The Spiders head down to Greensboro, North Carolina for our first ever CAA meeting against the Aggies, who come in at dead last in the CAA with not much offensive firepower. We’ve struggled with two lesser opponents already this season so this is by no means a guaranteed cake walk.

North Carolina A&T

Many Richmond fans will remember when A&T came to Robins Stadium in 2016 for a 1st-round FCS playoff matchup. Leading that team was Tarik Cohen, but thankfully this is a much different team than what A&T used to be. Coming in with just one win it’s hard to find a lot of positives so far for this group. The biggest compliment you can give them is that they haven’t been blown out despite being the statistically worst team in the CAA. Three score losses to Elon and Villanova aren’t great (but not awful), however they played NC Central and Delaware to two score games. They haven’t figured out how to win but this isn’t a team that rolls over easily. Richmond should extend the winning streak in this match-up, but I don’t think they are so bad that we can bring our “C game” and expect to walk out with a win.

Betting

Despite a 1-5 record for NC A&T it looks like the Spiders will only be 9-point favorites on the road. Total is coming in right around 43 with a projected score of 26-17. The Aggies have been horrible on offense yet somewhat formidable on defense so both of these make sense. If Richmond wasn’t known for playing down to the level of our opponent the -9 would be a good spot, but we’ve seen some odd games against lesser competition this season. Still hard not to jump on anything under 10 in my opinion.

Spiders on Offense

The strength of the Aggies is their defense who, despite having fairly average numbers, have continued to improve each week. They played their best game last weekend, holding a Delaware team that was averaging over 30 PPG to just 21 in a game played at Delaware. They allow the 3rd fewest yards per game in the air, which only somewhat makes up for having the worst run defense in the CAA. A&T allows over 240 YPG on the ground at a clip of 5.5 YPC (both last). Their pass defense gets a little boost from how bad their run defense is, as the 3rd fewest YPG allowed passing is mostly due to seeing high running volume. They only have two INTs, allow a 65% completion rate, and have given up 12 TDs, so this feels like a group we should win against in both areas.

My guess is an aerial attack like ours could easily have success in this match-up, but I doubt we don’t play to their weakness. We’ve seen this Spiders offense taken to a new level the past few weeks, yet conventional wisdom says this is a run heavy game for UR.

What I’m watching for

Build on the run game – The most obvious prediction is that Richmond continues to run the ball well but I do think it’s important we string two good games together. Take away the sacks and UR was over 5 YPC against Rhody, a mark we should hit again this week. The return of Wickersham plays a factor in this as he averaged over 6 YPC and looked fully in his old form. This is another perfect game to work him back in because we should have plenty of drives where we can run it seven or eight times with success.

The RB2 spot also took a turn in Rhode Island, with Fonnae Webb grabbing five carriers compared to only two for Milan Howard. True freshman Jamaal Brown still has one game remaining before he hits his redshirt limit however I don’t think he traveled to URI, so RB2 should be between Webb and Howard. Getting Webb more action does help the Spiders going forward, as both Smith and Howard are in their final year, so I’m always curious how much that factors in when discussing a reserve/substitute role. One game won’t conclude anything but if we see Webb end up with the second most carries again that would be very telling.

Clean game from Coleman – The Camden Coleman hype train has reached unprecedented levels for a UR freshman QB. Jerry Rice watchlist, FCS National freshman of the week, CAA offensive player of the week… just an insane amount of buzz surrounding a guy who was likely to get zero snaps all season just four weeks ago. Another big game in the air would bode well for his confidence but I’d much prefer a clean game in this matchup. North Carolina A&T isn’t someone we should need a 300+ yard game to beat, so rather than a 6 TD day how about a 0 INT day?

Coleman has 5 INTs in just 10 quarters of football, with a few more passes that maybe should’ve been picked. Again, it’s par for the course – a true freshman QB that hasn’t gotten many reps until the last week of September is bound to have these mistakes. I’m not saying a zero turnover game would eliminate all turnovers going forward but it’d be great for him to have that one game to look back on where he fully protected the football. A&T sets up well for that to happen.

Is Landon Ellis WR2 until further notice? – With Ja’Vion Griffin out the past few weeks the snaps/targets for our other receivers have been interesting.

DeGennaro is obviously #1, and it seems like true freshman Landon Ellis is trending towards being the #2 guy.

Targets for Garcia Jr., Veney, and Wilson have all dropped compared to a couple weeks ago, while Ellis is seeing the ball a lot more. A few games don’t necessarily prove this point to be true but it’s still a note-worthy trend. The rise of our tight ends is likely the primary reason for this (they’ve had 12 targets the past three game), as well as our backs getting a little more involved in the passing game. With that, overall WR targets were bound to drop some however the rate at which they’ve gone to Ellis has been astounding.

He had a chance to really separate himself from the pack with two 1-on-1 balls against Rhody but didn’t bring either down. Neither were an easy catch but based on his reaction after the plays he thought he could’ve come down with both. While I imagine he remains a key target in our WR room I don’t see slot-guys Garcia Jr. or Veney combining for zero again. We’ve had solid distribution in plenty of games this season so while it’s clear that Ellis is on the rise, don’t expect us to only target two receivers each game going forward.

Spiders on Defense

I’m going to list some stats about A&T’s offense and you aren’t going to believe me. None of these are typos – I’ve checked their website, the CAA website, ESPN, etc. All of these are somehow true.

• NC A&T averages 53 passing yards per game. Fifty three. That’s it.
• They have one red zone TD the entire season.
• They have zero 100+ yard passing games all season. Not zero 100-yard games by a receiver, zero by QBs.
• They have zero passing TDs on the season. In six games – not one single passing TD.

I was convinced I was looking at the wrong data. In 2023 there’s a CAA team that throws for about 50 yards a game, has never passed for more than 100 yards, and has zero passing TDs on the season. Insane to average those stats over six games. And those are the interesting ones – the more standard numbers show they average only 12 PPG, 209 yards of total offense, and are well below average on 3rd down.

Now listen, I’m not here to trash their team. This is simply a preview of the opponent with no desire to put anyone down – it’s just truly shocking that this is happening. I’m not saying A&T should be a contender for the CAA title but I didn’t expect their transition to go this poorly. I don’t think they’re destined to be this bad forever however nothing about 2023 has been kind to this Aggie offense.

What I’m watching for

Strong outing against an inferior opponent – In the games we’ve played competition that isn’t to our level, we’ve struggled defensively. Morgan State – good. Delaware State – not great. Hampton – ugly. Maine – not great again.

Call it a lack focus, call it coaching, call it guys taking other teams too lightly, or call it a coincidence. Whatever you think it is this is something that hasn’t been great this year. It happened every now and again the past five years yet we went all of 2022 without it, handling each CAA game we were 10+ point favorites in. I do think the injuries and inconsistent rotations have played a factor this year so I’m hoping that the momentum from Rhode Island will carry over.

Sometimes there isn’t much to say, and this is one of those games. We can pull all the numbers we want but their offense doesn’t stack up well in any areas. This isn’t a group that should threaten our defense too often, and if not this could be a smooth conference road win. Go out there and play a steady 60 minutes of football and rest should take care of itself.

Secondary – The spring position swap of Trae Tomlinson and Jabril Hayes has paid off immensely for this staff. Tomlinson won and has maintained the spot at field corner, with D’Angelo Stocker now playing the boundary spot with Rankin Jr. out. Curious what we do when Rankin Jr. returns because Stocker has played well in his absence. Would imagine there’s some rotation of the three but right now the combo of Tomlinson/Stocker is working so I’ll be watching how they manage the snaps at corner in the next few weeks.

The other side of that spring swap was Jabril Hayes, who has played a fair amount in 4-2-5 packages. With him getting more snaps and Banks/Parker rarely leaving the field we haven’t seen as much Mikey Jarmolowich as I would’ve thought. I don’t have every play graded for the season but it feels like he does a lot more good than bad when he’s out there for the Spiders. With a more run-heavy opponent in A&T I’m thinking this could be a week where we see #25 out there more often for this Spiders’ defense.

Tristan Wheeler – Now only 10 tackles away from the #2 as the UR record book after the 2022 season was wrong. They had him at 346 (what I used in the fall camp LB preview) when in reality he was at 366 – this week’s game notes update those standings so it will get here even faster than we thought. Apologies for the bad info.

Special Teams

Pretty solid special teams from the Aggies all around. Nice punting average, solid FG kicking, and pretty good kickoff coverage despite only have one touchback on the season. Where the Aggies have exceled is kickoff returns, as their primary guy averages 39 yards/return to go along with two TDs on the year. Those came against NC Central and Villanova (both worthy opponents) so this will be a nice barometer for our #2 CAA ranked KOC unit. McManus has settled in well to that role and overall coverage has been great in recent weeks. A strong test awaits the Spiders in this area tomorrow.

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North Carolina A&T recap (Monday morning)