Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Asbury Park Press) Thanks to Monmouth's game notes and the Asbury Park Press, which is the source of all of this research. Breaking Down Monmouth Offense Two years ago, Monmouth beat Lehigh thanks to a spread passing attack that featured a future NFL player, WR Neal Sterling, and a first-year offensive coordinator that was a former QB coach at Yale and a former head coach at UMass, Kevin Morris . Two years later, Morris' spread offense is back, and will test the Mountain Hawk defense. Monmouth returns nine starters, including one player that exploded onto the FCS football scene against Lehigh two years ago.

We break down Monnmoth after the flip. Going into the first game of the season there are oodles of storylines on both teams. One important storyline from Monmouth coming from Hawks coach Kevin Callahan is that Monmouth has a brutal eight road games in the 2016 season, thanks to construction being done on their home field, Monmouth Stadium. With all the focus on defense in the run-up to this game, senior OL Zach Duffy also talked a bit about that the offense is raring to go as well. "It's the most productive camp I've been in the past four years I've been here,, he told Keith Groller of The Morning Call .  "We were put in a position to get a lot of good [strength and conditioning] work in.   We have a lot of experience with a lot of guys returning and that's especially important up front where we have three guys returning including myself.   And then we have junior WR Troy Pelletier , Shaf [ senior QB Nick Shafnisky ] and sophomore RB Dom Bragalo...

"I hit him with a double move, and then I knew I had him beat," Monmouth WR Eric Sumlin said after the game, thrilled with the play of his Hawks.  "It was a great feeling." The happy occasion - or unhappy occasion, in the case of Lehigh fans - was Monmouth's come-from-behind 28-21 victory over the Mountain Hawks a couple of years ago. It certainly wasn't the lowest point of that ill-fated 2014 Lehigh football season - there's zero question that the Razzie there goes for the 150th meeting of the Rivalry - but it was an unquestionable sign that there were problems that needed fixing. When Monmouth last made it to Goodman Stadium, Lehigh was riding a three game losing streak, a long injury list, and a need to turn things around, fast, before Patriot League conference play. Going into that game, Lehigh was 120th out of 121 FCS teams in total defensive yardage allowed, and that needed fixing, fast.  Monmouth, no longer the non-scholarship team Le...

The 2016 Mountain Hawks will be leaning on their offense to carry them in the early going on the season. That's because they return eight starters from last year's squad, which was one of the more prolific offenses in all of FCS. Looking over the stat sheet from 2015, there's plenty of athletes carrying over that makes Lehigh Nation drool.  The return of a sophomore that was a 1,000 yard rusher as a freshman.  The return of an experienced quarterback that has started games each of the last three years.  The return of a deep threat receivers that invokes fear in opposing defensive coordinators. There's not a lot of drama on the offensive side of the 2016 Lehigh football depth chart.  But there's a lot that has Lehigh Nation extremely excited about the potential for this year.

There is one real adage when it comes to defensive football: if you sit around and wait for something bad to happen, it probably will. This season, the Lehigh Mountain Hawk defense knows it can't afford to hang back and let bad things happen. The 2015 Lehigh defense was a unit that saw flashes of strong play - just not enough of them. And in 2016, this unit knows that the statistics from last year indicate a unit that needs to get better. Most of all the identity of this defense needs to be formed. In most places, we know the athletes.  We know they have flashes of great play.  The question that needs to be answered: what will its identity be?