Lehigh Football Nation

One of the nice things about having done this for long is that at my fingertips I can summon up the definitive account of the last five meetings of The Rivalry through my game recaps of the time.  Here's a quick summary of the last five times Lehigh faced off against Lafayette in the most important game of the season.  And heck - it's Throwback Thursday somewhere, right?

All season I have done a statistical breakdown of Lehigh's opponent, position by position.  As a change of pace, I'm going to do something different this week with the "Game Breakdown" and do a head-to-head comparison of both teams - doing a stat breakdown of both teams still, but doing more of a "Tale of the Tape" to compare both squads to see who might reign supreme in this huge football game. Something that sometimes gets lost in The Rivalry is the importance of seniors on both sides.  For so many of these seniors, it's not only their final college football game, it is also their final time wearing a football helmet and a jersey.  I've found that seniors find it in themselves to play the best games of their careers.  So seniors in the starting lineup are of great weight to me.

Many Patriot League football fans remember the 153rd meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette, one that ended happily for the Mountain Hawks. They might remember the MVP performance of QB Brad Mayes , or perhaps the halftime speech by OL Zach Duffy that seemed to spur the Mountain Hawks to victory. Or perhaps they might remember the spectacular single play of Mayes rolling right and finding WR Gatlin Casey in the end zone to give the Mountain Hawks a lead they didn't relinquish.  It was an incredible play by Mayes, who returns this upcoming year for his senior season, and Casey, who, having exhausted his eligibility at Lehigh, will be playing one more year at Middle Tennessee State. As great as those individual moments are, though, they are not my biggest takeaway of that game. Too many Lehigh people forget that Lehigh was down 31-21 at half, and that victory was no sure thing.  And they sometimes forget that so much of that victory came from the grinding of WR Troy Pe...

(Photo Credits: Lehigh Athletics) Just like that, the 2018 Spring Session comes to a close this week, giving us a taste of what is to come in the late summer and fall. Here are my quick observations about what I saw at Murray Goodman on Saturday.

The Lehigh coaching staff took a page from Ole Miss' spring game in their annual Brown/White scrimmage at Murray Goodman stadium. The scoring system Ole Miss used was to spot their defense a 23-0 lead, and the scrimmage's goal was to  have the offense drive on the defense just like a regular football game. It is the hope of every Lehigh football fan in every game in the upcoming 2018 season that the offense scores more than 23 points a game.  Last year, the Lehigh offense averaged for than 35 points per contest. But the Brown defense this Saturday was up to the challenge of containing the White offense. Twelve times, the offense lined up with a potential drive to score points, and nine of those times, the defense forced the offense to punt or stuffed a 4th down conversion. It's true that the offense scored three touchdowns, one from rising senior QB Brad Mayes , one from junior QB Tyler Monaco , and one from sophomore QB Addison Shoup.    It is also true...

(Photo Credit: Brown and White) Lehigh had one of the best offenses statistically in all of the FCS last year, excelling offensively in pretty much every facet. Look at the statistics page for FCS last year . Rising senior QB Brad Mayes , 4th in passing yardage.  Rising senior RB Dominick Bragalone, 1st in rushing yardage with 1,388. Both Mayes and Brags return next year, and huge things will be expected of them for certain. But the spring is about finding out who's stepping up to the plate to keep the train rolling. There's little doubt that, barring injury, Mayes and Bragalone will be lining up in that first offensive possession vs. St. Francis (PA) at Murray Goodman this September.  But the 2017 offense is so much more than those two guys - the Mountain Hawks will need to replace the best receiving tandem ever to suit up at Lehigh, and will also need to replace the fiery leadership on the offensive line that, at times, seemed to will this team to their Patrio...

Lehigh's spring session is in full swing, and there's no question who the opening-day starter will be at quarterback, barring injury - that would be rising senior QB Brad Mayes . Mayes had a great season last year, helping the Mountain Hawk offense to tremendous production again, picking up exactly where Montreal Alouette QB Nick Shafnisky left off after the 2016 season. That doesn't mean Mayes is sitting back sipping an iced tea while his teammates are busting their humps this spring, however.  He's been busy. "This off season was a lot of fun for me,"  he told me. "I got to take on more of a leadership role which allowed me to make great strides in the weight room. We had an outstanding leadership council as well make some great strides in equipment and gear, nutrition, and alumni partnership. Although those may seem like little things when it comes to the game of football, stuff like looking like a team and matching on Saturdays really go a lo...

Lehigh's spring football practice segment officially starts tomorrow, ending an agonizingly long period of football inactivity from the end of the 2017 football season. Tomorrow, the beginnings of the 2018 football team will take shape - a team that waves goodbye to WR Troy Pelletier and WR Gatlin Casey , but welcomes back rising senior QB Brad Mayes and some changes on the defensive side of the ball. What sort of questions will be answered by by the end of this spring segment?  Here are five of my questions.

(Photo Credit: Alec Turner c/o Lehigh Athletics) For those that care about these things, Lehigh entered the first round FCS playoff matchup 21 1/2 point underdogs. And if we're being fair, that was probably the right number. The Seawolves were 9-2, nationally ranked with seven conference wins in the tough CAA and one of their losses coming to a very strong FBS team in South Florida.  In contrast, unranked Lehigh came into the game 5-6 and only were here because they upset Colgate 41-38 on the road and won enough Patriot League conference games to win the autobid. Yet a young Lehigh team was game to put their best foot forward and to have a heroic sendoff for potential NFL prospect senior WR Troy Pelletier , and in that, the game was a rousing success. With junior QB Brad Mayes expertly picking apart one of the top defenses in FCS, time after time he'd find Troy for reception after reception, each one highlighting his impressive skill set as an audition for the nex...

It was marginally better than last seasons 1st round loss to New Hampshire, but it still wasn't close. After holding Stony Brook scoreless in the first quarter and battling back to a 24-14 deficit at halftime, Stony Brooks' 2-play, 77 yard drive where QB Joe Carbone found TE Cal Daniels for a 40 yard touchdown pass to make it 31-14.  Despite a couple of second half touchdowns to keep it somewhat close, Stony Brook would add four more touchdowns in the second half to really pull away from the Mountain Hawks. Statistically, Lehigh battled pretty hard most of the way - especially on offense, when senior WR Troy Pelletier concluded his Division I football career as gaining the most receiving yards in Patriot League history.  On the day he had 10 catches for 94 yards and a terrific touchdown grab that undoubtedly caught the eyes of some NFL scouts. Junior QB Brad Mayes (33-for-48 passing, 333 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INT) and junior RB Dominick Bragalone (75 rushing yards, 40 r...

For the first time all season, it was a dark, wet day for a Lehigh football game. It was not at all ideal for the more than 15,000 fans, and countless tailgaters that made it to the tailgates but not in the stadium, partying and tailgating outside the gates of Murray Goodman. It was also not at all ideal for Lehigh's high-powered passing game, and during a disastrous second quarter with three turnovers, it felt like the wheels were coming off the Mountain Hawks' chances at successfully defending their Patriot League title. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, was actually going wrong.  Three fumbles resulted in three Lafayette recoveries.  A third down conversion incompletion by Lafayette QB Sean O'Malley became an unexpected first down, thanks to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that kept their drive alive.  A 14-7 first quarter lead became 17 unanswered points, leading to a 24-14 deficit against the best defensive team in the Patriot League. In thi...

(Photo Credits: Mike Geer/Lehigh Athletics) "We went right at 'em." That was head coach Andy Coen talking to Lehigh Sports' Steve Lomangino after the Mountain Hawks' 42-21 win over Bucknell. With their Patriot League title hopes on the line, and the No. 1 defense in the Patriot League the opposition, it seemed like the Mountain Hawks might enter into the type of defensive struggle that defined last year's game against Bucknell. But after junior LB Mark Walker forced and and grabbed a Bison fumble and returned it to the Bucknell 9 yard line, junior QB Brad Mayes didn't mess around.

The 2017 Lehigh Mountain Hawks are known for having a great offense, a high-octane group that features stars like junior QB Brad Mayes and junior RB Dominick Bragalone . But senior WR Troy Pelletier would trade it all for conference wins. On an afternoon where he broke a bunch of school and Patriot League records - some of them unanticipated - his focus, as ever, was about getting the league victories that count towards the main goal of this team - to defend their Patriot League Championship. "I didn't know what the records are," Troy said afterwards about his record-busting, 16 catch, 197 receiving yard, 4 touchdown performance.  "I just knew I was close.  I knew it was going to come if I bought in every day, do what I need to do every day to get better, and I knew it would come." Fortunately for Lehigh fans, his banner day came to allow Lehigh to resoundingly beat Georgetown 54-35 and go to 2-0 in Patriot League play.

Before the game, the Lehigh sports social media team had some graphics ready for a record that senior WR Troy Pelletier had a high probability of breaking today. Troy, or "The Doctor", as I call him, had to get 60 yards receiving to beat the Patriot League record for receiving yardage. After he skied past that record, the social media folks had to keep assembling a lot more graphics. By the end of the game, more records would be falling left and right.  The career Patriot League touchdown record - the first time since 2001 since a Lehigh player nabbed 4 touchdown receptions in a game.  Somewhere in the fourth quarter, he'd grab his 16th reception, breaking his own record for receptions in a game. In the end, Lehigh cruised, never trailing in a 54-28 win over the Hoyas, but the story was Pelletier, whose amazing 16 catch, 197 yard, 4 TD game was the talk afterwards.

As a guy who is pretty passionate about his Lehigh football history, it was great to see a national champion on the set of Lehigh Sports Central this week. QB Mike Rieker , quarterback of the 1977 Division II National Champions, showed up to talk to Steve Degler about his role on that team and share some stories (and some video highlights) about that magical season. One thing he didn't do is talk about funny locker room stories about head coach John Whitehead. "It was strictly business with coach Whitehead," he said.  "There was no footing around in the locker room until you left.  He was all business, and it reflected on us, a lot of guys took to heart they didn't want to make mistakes, because you'd have to face him.  He was a tough taskmaster and a great teacher, and he ended up being a really good friend.

(Photo Credit: Morning Call) "When’s enough, enough?" Sometimes the game narratives can fall into something that seems like a cliche - the old halftime pep talk about "winning one for the Gipper", or something like that.  But this one feels different. Head coach Andy Coen talked about it, and junior QB Brad Mayes talked about it - about Brad taking control of the locker room at halftime with a team full of long faces. Going into that locker room, Brad had just before rallied on a broken play to fire a perfect pass to junior RB Dominick Bragalone to cut the two-touchdown deficit to one, and after a special teams touchdown for Colgate was called back on a penalty, the defense stopped Colgate cold to end the half. But despite the momentum, gloom was still in the locker room. “As a quarterback, you have to be a vocal leader," Brad told Keith Groller of The Morning Call this week.   "I’ve done it in the past when I was younger and in high s...

We've all been there, Lehigh fans.  I know I was as an undergrad. You enter the mid-term needing something big to save a bad grade, so you work furiously, trying to catch up on months of the readings you should have been doing, going over homework you skipped for some good reason - that good reason escapes you now , of course - to try to ace the midterm that can pull your grade back up from the dead. With copious amounts of coffee, you go over the readings, taking the notes you should have been taking all along.  You stay up all night to go over all the material, catching several catnaps during the morning.  You finally enter the classroom of the test - and you deliver the grade you needed.  You save your GPA, and you find yourself finally back on track - and then you collapse in a heap of bones on your bed. OK, maybe the Colgate victory was not quite like that . In a way, though, it feels like it - the win injects a huge measure of hope into a season that...

It was a very different time for Lehigh football, but in 1966, the Engineers started out the season 0-5, and had to travel up to Hamilton, New York to take on the Colgate Red Raiders. "Lehigh faces its toughest opponent of the season tomorrow afternoon in the Red Raiders of Colgate, at Kerr Memorial Stadium in Hamilton, N.Y," the 1966  Brown and White preview read. After their 21-15 loss to Colgate in 1966, the Engineers would fall to 0-6 and eventually finish 0-9 on the season, the last time Lehigh started a season 0-6 and the last time Lehigh would go winless in a season as well. It was that sort of historic elephant that the 2017 Mountain Hawks had on their backs this Saturday, whether they realized it or not. Had they lost to their Chenango Valley rival, they would have been the first Lehigh football team to go 0-6 in more than fifty years.  0-5 entering this game, ironically their sixth shot at a football victory would involve going to the same venue to pl...

It was Colgate 28, Lehigh 14 as the first half was coming to a close.  The Mountain Hawks had the ball, but the pall over Lehigh fans everywhere was very evident - "here we go again," most seemed to be thinking. You couldn't blame fans necessarily for thinking that way, of course.  The Mountain Hawks hadn't found out yet this year how to pull out a game like this, and normally, a two-touchdown deficit to Colgate feels like a four-touchdown deficit, the way they run the ball and gradually crush the spirit of opposing teams. Driving and scrambling - somewhat of a broken play - junior QB Brad Mayes found junior RB Dominick Bragalone downfield with a big 35 yard touchdown pass, cutting the deficit to 28-21. And then, gradually, over the course of a half of football, Lehigh put mistakes behind them just as the uncharacteristic mistakes by Colgate seemed to mount.  One Colgate touchdown would be called back.  Then another.  And Lehigh would battle back ...

You could say that following Lehigh football through the first five weeks has been an exercise in frustration. That's probably understating things quite a bit. The season was not supposed to unfurl itself in this way. The Mountain Hawks, rated in the Top 25 to start the season, remained that way after losing a tough game against Villanova, but then fell out of the national rankings when they followed that up with a loss to Monmouth. And since, the team has just kept losing, each week more excruciating than the last. Some Lehigh fans appear to think that the Mountain Hawks could turn things around and make a run at the Patriot League Championship in a world where the Patriot League is a combined 9-20 against out-of-conference foes. I suppose it is still possible. But to this fan, this goal can't be the focus of the coming week. Speaking as a fan, I feel the focus of all the players and coaches needs to be on one singular goal: how to win one, singular, football...