Thursday, September 23rd, 2021 7:30pm EST

TV/Video: ESPN

Radio: 97.3 FM North Wilkesboro, 96.5 FM/1450 AM Boone, 1320 AM Greensboro, 107.7FM/1450 AM Hendersonville, Varsity Network App

Kidd Brewer Stadium, Boone, NC

Capacity: 30,000

Surface: Field Turf

Jeff Sagarin Ratings

App State: 73.52

Marshall: 70.10

Home: 3.00

App State is favored by the Sagarin ratings by 6.42 points

Line: App State -7.5

Series: App State leads 14-9

Last Meeting: App State 7, Marshall 17, September 19, 2020, Huntington, WV

For those who were looking for normalcy in Boone this past weekend, you got it, and then some. It was a busy weekend in the High Country. The eighth-largest crowd in Kidd Brewer Stadium history was treated to a big win over a former foe. It was a great day, but it was not perfect. Several adjustments will be made between games. There were fumbles on and off the field, and although the game day experience might not exactly be like riding a bike, the opportunity to jump back on does exist. That’s the beauty of it all. If everything was always perfect, it would get boring pretty quickly. We didn’t drive to the mountains for boring. We drive to see what we have yet to discover. We hike the same trails to relive an experience, and see it for the first time all over again. A lot of supporters will be doing the exact same thing on Thursday. Most App State students were but a twinkle in their parents eyes the last time Marshall played in Boone, and others have been waiting for this moment for a quarter century. Let us all appreciate it.

If this past weekend helped you relive the memories of the SoCon yesteryear, enjoy the the more vintage and seasoned brand of Marshall this weekend. Elon and Marshall did not cross paths in the Southern Conference, but those schools membership tells a great story about App State’s history in the last 30 years. Marshall left the SoCon in 1996, and became members of the Mid-American conference for eight years. Elon joined the SoCon in 2003. Those two moves along with others got people around App State thinking about FBS, or as it was referred to then, Division I. Marshall joined Conference USA in 2005, about the same time of App State’s resurgence in I-AA/FCS football. The Marshall games in the late 1980’s and 1990’s were intense battles. App State missed those games, and Georgia Southern helped bridge that gap, that Elon and other small private schools could not provide. Marshall went on to great success, winning I-AA titles, which was what they needed to move to FBS. App State’s playoff success in the 2000s stoked the desire to play teams like Marshall again. Last year, App and Marshall scheduled a series to work around the pandemic. This week’s game is the first leg of a separate home and home agreement that was announced in June 2015, and will be completed next year in Huntington.

Last season’s scheduling of the Marshall game was a win on paper, but was not exactly what a coaching staff wants at the last minute. You prep all offseason for the first few games, and then poof, Wake Forest and Wisconsin are gone, insert Conference USA. It did not help that App State had to deal with pandemic issues leading up to the game, and were trying to discover their identity with limited practice times and groupings. Long story short, it was not our best showing, and Marshall stuck to their game plan, and won an old-fashioned game. The Herd took that momentum and won five more games, to start the season 7-0, and then things went south. Marshall lost their last three games, getting shutout by Rice, stymied by UAB 22-13, and falling flat in their 17-10 Camellia Bowl loss to Buffalo. In all three games, Marshall was dominated in time of possession. This season, Marshall has soundly defeated two teams in Navy and NC Central. Navy has scored ten points combined in two games this season. NC Central has scored forty-three points in their two wins over Alcorn State and Winston-Salem State. And then, there is the debacle of last Saturday night. East Carolina scored 21 unanswered fourth quarter points to steal a win on the road from the Thundering Herd.

Seems that Marshall success has gone the way of its sophomore quarterback Grant Wells. The Mountain State native has already thrown for 1,110 yards in 2021, and has eclipsed 300 yards passing in every game, a feat he accomplished just twice last season. However, Wells is streaky, and when he is up, so is Marshall, and likewise when he has a rough game. He threw 18 touchdown passes in ten games last year, and half of those touchdown passes came in two games, against Eastern Kentucky and Middle Tennessee. On the the other hand, seven of his nine interceptions last season came in two games, in which Marshall was shutout by Rice, and narrowly won 20-9 over Florida Atlantic. Wells’ touchdown/interception ratio might be leveling out in 2021, with four touchdown passes and five interceptions, but that includes interceptions in each game. Thursday comes down to which version of Grant Wells shows up for Marshall.

App State was somewhat accused of sleepwalking on Saturday, but in the end, Elon never threatened the Mountaineers at all. Sure, Elon was annoying with 14 first downs, which is actually a pretty good number for a defense, but it felt like a lot more. Meanwhile, the Phoenix did not want to succumb to the ground game, and limited the Mountaineers to 187 yards on the rushing. That forced App State to probably throw the ball a handful of times more than they wanted. Chase Brice put up his largest yardage total (293) of the young season, which lead to big games from Corey Sutton and Malik Williams. Both eclipsed 120 yards receiving on the day, with Williams catching the 50-yard touchdown pass from Brice. Camerun Peoples was limited to eleven carries, which could be a signal that he might have a larger workload this week with the quick turnaround. Nate Noel finished with 73 yards on seventeen carries. The best stat line was produced by the defensive side of the ball. D’Marco Jackson turned in a thirteen tackle, three sack and 4.5 tackle for loss performance that had not occurred in college football in quite some time.

From 1977 through 1996, App State and Marshall played every single season, including twice in 1987. Throughout the 23 games series, neither team has played more than two games in a row in its home turf. Neither team has won more than four games in a row against each other. App had a four game winning streak to start the series, and Marshall currently holds a three game winning streak. It’s a real life cliché. Throw out the records. It has been a while since App State last beat the Herd in Boone. Twenty-seven long years. That night in 1994 was glorious. Scott Satterfield ran the option and pitched it to Chip Hooks repeatedly. Johnny Smith pulled down an interception and took it in for the go-ahead score, that would provide the final margin. Students could not control their excitement as attempts to remove the goal posts began before time expired. Only Jerry Moore could get everything organized long enough for the final seconds to tick away. And once again, the lights will be on at Kidd Brewer for one of the best Group of Five matchups of the weekend. This matchup was one that App State has circled. The Herd knocked App State out of the Top 25 last year and have not sniffed it since. Players and coaches might not care about that, but the fans do. We remember that painful feeling. Marshall has an offense that has the ability to score a lot of points. They have one speed, and that’s go. They like to move the ball up and down the field. The problem is the Herd’s defense. East Carolina blistered them for 561 yards. A very bad Navy team still managed 398 yards. How has Marshall surrendered all these yards without letting everyone score? It doesn’t help that Marshall has thrown six interceptions as a team, and has fumbled seven times, while losing three of them to inferior opponents. That also goes back to that time of possession battle that mentioned earlier. It’s a trend that dates back to last season. If Marshall turns the ball over three times, which is their average this season, it will be a long night in Boone. Mind you, they have been turning the ball over to teams that are clearly not as powerful as App State is on defense. Which leads to another interesting stat. Marshall has allowed just two sacks all season, while App State has nine defensively. It all comes down to how App defends Wells, and he has just been too streaky in his last several games to expect Marshall to come out on top.

The First Pick

Blundering Bessies 21

Mountaineers 31