Lehigh Football Nation

The enormity of the challenge of Lehigh's 2015 football schedule was evident to everyone looking at the schedule. "October 10th, at Bucknell.  October 24th, at Fordham" . In August, every Lehigh fan wants to be an optimist.  They want to believe that this is the year that they win a Patriot League champions.  They look at the entirety of the schedule, and say, "Yeah.  We could win that one." But even the biggest optimists looked at this two-game stretch, at Bucknell, and at Fordham, and had to pause, and perhaps exhale.   "Number Two and Number One in the league last year," they think.  "On the road.  And Fordham, a Top 15 team for the last two years, who has gone to the FCS playoffs for two straight years, with a returning Jerry Rice award-winner in RB Chase Edmonds." Lehigh defied their preseason expectations by beating Bucknell 21-10 two weeks ago , setting up an extremely meaningful game in the Bronx this coming weekend for ...

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.

The businesswoman who looked suspiciously like Nicki Minaj was packing her suitcase. Art sighed, again. "We're done here," the businesswoman said.  We can stop the work.  Fordham's won.  Head coach Joe Moorhead won the Patriot League last year, the Patsy Points this year, and, for all we know, has won the annual Patriot League head coaching marble championship, too." "THIS IS A JOB WE NEED TO DO TO THE FINISH," Art said ominously.  One more squad, one more final revision, and we're done for another year.  Coach Moorhead certainly seems like he has a lot of marbles in his pocket, but we need to figure out exactly how many." "All I know is I'm fairly certain you'll find something bad to say about THIS class too," the businesswoman said. "You know me well," Art said.

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.

If the records and numbers determined the outcome, they probably wouldn't bother playing the football game. Lehigh, at 1-5, faces off against Fordham, the 12th-ranked team in the nation, who sits atop the Patriot League at 6-1. Fordham boasts one of the top offenses in the  nation - that part's pretty much known by everyone - but what few people realize is their defense, for the most part, has also been stellar. Three weeks ago, on Friday night TV against the defending Patriot League champions, Lafayette, you probably heard or saw the four-minute stretch where QB Michael Nebrich helped score three straight touchdowns to put the game, basically, out of reach.  What you didn't maybe stop to think about is that the Rams stopped the Leopards on three quick, straight drives, allowing that offense to bowl over the Lafayette defense. So don't play the game, the stats and highlights seem to say.  Fordham's too good.  Don't even bother. But you can guarantee...

(Photo Credit: WFUV) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Though this game doesn't officially count towards the Patriot League standings, make no mistake about how big this game is for both programs. Look no further than the ticket sales for this game. Fordham's Jack Coffey field is sold out, all 7,000 seats, and even on StubHub.com this game is a hot ticket, with no tickets available as of right now.  (Check back if you still need tickets!) A sold-out, 7,000 seat venue for a meaningful football game is what FCS football is all about, and whatever happens it's going to be a fantastic ambassador for Patriot League football broadcast across the country on CBS Sports Network.

(Photo Credit: Philly.com) "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" I honestly don't know exactly why this quote from the cheese-fest-y move Clash of the Titans  was the first thing to leap to mind when thinking about this weekend's Lehigh/Fordham matchup. In the Patriot League, certainly, Lehigh and Fordham are the definition of Titans, both undefeated with the three best out-of-conference wins in the League this season.  Two are owned by Fordham - they beat FBS Temple and nationally-ranked Villanova - and the other by Lehigh - their win last week over New Hampshire. In the FCS, too, you could define them as Titans in the sense that the Mountain Hawks and Rams are two of only twelve undefeated teams in the entire subdivision.  Not all of these undefeated teams will be Titans at the end of the season, of course, but at least much of the national FCS community agrees for now that both are top teams: both are ranked in both major polls as two of the top 13 teams in the nation. ...

In 2010, Fordham limped to a 1-10 record, ending head coach Tom Masella 's time as head coach on Rose Hill. In the offseason, outgoing active athletic director Frank McLaughlin introduced Fordham's next head coach, Joe Moorhead , and exclaimed to all present, "This is not a rebuilding program.  We expect to be successful this coming year." After turning things around to the tune of a 6-5 record this past season, few would argue that first-time head coach Moorhead was indeed a large success last season, allowing the Rams to put their 1-10 season well in their rear-view mirror. For the Rams, the challenge will now be to increase their win total again, and return to the FCS playoffs.

(Photo Credit: Fordham Athletics) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip. It's strange that this is a conference game - yet not a conference game - for Lehigh, which actually makes this a difficult game to analyze. Against, say, Bucknell, a loss would be devastating to Lehigh's Patriot League title chances (and autobid chances).  A loss against Fordham - whom Lehigh has played every year for the last 25 years, most counting in the Patriot League standings - would still be awfully tough to swallow, but not fatally so.  There's more history there than against, say, Liberty, yet a tiny bit less at stake than against, say, Colgate. How dangerous are the Rams, really, in the end?  Let's dive in.

(Photo Credit: WFUV) Everyone knew that Fordham would be a different team from the Rams that went 1-10 in 2011. The only question was: how different? They changed the helmets - a sort-of cross between the crimson, white-lined black letter of Harvard and the numbered helmet of a Holy Cross or Alabama . They changed the uniforms - presumably to make it resemble those of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals , who, in the early going, a a surprising 3-0 with wins against the Patriots and Eagles.  (That might be no accident: former Ram QB John Skelton is on the roster and started opening day, while his brother, TE Steve Skelton , who also went to Fordham, is on their practice squad.) They even changed the head coach - Joe Moorhead took over for Tom Masella to usher in the next phase of Fordham's transition from need-limited aid to academic index-based scholarships. So far, the Rams are different enough from last year, tripling their win total from last year (1) over their ...

Technically, it could be considered a non-conference game. While Fordham is a part of the Patriot League, and their players show up in the preseason and postseason league all-America teams, since they started to offer merit-based aid for football players, they continue to be ineligible for the league title, and their wins and losses against teams in the League only serve to break ties. But they're not just a non-conference game. Fordham's players know what this game means for their program in 2012.  Rules might determine that they can't win a Patriot League title, but they know if they sweep the Patriot League they have an excellent chance to make the field as an at-large team. The centerpiece of that argument would be a win over nationally-ranked Lehigh.

While Lehigh was making their run in the FCS playoffs this year, there were a host of interesting head coaching moves that directly involved three of Lehigh's opponents in 2011. From the Mountain Hawk perspective, the most interesting such move was that of sort-of Patriot League member Fordham, who was relieved of his head coaching duties at the conclusion of a dismal 1-10 season where the Rams lost by double digits in their last eight games. The Rams' hiring of head coach Joe Moorhead from the staff at UConn is but one of the interesting FCS offseason coaching moves.