BY: Pietro Marino
Lots to love from the season opener at Zable!
For the 26th consecutive time, W&M beat VMI on the gridiron and opened the season with a much expected win over their (once) historic rival.
While the outcome of the game was never quite in doubt, there’s still plenty we learned of this Tribe team in the early stages of the season. Let’s get into it.
1. Bronson is back
In the limited action that Bronson saw, he looked every bit of his old self, rushing for 54 yards and an opening drive TD on 10 carries. His 21-yard catch, juke and run was a thing of beauty, and it makes you wonder if #9 should be more of a fixture in the passing game moving forward.
Yoder and Imoh had 11 and 10 total touches respectively, which is the type of offensive share I believe will benefit the duo as we get deeper into the season.
Some games I can see Imoh getting a couple more touches and vise versa, and it will really be dependent on the defensive strengths and tendencies of the competition in front of them.
It was also good to see Bronson and the majority of the starters pulled in the waning minutes of the 2nd half; the game was effectively over at halftime, and with Coastal Carolina looming this upcoming week, why risk the injury?
2. Hollis Mathis earned every bit of his ATH position listing
The Blog’s finest NIL athlete put every bit of his offensive ability on display in this win, contributing 117 yards of total offense and scoring a pair of touchdowns on just 6 touches. It truly seemed like #12 had double the amount of touches considering everywhere he seemed to be on the field.
We’ve heard a ton this off-season about how new Offensive Coordinator Mario Acitelli wants to keep Christian Taylor’s creative offense humming along, and it certainly seemed like that this past Thursday.
Maybe the takeaway should just be this. Hollis Mathis: Lethal in small doses.
3. Kicking unit needs to be cleaned up before Coastal Carolina
It could be that the kicking units are still shaking off that off-season rust, but I can’t say I was all too impressed with their performance. Senior kicker Eric Bernstein missed a PAT and his lone FG attempt, although he did make 5 PATs on the night. Leaving points on the board is fine against VMI, but could come back to bite the team versus tougher competition.
The team also got a little too excited after Bronson’s TD to open the scoring, because the unit was penalized with a delay of game on the ensuing kickoff.
Again, it didn’t make a meaningful difference in this game, but this is such an avoidable penalty that should (hopefully) never happen again this season.
4. Tribe defense had a solid outing
Opposing running back Hunter Rice put the VMI Keydets on his back (for one drive). Outside of VMI’s one scoring drive where Rice and Schalow had their way on the ground, the Tribe defense played a really solid game.
There were a couple things I noticed that Coastal might look to exploit (W&M seemed to struggle with outside runs and edge containment) but you couldn’t ask for much more than what the defense brought on Thursday.
Collin Shannon was unable to get anything going in the passing game (8/19 for 62 yards and an INT), and his replacement Chandler Wilson didn’t fare any better (3/5 for 18 yards and an INT).
Side note: This next point is nitpicky, but in a blowout win there’s really not too much to critique. I counted a solid 3 or 4 open drops by VMI receivers where they had made good separation from their defender.
This is a sentiment repeated a lot throughout the article, but again, Coastal’s receivers probably are going to come down with those balls.
5. The W&M student section deserves their flowers
Look, we’ve all heard it before. “Nobody at William & Mary cares about sports. People don’t show up to games. People would rather study than watch a football game.”
Well, it was apparent that some students didn’t get that memo…
Admittedly, I have only been to football games since I began attending W&M as a freshman back in 2019 (which included the Cam Newton cameo season in 2022), but this was a sight to behold for me and lots of other alumni.
While I can say I’ve seen a white out at Tribe games before, I can confidently tell you that I haven’t seen a second student section pop up on the Smith-McGlothlin side of the stadium.
The student section was loud and high energy all night, and you can chalk it up to the first game of the season, the first week of classes or whatever you want, but I really don’t care. The players love it, the coaches love it, the alumni young and old love it, and gosh darn even the President herself loves it!
This was the cherry on top to a much successful and encouraging opening night for Tribe football.
Stay tuned for our 3 Players, 2 Matchups, 1 Prediction article for Coastal Carolina in the coming days!
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