Somehow the Spiders have managed to get Delaware State on the schedule, but not Delaware. Another oddity from the 2023 schedule as the Hornets come to Richmond to round out non-conference play in what should be our easiest opponent of the season.

I count four HBCUs on the regular season schedule (Morgan State, Delaware State, Hampton, NC A&T), which is the most I could find all time. UR played three HBCUs in 2014 (Morehead St, Hampton, and Morgan State in the playoffs) but I don’t think we’ve had four in the program’s history. Just an obscure fact.

Delaware State

The Hornets are bad. Really bad. I also said that about Morgan State but it was true – they weren’t good either, we were just worse. Delaware State is unfortunately on another level and not in a good way. They opened the season with a Division-II loss against Bowie State and then suffered a 57-0 shutout at Army last week. Nothing has gone right for them so far and this should be a game that UR can get right back on track with.

Betting

Total looks to be around 45 with the spread at roughly 31 points. Projected score based on that would be 38-7 which makes sense based on how things have gone. I know our number might feel like a lot based on the past two weeks but against a team that is allowing over 400 YPG and has lost to a D-II school it makes sense.

Spiders on Offense

The final game before CAA play is upon us and this offense has so many unanswered questions. Protection, run game, passing attack, you name it. It ends up being a great time to play a team like the Hornets because we need to (should) build some confidence before squaring off against somewhat similar talent levels. Delaware State hasn’t played an FCS level opponent so neither of their prior games means too much statistically. They are coming off a 2022 season in which they lost to Delaware by four scores, as well as Morgan State. They only gave up 23 PPG so their defense wasn’t necessarily the problem, however with two of their three All-MEAC selections graduating there isn’t likely a lot of talent returning on that side of the ball.

From the few games I’ve seen of them it’s either a three man rush with soft zone, or pressure. They haven’t been afraid to pressure from every direction so we’ll for sure see that but they’ll also be content to play zone and make us string plays together. We haven’t had many sustained drives this year so I’m interested to see how they choose to attack us.

What I’m watching for

Can we get the ground game going? – The Spiders are only averaging 85 YPG on the ground so far, with 12% of our entire rushing yardage coming from Owen Laughlin’s 20 yard run on the fake punt last week. Right now it feels like we’re struggling a little bit everywhere so getting this senior group of running backs going would be impactful for igniting this offense. Feels like most runs have been A or B gap early on so I’m interested to see if that changes. Billy Cosh started going a bit more wide in the ground game after a slow start last season so I’m curious if Coach Ross dips into that well and we see our ground attack get more horizontal to help open things up.

Working the ball downfield – I said I’d do a deeper dive of our passing game against Michigan State, so here’s the breakdown by distance and direction:

Some staggering numbers – obviously this is one game, and our opponent was the best we’ll face all year, but it’s still eye opening. Only five of the 25 passes thrown went 10 yards or more, meaning passes anywhere from behind the LOS out to nine yards compiled 80% of our total attempts. We also threw the ball to the right 1/3 of the field 60% of the time, which is ok for one game, but a bad sign if that becomes a pattern. There’s a lot of factors that could influence this but between the rollouts and not being able to work the ball to a 2nd or 3rd read means there’s a chance we’re making it easier on defenses than we need to.

This chart isn’t meant to say that we should be roughly even between 0-9, 10-19, and 20+. However that distribution only highlights what we’ve seen so far – it’s crowded near the LOS and we aren’t doing a good job finding our receivers in the intermediate zones. So far we have one completion to a receiver over 17 yards, a 32 yard screen pass to Jerry Garcia Jr. (0 air yards). This is affecting what we see in coverage (defenses moving closer and closer to the LOS), pressures (less downfield passes = more freedom to blitz and leave the secondary 1-on-1), and our running game (more guys in the box = not good for running).

I don’t think we need a huge increase of 20+ passes but that 10-19 zone has to jump significantly. Once you get a few chunk plays going it makes the four yard receptions turn into seven yard receptions as space underneath opens up a little more. While we’ve done a nice job completing a lot of our underneath routes we’ve got the see the intermediate zone spike upwards, even at the expense of our completion percentage.

Completion percentage – Our completion percentage is…. too high. Weird, but likely the direction we need to go. Wickersham is completing 75% of his passes which is less about him playing great and more about us being too simple. This is directly correlated with the above as any team that throws 80% of their passes within nine yards of the LOS will have a good looking completion percentage. With high completions and low yardage, our yards per attempt (YPA) sit at 5.2 and our yards per completion sit at 6.9. Those are both very low based on 2022 full season statistics and it helps explain why teams are so willing to play tight. I don’t want to sound ridiculous and say I hope #16 completes less passes but sacrificing completion % for a higher YPA and YPC would be extremely beneficial to this UR offense.

Spiders on Defense

Coming off back to back weeks of strong showings this is really about keeping the momentum going. Delaware State’s offense shouldn’t pose any threats so ideally this is another straight forward game for Justin Wood’s defense. The Hornets weren’t overly strong in any area in 2022 and things look to be relatively the same in 2023.

What I’m watching for

Make them one dimensional – Through two games the Hornets are averaging 43 yards rushing per game, with a 1.3 YPC average. Things shouldn’t get much better for them facing our front-7 so if this game plays out the way it should we can force them into a lot of 3rd & longs, or make them pass on earlier downs than they prefer. They averaged 120 passing YPG in 2022 so this isn’t a group that wants to throw the ball too often. A solid run defense early on could be what forces them into early mistakes.

Linebacker personnel – Typically you try and play a lot of guys early in the season and then tighten up the rotations for conference play. I actually think we’re trending to keep a lot of the groups we use active throughout the course of the season, especially at linebacker. Jared Joseph and Quantraill Morris-Walker have been splitting snaps at Will linebacker and it seems both have done well. Wayne Galloway has played some Sam and some Mike, and with Donovan Hoilette also being used as an edge rusher it make sense to keep #9 in the rotations. I still think there’s great value to having established lineups but if we’re able to go five deep at linebacker throughout the course of the season that will be extremely beneficial come November. Expecting to see all five guys contribute this Saturday.

Special Teams

Delaware State was the #7 KOR defense in 2022, only allowing 15 yards per return. A good test for our KOR unit that hasn’t shown much promise early on. We took all touchbacks against Sparty but the Hornets won’t be kicking it out the end zone each time. Not much to analyze here, we just need to be better in the return game.

Their weak spot is allowing blocked kicks, as they allowed three blocked FGs/PATs and three blocked punts in 2022. The Spiders haven’t been known for our kick blocking ability but if you’re trying to ignite an offense that has two TDs on 22 drives (with one starting in the red zone) a blocked kick might be exactly what we need.

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Delaware State recap (Monday morning)