TOWSON, Md. — Last Saturday against Sacred Heart, the Fordham football team’s potent offense was stuck in neutral. The Rams could muster only two field goals in the second half of their 37-27 victory, with the opportunistic defense bailing out the struggling offense by intercepting the Pioneers twice in the fourth quarter.
“[That’s] the beauty of playing a team game,” Rams coach Joe Moorhead said this week. “This team truly doesn’t care of who gets the credit, regardless of how many points we win by, or who scores points or how many we hold them to. There’s one stat that matters, and that’s the one in the left-hand column — did we win or lose the game? In terms of the flow of the game in the second half, the defense absolutely helped turn the [tide] and made a couple of momentum-changing plays [that] really helped seal the game.”
That defense will have to keep creating good opportunities for the offense on Saturday, when Fordham will take on Towson at Johnny Unitas Stadium in the second round of the FCS playoffs.
The Tigers — who are seeded seventh in the playoffs, but ranked fourth in the latest Sports Network FCS poll — are going to be a tough test for the unseeded Rams, and Moorhead knows it.
“The big message for this week, relative to a very, very talented Towson team is that our margin of error is going to be much smaller,” Moorhead said. “Some of the things that maybe we were able to get away with in the Sacred Heart game and still pull away with a victory, I’m not so sure that we’ll be able to do that against a team of Towson’s caliber.”
In order for the Rams to give themselves a chance, they will have to fine-tune the same offense that sputtered in the second half against Sacred Heart, and Moorhead is confident his offense will get back to its high-scoring ways.
“You look at two plays in the second half — Tebucky [Jones had] a touchdown in his hands in the end zone and he bobbled it and dropped it, and that took seven points off the board,” he said. “We didn’t get the field goal there. We had another touchdown where Brian [Wetzel] scored and we had an unnecessary hold that really didn’t have any factor in the play. You take 14 points off the board right there, and we’re in line for another 50-point game.”
The biggest challenge Fordham will face is Towson running back Terrance West, who is second in the FCS in rushing yards (1,865) and has already tallied 30 touchdowns on the ground. The Rams have had trouble stopping the run this season, allowin 5.3 yards per rush.
Moorhead said the 5-foot-11, 223-pound West possesses both breakaway speed and brute physicality, and detailed what it will take to slow him down.
“It’s really about gap fits — making sure the defensive linemen hold a point in the front four,” he said. “Our linebackers have their assigned gap, and particularly on the back end, that our safeties are fitting in to force them to run back to the linebackers.”
Sacred Heart running back Keshaudas Spence recorded runs of 65 and 57 yards against the Rams last week, which Moorhead attributed to errors in execution.
“Where the runs got out, we didn’t fit the runs properly and had guys out of position,” he said. “When you’re committing that many men to the box and one person is out of position, it’s going to get out.”
Despite the challenge in front of them, the Rams are confident, as they already have recorded two victories over Top-10 teams this season — Villanova, which was ranked No. 8 in the Sports Network FCS poll at the time, and Lehigh, then ranked No. 10 in the FCS Coaches’ poll.
Fordham quarterback Michael Nebrich said after last Saturday’s game the offense won’t fear any defense it faces. This Saturday, we’ll see if the Rams can shake off their second-half offensive slump from a week ago and get back to their prolific ways.