Lehigh Football Nation

According to the FCS record books for 2017, there are 123 Division I schools listed in the team statistical Rankings.  Out of 123 teams, Lehigh was ranked 119th in total team defense, allowing 477.7 yards per game. And the defensive numbers don't get much better the more you look. Rushing defense, 117th.  Passing yards allowed, 89th.  Team sacks, 118th.  Red zone defense, 103rd.  Total sacks in 12 games: 10, or 0.8 per game.  Total interceptions in 12 games: 4, or 0.25 per game.  Total takeaways: 13, or a little over 1 per game. Though the final defensive numbers from 2017 are unable to be sugar-coated, nobody involved with Lehigh's defense is running away from the facts this spring.  In fact, they feel they are better than this. "When you hear so much about your defense not being good," defensive coordinator Craig Sutyak said this week , "you start to believe it, and I think our kids started to believe it too the last couple of year...

( Photo Credit: Craig Shipley /The Morning Call ) What a difference two weeks makes. At times it's hard to comprehend how desperate it felt for Lehigh fans after the Mountain Hawks' slender loss at Villanova to fall 26-21 to the nationally-ranked Wildcats. At 0-2, after a pair of excruciating losses, a rematch with the defending Ivy League champions Penn awaited, a game that the Quakers had circled on their calendar since about December.  Following that tough test would be a Princeton team that laid 52 points on Lehigh last year and returned almost all of the skill players on the team that beat them then. A losing record going into the Colgate seemed like a best-case scenario. And yet, here we are after these two tough tests, and the Mountain Hawks are 2-2, with a boatload of momentum going into their game vs. 0-2 Yale next weekend.  Suddenly, 3-2 and a three-game winning streak going into an enormous game vs. Colgate seems like a real possibility. The reason for...

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?

The 2014 season is over, and recruiting has been very much underway for the Lehigh football program. If you mosey on over to the Lehigh Sports Forum , you can get a list of all the unofficial recruits that head coach Andy Coen and the rest of the coaching staff appear to have secured commitments for the class of 2019. I always look at the Lehigh football program's recruiting season as a list to Santa.  If I was running the program, what would I want to see under Lehigh's tree? In order to do that, we need to see what Lehigh has coming back in 2015, and what we need for the future, and what better place to get that than some of the biggest fans of the program? (And you don't even need to work on your ground game to do it.)

Once upon a time, Lehigh's football team was many preseason pundits' consensus No. 1 in the Patriot League.  It wasn't even a question. Sure, some of that was due to the fact that Fordham, now for the first time in years an full, card-carrying member of the Patriot League, was ineligible. But in 2010 and 2011, Lehigh was the undisputed king, with wins over their Rivals, undisputed Patriot League championships, and even playoff victories against Northern Iowa and Towson. This season, it's a new team with a dynamic offense and a team loaded with talent that is the undisputed champion going into the 2014 season.  With one of the best FCS quaterbacks in the nation, QB Michael Nebrich , and a talented defense backing them up, the Rams now have the targets on their backs. And if Lehigh hopes to stand a chance to challenge the new kings of the hill, they will have to improve immensely on the defensive side of the ball.

During Lehigh's media day, the starting defensive line was eager to show off their offseason weight work - to show how different they were, even from last year. That is a goal that senior NG Sajjad Chagani , told me at Patriot League media day this year. "My goal this year is to be different," he said.  "When you're on the field, you want to be different than everybody else.  I can't really explain it." I quickly told him that he perhaps shouldn't want to be too different - after all, the Mountain Hawks were ranked 19th in total defense in 2011, and sitting just behind Bucknell in total defense in the Patriot League. In 2012, the Mountain Hawks will be reliant on their defense to keep the center together while senior QB Michael Colvin gets his sea legs as Lehigh's opening-day starter. Keeping that defense together starts with the "different" guys up front.

Lehigh's defense last year was one of the best Mountain Hawk fans have seen in an awfully long time. In 2009, a vast, talented secondary featuring CB Jarard "Main Man" Cribbs" and CB John "Prez" Kennedy , and a linebacking unit that headlined a two-time Lehigh/Lafayette MVP in Al Pierce were not the only reasons why Lehigh had the top scoring defense in the Patriot League last year. Head coach Andy Coen brings back a budding defensive superstar and a host of very, very good defensive players.  But the optimism should not diminish the challenge ahead: that defensive coordinator Dave Kotulski has in front of him: to replace three all-Patriot League players, including the entire starting secondary. Will this unit achieve the high bar set by the 2010 squad?  (more)

For fun, I thought I'd pull together my hypothetical ballot for the 25 year all-Patriot Team, in preparation for the Patriot League's release of the team next week on July 25th. Part One, which I'm releasing today, is going to be the defense (and, for good measure, I'm going to include the 25th anniversary all-star punter, too). The intent of the ballot is to be a true "team."  That means that the ballot should consist of four defensive linemen, for linebackers, and four defensive backs. (more)

Yesterday, we took a very close look at the Lehigh offense and what is hoped to be a vastly improved unit from 2009 .  Today we turn our attention to the defense: a squad that has the potential to be one of the best in the nation, if everything works out; and special teams, a squad that has seen agony and ecstasy in the past two years. And yet, the defense loses one of the best defensive linemen in recent memory at Lehigh, DT B.J. Benning , and one of players that head coach Andy Coen considered a "once in a decade" player, LB Matt Cohen .  Replacing them with good players won't be a problem. Having one or more defenders grow into the stars that Cohen and Benning were - that might be the challenge. (more)