The 2025 squad ended the season doing the two things they do best – playing in one-possession games and beating the William & Mary Tribe. A thriller down in Williamsburg ends the season on the high note and gives the Spiders a third straight win over W&M.

Drives

Game thoughts

Penalties – Personal foul. Personal foul. Personal foul. Pass interference. Kick catch interference. Holding. Personal foul. False start. Delay of game. Unsportsmanlike conduct. 10 penalties for 116 yards is ridiculous. I’m too pesimistic to leave this alone, and thankfully W&M was nearly as bad as we were (nine penalties for 85 yards). The Spiders must leave this behind in 2025.

1st half v 2nd half – We all know this was a game of two halves. Separate breakdowns for offense/defense will be below, as we went from one of the most boring halves of football to absolute must-see TV. I was going to save this for the season recap but it has to be mentioned here – I cannot put into words how fun it is to see a program continually battle no matter the situation, something we’ll never fully appreciate until you don’t have it. Very few teams would fight the way the Spiders did while being behind the 8-ball most of the season. In seven different games, the Spiders trailed in the 2nd half yet either tied or took the lead at some point. Again, this is not a consolation, it’s just what good teams do and it deserves attention. No one wants to go 7-5 again however you would’ve never know our record watching this group’s effort week in and week out. That’s something all UR fans are extremely thankfully for.

Capital Cup dominance – Three in a row, four of the last five, 17 of the last 22. That’s a whole lot of winning and not a lot of losing.

Offense

11 drives – 65 snaps | 6 punts, 4 TDs, 1 turnover on downs

1st half/2nd half – A disastrous 1st half is now a funny story to tell after what we did the final 30 minutes. The side-by-side comparisons are staggering:

We don’t need to dive too deep because I have absolutely no idea what we were going for early on. So many QB runs and so many short passes, as the offense never crossed midfield the first 30 minutes. As the passing charts show, we were a one-sided, close-range passing attack in the 1st half and a perfectly balanced operation in the 2nd half.

Like we’ve seen before, once the Spiders used the entire field, both horizontally and vertically, everything clicked. Wickersham was deadly accurate, the ground game got going, and for just the second time all year Richmond scored TDs on three straight drives. William & Mary simply had no answers.

Quarterbacks – Both answered the call but this was all about Kyle Wickersham.

In potentially his final game in a UR uniform Kyle delivered a flawless performance, with two passing TDs and a rushing TD in the 3rd quarter alone. He put throws in spots only his receivers could get and wore down the W&M defense with his power running. After his injury Snelsire made a perfect pass to Griffin to get deep into W&M territory, then capped it all off with the game winning 14-yard TD run. For all the crazy back and forth we had throughout the year both guys played a part in bringing home our biggest victory.

Zable Stadium must’ve felt like home to Wickersham. In two starts he was 26/39 passing for 280 yards & 2 TDs, along with 145 rushing yards & 2 more TDs (plus 2 wins).

Ja’Vion Griffin – J5 is officially on my short list for underappreciated Spiders in my lifetime. I’m truly so happy that he ended his collegiate career the way he did, displaying his true talents as a receiver the entire month of November.

A dominant November, with a TD in all four games and two 100-yard games. I talked over the summer about wanting to see Griffin step up as the WR1 after the departures and he did that and plenty more.

Redzone – The 2025 woes ended in Williamsburg, with the Spiders going a perfect 4-4 with four TDs. That was our first game scoring four redzone TDs, as the staff found the answers in time to bring home the Capital Cup.

Defense

12 drives – 57 snaps | 7 punts, 3 TDs, 2 turnovers [1 on downs]

Our defense kept us in the game in the 1st half and helped bring home the win in the 2nd. We held the Tribe to their fewest points and yards against FCS competition, completely neutralizing their best playmakers.

3rd down – The Spiders held William & Mary to just four 3rd down conversions, their second lowest of the season. Having 12 possessions but running just 57 plays shows we limited lengthy drives, as the Tribe’s longest possession lasted only seven plays, giving our offense plenty of opportunities in the 2nd half.

Defensive front – Disruption has been a staple of Justin Wood led defenses and that was on full display over the weekend. Our defensive ends had 1.5 sacks and 3 TFLs, our defensive tackles combined for 1.5 sacks and 2 TFLs, and four different linebackers tallied TFLs against the Tribe offense.

The pressure off the edge significantly impacted W&M’s gameplan, as Hughes didn’t have a ton of time to go through his progressions. At the same time, most of his scrambles came from stepping up in the pocket yet our DTs weren’t having any of that. Add in Blake Houser in his QB spy role here, as the interior linemen stopped their run game and forced Hughes to sit in the pocket and beat us with his arm. As a result Hughes netted just four yards rushing, his lowest output of the season.

Matei Fitz recorded a 1/2 sack in his final game as a Spider, with Braxton Lassiter adding a sack and his first career interception. Byrd & Hoilette both finished the season above eight sacks. Superb work from coaches Rob Noel (DTs) and Chris Ellis (DEs) to replace two starters from 2024 and have so many guys contributing at a high level.

Coverage – That game was won in the trenches but let’s not lose sight of how good our coverage was throughout the day.

Just 86 passing yards for Hughes, his lowest total this season BY FAR. He also didn’t throw a touchdown for only the second time in 12 games. His 17-yard completion that came up short on the final play of the game was his longest pass, as we shut down their ability to stretch the field. Amir Haskett had another solid game at corner (along with a highly questionable PI call), with Lee Bruner IV delivering a big hit to force an interception. Add in Tayshaun Burney snuffing out multiple screens from his nickel position and the secondary was excellent all the way around. It’s fun to see how well our secondary can play when they communicate and I hope 2025 serves as a building block for next year.

Special Teams

I feel for Jaiden Fair, who muffed another punt and never saw the field after that. He was just too good early in the year to not have me think the injury is still on his mind. Curious to see how we looks in the spring after a full recovery.

The rest of the day was uneventful, with Jayden Alsheskie 4/4 on PATs and Will McManus adding two more touchbacks. Andrew King returned his first kickoff of the season, replacing the injured Isaiah Dawson.

Thank you!

As another season comes to an end, thank you to everyone who reads, shares, and comments throughout the season. I’ll say the same thing I always say – continuing to grow the UR football community is the only goal of this website. I enjoy the back and forths about what people agree with, disagree with, or want to hear more about. I’m always open to take suggestions on how to structure things so feel free to reach out with any thoughts you may have. The more topics discussed the better, as there’s always room for more fan involvement.

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Next Post

Sometime in December I’ll do a quick season recap, overviewing how our season numbers ended up against the rest of the Patriot League and FCS.

The big thing now is the upcoming transfer portal window. The window is open for 15 days, from January 2nd through 16th. I imagine you’ll see some transfers announce their intentions on social media before that however they can’t officially enter until the New Year. We’ll lose some guys to the portal and we’ll gain some in the coming months – a natural part of college athletics these days but we have to avoid significant losses like we saw last season. Recruiting remains a full-time endeavor, even recruiting your own guys throughout the year, so I’m hoping we’ve made substantial adjustments. It’s a bad idea to speculate who may enter so for now let’s wait and see how things play out. I will likely have a portal update in the season recap.