Lehigh Football Nation

All WR Troy Pelleite r and OL Zach Duffy ever wanted was a shot at the NFL. After the NFL Draft concluded this past Saturday, they learned that they both would be getting a chance. Troy, whose name is plastered all over the Lehigh record books, was invited to minicamp with the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles.   And Zach Duffy, the fiery leader of the Mountain Hawk offensive line, was invited to minicamp with the Indianapolis Colts. Lehigh Nation is thrilled that these two great Mountain Hawk football players will get their shot to play in the NFL.

We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. A key element to this week's game is the status of Fordham QB Kevin Anderson and RB Chase Edmonds .  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Fordham is a different team with or without one or both of them. Edmonds was held out in the second half of a blowout loss to Colgate, only eight yards short of the Patriot League all-time rushing record, while Anderson left the Lafayette game with an ankle injury, and hasn't returned since. Some speculation exists on the Fordham board that Anderson was suspended for the Georgetown game last week.  If it is true that Anderson was suspended, and not hurt, the interesting part of that aspect is that there is historic precedent. "Eagle-eyed followers of Lehigh Football Nation may have noticed last week that Fordham did not suit up their regular starter, QB Kevin Anderson, versus Georgetown," I wrote in last year's...

This was not how it was supposed to be. Back in March, looking at the schedule, plenty of Lehigh and Fordham fans looked at the schedule and circled October 28th, 2017 as a must-see game. WR Troy Pelletier?  RB Chase Edmonds?   Are you kidding me?  It might be a battle of nationally-ranked teams!  There's an outside chance ESPN College Football Gameday might show up in New York City!  Imagine that! College Football Gameday did indeed come to New York City this season.  But it wasn't for the matchup on October 28th, 2017. Now that the date is very close to being upon us, a very different College Football Gameday-free matchup awaits. Sure, WR Troy Pelletier will be suiting up for Lehigh, and even though he didn't suit up versus Georgetown this week, it's anticipated that RB Chase Edmonds will suit up this weekend as well.  The game, without question, will be a showcase for some athletes that might very well find themselves playing on Sundays...

It was supposed to be RB Chase Edmonds ' day. The questions around Lehigh, as ever, surrounded the defense.  Would they be able to slow down Edmonds?  Would he score two touchdowns, or three?  Would they hold the almost-certain-NFL-player to only 200 yards? In all the talk about Edmonds, people forgot about two pretty good runners on the Lehigh side: senior QB Nick Shafnisky and sophomore RB Dominick Bragalone . Bragalone, for the second straight week, had another amazing game, getting 192 yards rushing, zero negative rushes, and 3 touchdowns.  Shafnisky ran for 112 yards and added 3 touchdowns of his own. It would be a game where Lehigh would not need to punt - the first game since Bucknell in 1999 where that was the case.  That's because they ran over Fordham, 58-37, going up at one point 51-9 before giving up a bunch of late scores. Next week Lehigh will host Bucknell for the right to clinch an FCS playoff shot, and the chance to do no worse than t...

We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Remember when Fordham RB Chase Edmonds set a Patriot League rushing record against the Mountain Hawks?  I do - it happened just last year , just the sort of Halloween "treat" I'd rather live without. "Edmonds came out of the locker room like a man on fire, and played like it," I wrote.  "Two 14 yard runs set up Fordham's go-ahead score, and he would rush for 100 yards in the 3rd quarter, ripping off a 60 yard touchdown run to give Fordham a 38-21 lead and capping off three straight touchdowns for the Rams." Another less-publicized reason for Lehigh losing in the Bronx last season?  Unforced errors. "Unfortunately, we're still our own worst enemy," head coach Andy Coen said afterwards.  "Whether its penalties or turnovers, you can't beat a good team with those. They're trying to learn that lesson. If you're going to k...

Junior WR Troy Pelletier seems to want the game to start now.  Like, yesterday. When you read and hear the interviews with him at media day this week, he seems to want the game to start right after the interview, to go on the field and get the game over with right now. Though he knows he and teammate junior WR Gatlin Casey are on top of the total receiving yardage list in FCS, that's not what he wanted to talk about on Wednesday. "I haven't really put much thought into it," Pelletier told Greg Joyce of Lehigh Valley Live . "I just know good things are going to happen if we prepare the right way. We focus on each day to get better. We're confident if we put ourselves mentally and physically taking care of our body, good things are going to happen." There was lots of "focusing on getting better, taking it one game at a time" talk from both Pelletier and head coach Andy Coen this week, as you might expect.  But their body language sa...

"With the exception of the first five minutes," The Brown and White said, "Lehigh played indifferent football.  At times the Brown and White showed flashes of form, but for the most part they lacked the dash and drive which characterizes the opening minutes of the game.  The aerial attack which gained so much ground last week was poor, and it was not until the latter part of the third quarter that Lehigh completer her first successful forward pass." This quote, taken from the 1923 student newspaper detailing the first-ever official football meeting between Lehigh and Fordham, won't be something that's repeated in the student newspaer in their recap this weekend.  In fact, the fifteen points scored in that 1923 game, a 9-6 Lehigh win, might very well be outdistanced in the first five minutes of the game this weekend., and it's a guarantee that Fordham and Lehigh will be completing their first passes well before the 3rd quarter. It would be stunning...

We continue the series "Know Your 2016 Opponents" a mere 16 days away from the opening of the 2016 football season. This might be a good time, for your reading pleasure, to remind you that these are modified with some more awesome Lehigh information from the originals over at The College Sports Journal . It's also a good time to remind you that I already have written a bunch of these: Bucknell Georgetown Holy Cross Lafayette Princeton Yale To come: Penn, Colgate, Villanova, and, of course Monmouth, the season opener on September 3rd.  And also, this preview of Fordham.  Below the flip.

Say Doc Brown had shown up at your house October 21st, 2015, and told you something about the upcoming Lehigh/Fordham game. Suppose he lets slip that senior QB Nick Shafnisky would go out with an injury before halftime, and that Fordham RB Chase Edmonds would set a Patriot League record for rushing yards in a game while getting over 400 all-purpose yards. Would you have gone to the game? Would you have bothered to be one of the 5,000 fans in attendance who watched the No. 11-ranked Rams face off against a game Mountain Hawk squad? The truth is, even though the loss was certainly frustrating and a teeth-gnashing reminder of what could have been, with two minutes to play in the game freshman PK Ed Mish lined up at the 27 yard line with a chance to make it a one-score game. At what was effectively the "two-minute warning" in the game, Lehigh had battled all the way back from Shaf's injury, their own penalties and mistakes, and put the Mountain Hawks in a pos...

We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Fans, coaches and players alike are keenly aware of the importance of this weekend's game. “If you look at our win against Bucknell and our win against Penn, which are our two best wins of the year, those were our two best weeks of practice,” senior TE Chris Ruhl told The Brown and White this week . “It was our most intense week of practice. It was our most focused week of practice, so head coach Andy Coen has been pushing for us to set the standard with that.” Also in this week's game notes for Lehigh , which I forgot about for yesterday, sees a big return on the two-deep as well in junior LB Colton Caslow . "We've still got a lot of work to do and we're still working hard on getting better every single time we step on the field," senior LB Noah Robb said this week . "We've made a lot of progress, even from two weeks ago. We're getting there....

The past two years have been ones of Ram nightmares for Lehigh fans. Even though it seemed like QB Michael Nebrich was never 100% healthy as a Fordham Ram, he always seemed like he was plenty nimble enough to step up in the pocket and drop forty or fifty points on Lehigh's defense. But now, it's a new year.  Nebrich has graduated, as well as an eye-popping thirty-two other Fordham football seniors, many of whom had key responsibilities on both offense and defense. Head coach Joe Moorhead knows his 2015 Fordham Rams will look different.  But exactly how different? And will the Rams be able to simply reload and win a second straight title and qualify for a third straight FCS playoff appearance? If the preseason polls are any indication, Fordham was picked to win it all for the second consecutive year.

In the past, the opening comments from the Patriot League Executive director took a good ten to fifteen minutes. But since it was Jennifer Heppel 's second day on the job, her opening comments were short and sweet. "I turned on the computer, retrieved a voicemail, and despite the fact that I was convinced I would lose the battle, I considered it a day well lived," she said. Before addressing the assembled media at the Green Pond Country Club, she had met with all seven Patriot League football coaches and discussed the different rules changes. "I couldn't be more excited to be here honored to be the next leader of the Patriot League," she continued in her brief comments. A few minutes later, Lehigh was picked to finish fifth in the preseason Patriot League football poll.   Sophomore WR Troy Pelletier, junior LB Colton Caslow and senior P Austin Devine were named to the preseason all-League team, and just like that, the media were unleashed to me...

As beautiful fall days go, it was hard to beat this Saturday's homecoming game at Murray Goodman when it came to weather, atmosphere, or color. Unfortunately for Lehigh, it was also hard to beat the Fordham offense that showed up on homecoming in terms of physicalness, efficiency, and big play ability. The Mountain Hawks showed a lot of fight on Saturday, playing tough until the end against the No. 12-ranked Rams.  But after Fordham surged to a two-score lead early in the game, Lehigh's efforts to cut the deficit never really made it close, falling 48-27 in a career day for Fordham freshman RB Chase Edmonds .

WR Brian Wetzel (AP Photo) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Fordham's incredible squad gives a tantalizing glimpse as to what Patriot League football teams might look like once four seasons of scholarship athletes come into the program. In their first year of eligibility for the Patriot League title since adopting conventional scholarships in football, Fordham has been drilling opponents, scoring more than 40 points per game in their six wins. They're doing so with scholarship athletes, of course - but with scholarship athletes that are seniors, too, including two very, very important transfers from UConn. Fordham's strategy has been a slow payoff, but a great one so far, giving the Rams a squad that is among the top offenses in all of FCS. That's what Lehigh is up against this weekend.