Lehigh Football Nation

In their last 3 football games against Division I competition, Wagner scored a grand total of 34 points in three losses. Tonight on a cold, windy evening in Staten Island, the Seahawk offense came to life against Lehigh. The Seahawks scored on their first offensive drives of the first half and second half on big plays, a 50 yard run by RB Ryan Fulse and a 30 yard pass from QB Ryan Massei to WR William Dale .  Fulse would add a touchdown and RB Denzel Knight would add touchdown runs of 24 and 60 yards to put up five touchdowns on the Mountain Hawk defense. Unlike prior weeks, Lehigh maintained a lead against Wagner during stretches of the first half.  Junior RB Dominick Bragalone got a 26 yard run to give Lehigh and early lead, and junior QB Brad Mayes would take it in on a read option to go up 14-7. But then the Seahawks would go on a 30-6 run after that aided by five Mayes interceptions.

Not headed to Staten Island tonight? OK.  I do sort-of understand.  After all, you might be avoiding vampires, because the game will end at night.  Perhaps your GPS is broken, and the Staten Island Expressway is something you can't find, or perhaps you're trying to avoid Yankee traffic. So how do you catch the game? Never fear.  LFN's here.

The media in the run-up to the Wagner game has been more upbeat than one might think considering the Mountain Hawks' 0-4 start. That's not to say that head coach Andy Coen is at all happy with how things have started, but his answers to this week's media questions were not what some fans may have expected. “I’m disappointed, I’m not going to lie,” he told Keith Groller of The Morning Call . “But again, this is a funny game. It’s never easy. It’s hard to win a game. It really is. At times last year we made it look really, really easy. Right now, we’re making it look really hard.” On Lehigh Sports Central this week, he said he felt like Lehigh was more competitive against Penn than they were against Yale. "We just continue to make mistakes," Coen said.  "We got the ball first, and turned the ball away.. we've got to get away from all of that stuff, and start playing better football."

We break down the Wagmer game - and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip. Like the Mountain Hawks, the Seahawks are aiming to reverse a multi-game losing streak, but Wagner's current problems are pretty much the opposite of Lehigh's. Since the season-ending shoulder injury to QB Alex Thomson , the Seahawks have had pretty good defensive play at times, but it's the offense that has let them down.  Against Columbia, for example, the offense went 1 for 9 on 3rd down conversions and only was able to put up 14 points. Worrying for Lehigh, though, is that the offense that they have been able to generate has come mostly from a bruising running game.  Of their 307 yards of offense against Columbia, 187 of it came on the ground.

Lehigh has never played Wagner in football, despite the fact that the schools are separated only by an hour and a half drive and that the institutions both sponsor FCS football in an area of the country where nearby opponents are sometimes hard to come by. Long-time Patriot League fans might remember Wagner as legendary Lafayette head coach Bill Russo 's coaching stint before he came to Easton to coach the Leopards for an 18 year stretch from 1981 to 1999.  Back in those days, Wagner was a Division III school, playing local schools like Iona, Pace, Seton Hall and Fordham, during a time when it was OK to field a Division III football program and a Division I athletics program (this is something that is no longer allowed today). Since then, though, many Lehigh fans may not know that much about Wagner College, the Seahawk football program, and their ascent to becoming, eventually, and FCS playoff team.

I don't officially vote in any of the FCS Top 25 polls, but I do share who I think deserves to be in the Top 25 .  And, well, was I completely wrong about Villanova and Richmond , who were two of my Top 10 teams that got upset this week? CAA fans will say that conference games in their conference are hard, but... Albany and Elon aren't known as being the giant-killers in the conference, let's just say.  It's great to see Albany do well, who were awful close to an FCS playoff team last season, and Elon as well, former home of former Lehigh head coach Pete Lembo as well as  the new home of former Lehigh offensive coordinator Drew Folmar .  But are they Top 25 teams?

A lot of football teams in the middle of a football season have what is called a 24 hour rule in regards to the outcome of their games.  The rule is the win, or loss is to be celebrated/agonized over for 24 hours, and then it's back to work. Like the No Cheering in the Press Box rule in the past, I violated that one this weekend. After the Penn loss, I was mad in a way I hadn't been mad before.  Irrationally mad.  Talking back at the dog mad.  Losses affect me, some more than others.  And this one, for some reason, really hit me hard. It was 5:00 PM on Sunday, the Eagles had just won on a 61 yard miracle field goal, and the Saints had just humiliated the Panthers on the road for their first victory of the season.  A Saints victory on the road, against a conference rival, something that, as a Saints fan, happens at about the same frequency as Super Bowl visits - and I was still mad about the game yesterday. That was the point when I realized something was wrong.