Lehigh Football Nation

Spotlight On: S Sam McCloskey Lehigh Sports issued a release Friday evening that announced Lehigh's team captains for the 2017 season . Some of the names, senior OL Zach Duffy and senior OL Brandon Short , were hardly surprises - after all, they were team captains last year. Another, senior DL Jimmy Mitchell , is a steadying leadership force on the defensive line - again, not much of a surprise. But the presence of junior S Sam McCloskey as the fourth team captain raised some eyebrows.  It's unusual to be a junior team captain, though QB Nick Shafnisky and LB Colton Caslow had been team captains as juniors. As head coach Andy Coen explained, "What's really impressive is that in our ballots contain only seniors with the ability to write-in people. A lot of our guys obviously had to write in Sam, so that was really interesting to see. Our coaching staff feels he's ready right now to be a strong captain and his peers obviously feel the same way."

Spotlight On: DE Tyler Cavenas and NG Jimmy Mitchell This past year, the NCAA mandated that two-a-day practices would no longer be allowed , which naturally has changed the way Lehigh has been camping this August.  "A single day may include a single, three-hour, on-field practice session and a walk-through. During walk-throughs, protective equipment such as helmets and pads can’t be worn, and contact is prohibited," the NCAA said. “The guys like the new procedure, the new process we have in place here,” head coach Andy Coen said. “The guys are more fresh not having the two-a-days. [Sunday] was the first day we went full pads and had live tackling and the kids were fired up about that. We didn’t do a lot, just enough to get our feet wet.” With no contact during the two-hour walkthrough session, pads and contact are a more rare occurrence.  To senior DE Tyler Cavenas , though, what did that mean? "I [still] feel like we can push ourselves," he told Le

Spotlight On: Brandon Short and Zach Duffy Somewhere after the end of the 2016 season, senior OL Brandon Short and senior OL Zach Duffy announced that they would be enrolling in graduate school at Lehigh and playing their final years of eligibility, which had to make offensive line coach Andy Merino and head coach Andy Coen high-five each other.  Short and Duffy, along with senior OL Tim O'Hara , gives the Mountain Hawks a rock-solid center and bookend tackles with loads of game experience that helped carve the way for Lehigh's astounding offense last year.

Most of the teams on Lehigh's football schedule have become so familiar that it seems like they are on the Mountain Hawk football schedule every single season.  Ivy League teams, Villanova, Monmouth... to anyone following Lehigh football over the last decade, they are names fans have heard of. Not so Wagner. That's nothing against the Seahawks, who have played many Lehigh opponents in the last five years (Lafayette, Central Connecticut State, Monmouth, Georgetown, Holy Cross, and Colgate in the FCS Playoffs in 2012). But, strangely for a school so close to Bethlehem, Wagner has never played Lehigh in football.  That will change this season, when the Mountain Hawks travel to Staten Island to compete in their only night game of the year.

Last season, there were two iconic games that set the tone for the Lehigh football season - one a tough loss, the other a tough victory. The first iconic moment was simply called " the Monmouth game " - the season-opening game where the Mountain Hawks started out slow, allowed the other Hawks to build up a double-digit lead, and after a furious comeback, Lehigh came up just short.  Lehigh had multiple opportunities to seize control - but didn't. It threatened to become the narrative that defined the season - that is, until the second iconic game, which was simply called "the Penn game", and also broke down to a specific moment - the end of the first half.