Can this season be saved before it gets worse?
Statistics often don’t tell the whole story of a football team’s season.
But in the case of Lehigh, the stats sum up fairly well what the first six games have looked like.
The Mountain Hawks are No. 123 in NCAA FCS football — which has 123 teams — in total offense with 136.8 yards per game. No. 122 is Grambling at 182 yards per game.
They are also No. 123 in scoring offense at nine total points in six games. No. 122 is Long Island University with 32 points in five games.
They are No. 123 in rushing offense with 36 yards per game; No. 122 Georgetown is one yard better.
They are No. 122 nationally in passing offense at 100.8 yards per game, ahead of only Kennesaw State.
They have had three scoring drives this season, but those three resulting in field goals, covered just 19, 5, and 27 yards as they were set up by the defense or special teams.
There are other distressing numbers, not the least of which is the team’s 0-6 record, which is part of a school-record 13-game losing streak.
It’s all unpalatable stuff for an alumni and fan base that just four years ago had a Patriot League championship to enjoy along with an offense that averaged 35.8 points and 474.8 yards per game in a 5-7 season that featured a playoff appearance.
But coming off a much-needed bye, the players and coaching staff on this year’s team aren’t going to waste time looking back or dwelling on why the first six games went as they did.
Head coach Tom Gilmore could, but won’t lay out a laundry list of reasons for the precipitous drop and why the 2021 Lehigh football team only resembles the 2017 squad in terms of name and uniform schemes.
With five games left on the schedule starting with Saturday’s game at Fordham, Gilmore and his team are doing the only thing they can do and that’s work to get better and hope that its work produces better results.
Make no mistake, in a day when everyone seems to have a voice and can express it in 140-word increments and a click of a button, Gilmore is aware of the criticism he is getting on various social media platforms.
He understands the disappointment of an ardent fan base. But he feels it’s not in his or the team’s best interest to respond to it, so he’s doing what he has done his entire adult life and that’s work to make his football team better.
“There’s not one thing,” Gilmore said Wednesday at the team’s weekly media function. “You can’t say this is our problem or that’s our problem. We’ve had issues across the board, but we’ve also had some good things across the board. We just haven’t been able to string them together.”
The bye week wasn’t used to revamp schemes or make massive changes in personnel. There’s only so much you can do in the middle of a season. Instead, there was a recalibrating of what the team can do well.
“We used the bye to focus on what we can do well and what we have done more consistently well and we’re practicing those things more to see if we can
execute at a higher level,” he said. “There were also some procedural things we’ve evaluated. We made some refinements and flat-out changes. We’ve gone back to doing some things we’ve done previously, but haven’t used in recent weeks or even this year. It’s all about putting our kids in better positions and situations so they can execute better.”
Gilmore concedes that “we’re not where we want to be or where we hoped to be,” and while there have been a variety of factors that have contributed to it, he understands how tough it is to see a team not score a touchdown in six weeks.
He still would like those on the outside to know that he still has hard-working players who haven’t given up trying to get some positives out of this season while laying a foundation for 2022.
“I do think there’s great talent in this program and I do think we’re going to be back at the top,” he said. “Sometimes you get frustrated and impatient that it’s not happening now. But behind the scenes, we know we’re working hard to improve and I see those improvements. Now it’s a matter of those improvements showing on the field.”
While the offense has struggled at an unprecedented level, the defense also needs to perform better. Lehigh has surrendered 32 points and 441.8 yards per game. The 227.7 rushing yards allowed per game yielded is last in the league.
Part of that is a rugged schedule that has featured two nationally ranked teams in Villanova and Richmond, and Princeton, the preseason favorite in the Ivy League.
Another part of it has been some key injuries, especially to senior captain Pete Haffner, who was a second-team all-league selection in both the fall of 2019 and this spring.
Another part of it is the strain the offensive woes have put on the defense as opponents have run 416 plays to Lehigh’s 314 and have the ball nearly eight minutes longer per game.
But the Mountain Hawks have allowed opponents to convert 41% of the time on third downs and 55% on fourth. The defense also has just three takeaways, contributing to a negative-9 turnover ratio.
The good news is that in the team’s last game at Penn on Oct. 9, the Quakers managed just a field goal through three quarters and were held to just 76 passing yards.
“We haven’t played to our standard, but we felt at Penn we were starting to hit our stride as a defense and play the brand of football we’re capable of and what we expect,” said sophomore safety Spencer Roof. “Going into Fordham, we’re looking to build off that.”
Roof seemed to sum up the attitude of the entire program when he said: “You can either sit and dwell on the past or you can learn from it and learning is what we’ve been doing. We’re just beginning to hit our stride.”
Senior tight end Alex Snyder agreed that better days are ahead.
“We got better every day at practice during the bye and really dived into the film,” he said. “We’ve added some new plays, but it’s really about executing the plays we do best. It has been frustrating what we’ve done so far, but we still are highly motivated. We come in every week looking to change things. We feel just one game could change around the entire season.”
Everyone involved hopes change is around the corner, maybe in the Bronx.
“I believe there’s a bright future for this program,” Gilmore said. “I’ve been impressed by how the team and coaching staff has handled this under difficult circumstances. We all want the results to start showing up. We all want that bright future to be here sooner rather than later. That’s what we’re striving for. We’re trying to stay focused on the program itself, and on getting better, and not getting distracted by the outside noise.”