Cohen Is Player of the Week

In the closest voting in Player of the week history, junior LB Matt Cohen barely won LFN Readers' "Player of the Week". The quiet local defender from Allentown Central Catholic doesn't always get the press and attention he deserves, but with 7 tackles last week, including 3 tackles for loss and 2 sacks he was a monster out there. All three tackles for loss were in key spots: one on a fourth down gave possession to Lehigh; another knocked Princeton out of field goal range; and the third pushed the Tigers back from a 1st and goal on the 2 yard line, and set up the blocked field goal attempt that set up our only score.

This week, game balls go to:

Readers' Choice: Junior LB Matt Cohen

Offense: Senior WR Mike Fitzgerald (5 receptions, 70 yards, 1 TD)

Defense: Senior DB Brendan VanAckeren (10 tackles, 4 solo tackles)

Special Teams: Junior LB Heath Brickner and Junior LB Al Pierce for the blocked field goal attempt (Brickner) and runback (Pierce).

Congratulations to all the winners!

News & Notes
Speaking of VanAckeren, the senior has been nominated as a semifinalist for the prestigious Draddy Trophy. The award is highest academic honor that can be achieved by a football player, "which recognizes an individual as the absolute best in the country for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary community leadership," according to the press release.

Also very interesting is an interview of assistant head football coach and Lehigh defensive line coach Donnie Roberts, which appeared in today's Morning Call. The former Central Catholic High School coach shared an insight on coach Coen:

Can you tell us something about head coach Andy Coen that we don't know? What you see is real, a great competitor and a fiery temperament. He can also be very funny. He used to get mad and throw his hat. Sometimes he could make it skip like stones skipping on water.

Comments

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results. In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago . Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth. Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled. Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season. The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League....

Merrimack at Lehigh Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction, 9/28/2019

It's what we do every week: copiously go over the opposing game notes and analyze the upcoming game matchup. I'm starting to call these the "football nerd" previews because it feels like the audience for these detailed team breakdowns are other football nerds like myself. For Lehigh fans, there is no greater need for a "football nerd"-level breakdown of an opponent than Merrimack. Few opponents have been as big as an unknown to Mountain Hawk fans as the school that formed right after World War II in North Andover, Massachusetts. Helping that sense of mystery is that the Merrimack Athletics' website offers no football game notes, and when you click on the link called "Weekly Two-Deep", you get a two-deep from 2018. Merrimack, until recently a member of the Northeast-10 conference in Division II, announced they are going to join the NEC as a full Division I member in time for the 2023-2024 season. “The College’s 2011 strategic ...

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini . The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero. (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people? Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Lehigh Football Nation

Search This Blog