FBS team that scored 59 points.

Then South Florida scored as the half expired and Delaware State never scored again. The second half was 31-0. South Florida finished with 611 yards and 33 first downs.

The salvage is real, though. Ui Ale went 16-of-22 for 249 and two touchdowns and hit Nathan Stewart for a 90-yard score, which is the single longest play anybody on this beat has produced this season. Jaylin Terzado caught the other one from 20 out, three weeks after his 76-yarder at Zable. Ale has quietly become the most watchable quarterback in this group.

The Hornets are 2-2 and host Towson, who are 0-4, on Saturday.

Saturday, all seven of them

The whole beat plays on September 26. Virginia Tech at Boston College at noon, William & Mary at Duke at 3:30, then a 6pm pileup with James Madison at Old Dominion, Campbell at Hampton, Towson at Delaware State and Delaware at Virginia, before Norfolk State kicks at Chicago State at 7.

James Madison at Ballard is the one. The Dukes are 3-0 and played at San Diego State on Saturday night, so they fly back across the country and turn around on a six-day week. Neither they nor Old Dominion has played a Sun Belt game yet. Preview midweek.