This Saturday will be the same, but it'll be a little bit different, too.
That's the message I got from JMU Football, which will play in a first-round playoff game for the first time since 2014. The Dukes were ranked No. 2 by the committee in its look-ahead playoff rankings, but a loss at New Hampshire dropped them out of seeding range entirely.
The growing purple-clad mob operating out of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley viewed the first-round seeding as disrespectful. Wins over Towson and Stony Brook helped propel the Dukes to a second-place finish in the rugged CAA, and most polls & metrics (including BennettRank, the STATS FCS Poll, the Coaches Poll and the Sagarin Rankings) have JMU marked as a top-6 team.
Still, the FCS Playoff Committee pegged JMU as the de facto No. 9 seed, slating the Dukes for a potential second-round matchup with No. 8 Colgate — a move that's been met with scorn by everyone from freshman SMAD majors all the way up to head coach Mike Houston himself.
"I would say it's fairly disrespectful, from our standpoint," Houston said live on ESPN last Sunday. "I think that we're definitely one of the eight best teams in the country."
OUR COMPARE TOOL: JMU v. Delaware | JMU v. Colgate | JMU v. North Dakota State
But with JMU's game day with Delaware (7-4, 5-3) drawing near, it may be time to set aside the selection outrage and enjoy the path forward through the playoffs. JMU's playoff path is as challenging as it's ever been, but it also offers an intriguing chance to beat up on rivals and avenge some of fans' most painful losses in recent memories.
JMU opens with the Hens, a historic CAA rivalry born from both teams' mutual success. As Kevin Tresolini of Delaware Online has reported for much of the week, injuries may force Delaware to reach deep into the roster for a quarterback. The resulting patchwork seems primed to potentially add to JMU's growing playoff history of Bridgeforth blowouts.
Week two? Well, that's a rematch of a second-round playoff game from 2015, where Colgate ran wild through Everett Withers' swiss cheese defense en route to a 44-38 victory over No. 5 James Madison. Weeks later, Withers left Harrisonburg for Texas State, and JMU fans have been itching for a rematch ever since.
And if the Dukes should make it past Colgate to the quarterfinals? Well, we all know what that would mean.
Forget JMU fans and North Dakota State fans — fans all over the country want to see Dukes-Bison III.
[divider]MORE: Betting Odds to Win the National Title[divider]
JMU may have been slighted in the seeding, and the road ahead might be among the toughest draws of any first-round team, but there's still a lot for Dukes fans to look forward to with this particular playoff draw. The team appears to be ready to rise to the challenge, too. In typical Mike Houston form, Madison is rounding into shape right when it matters the most.
"I think we've gotten our swagger back," said offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick. "I think the offensive line has played its best football the last two weeks. When you play well up front, I think that gives everyone a good feeling. We were able to run the ball the last two weeks, and we've been able to throw the ball, too. We've been able to do it when we want."
A four-game stretch in the middle of the season saw the Dukes go 2-2 with losses to Elon and New Hampshire. The offense never scored more than 24 points, and JMU briefly fell out of public favor for the first time in the Houston era.
Following the loss at UNH, JMU's offensive staff wanted to get back to the basics. Much of that involved a reset for quarterback Ben DiNucci, who was benched in the first quarter in Durham.
"We had a lot of sit-down, heart-to-heart meetings with Ben after the New Hampshire game," Kirkpatrick said. "We said, 'you know, the season started off and you were so energetic. You were having fun. You were glad to be here. Let's get back to that again. Let's not make this a job. Let's go have some fun.' I think that lightened him up a little bit, knowing that we had confidence in him. He'd come from a tough situation in Pittsburgh where they played him, benched him, benched him, played him. He was kind of looking over his shoulder a little bit. We said that's not the situation here. Just go out there and play your game and everything's gonna be fine here.
Indeed, much of Kirkpatrick's work with DiNucci had little to do with X's and O's.
"That's tough on a young man, when you have to pull him," Kirkpatrick said. "It wasn't a benching for life — it was, 'okay, we need to make a change.' Sometimes, you've gotta go out to the mound and make a pitching change. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to try and win. I think we did a good job of not trying to destroy somebody, and blame them for having a couple of bad plays."
In the two games since, both quarterback and offensive line have looked spectacular for the Dukes. The run game has generated nearly 500 yards of combined offense, while DiNucci himself has accounted for 546 total yards of offense and eight touchdowns.
According to Houston, the November turnaround is a part of a larger maturation process the team has been working through all year: growing up. JMU's previous two teams had a reliable share of battle-hardened juniors and seniors with playoff experience, even if it didn't necessarily have playoff success; this 2018 team, by contrast, has plenty of major contributors who will see their first real playoff minutes this Saturday.
"I think it's such a different scenario from the past two years because of the makeup of the roster," Houston said. "Last year, we had a lot of expectations. We'd been the No. 1 team from the beginning of the year all the way through. It was one of those things like, 'okay, here are the playoffs. We've got business to take care of.' Our goals weren't just to make the playoffs — our goals were to return to Frisco. This year, we're dealing with the growing pains of the season, breaking in new players, getting that chemistry, finding out where the next guys are coming from. We've got a lot of guys where this is their first real playoff experience. So we're talking to them about how every week, you're playing for the right to move on. Somebody will advance, and somebody will go back to the house."
All that — the perceived disrespect, the November maturation, the week-to-week grind of the CAA, the return of DiNucci — it all sets up the most unpredictable playoff path in Houston's three years in Harrisonburg. JMU could return to Frisco, or it could fall flat on Saturday against a very good conference opponent. Nothing is guaranteed, and no outcome is off the table.
JMU may not return to the national championship. But at the very least, the Dukes are going to get a shot at one of two opponents it would like another game with. If recent performances are any indication, the Dukes are going to have an excellent chance to fulfill quite a few revenge fantasies.
"You've gotta play every game like it's the biggest game of the year, because it is. It's the only one you have," Houston said after practice this week. "I think you've gotta play with intensity and fire, so any little thing you can get as an extra motivating factor, you want."
This year, on the eve of the 2018 playoffs, Houston won't lack for material.
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MORE CAA: Is JMU Still Elite? | The CAA's Wild Finale | The Most Dangerous Unseeded Teams
MORE PLAYOFFS: Detailed First-Round Playoff Predictions | Our Full Bracket Predictions
