The Other Game in Georgia: Wofford vs Kennesaw State Preview

by Joe James

This weekend in the Atlanta metropolitan area, two college football teams will fight to advance in a college football playoff. These teams like to run the football. They play tough defense. One has been in this position multiple times before, the other trying to build momentum from last season’s success, propelling themselves to the next level.

Neither team is the Georgia Bulldogs or Alabama Crimson Tide.

At Fifth Third Bank Stadium in Kennesaw, Georgia, 30 minutes away from the site of the SEC championship, the Wofford Terriers will challenge the Kennesaw State Owls for the right to advance in the Division One Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs.

Both teams average over 400 yards on offense with the majority of it coming on the ground through the option. Both teams have a top 25 defense and a young head coach with less than 5 years of experience at the position. And both teams believe they have what it takes to win it all.

The Challenger: The Wofford Terriers

Wofford is the co-champion of the Southern Conference and coming off a solid 19-7 victory over Elon in the first round of the playoffs. The Terriers are no stranger to playing past Thanksgiving, winning 9 playoff games since their debut in 2003, ranked 15th among active FCS teams. That number may not seem impressive on the surface, but 13 of the 14 teams ahead of the Terriers on the list first made the playoffs more than a decade before them. The other team? Subdivision powerhouse North Dakota State. So the Terriers may not have the most playoff wins, but only a handful of teams have been more successful since they made their debut. The Terriers are aiming to win their 10th game for the third consecutive season (a school record), a 35th win for their senior class (tying a school record) and winning as many playoff games since 2016 (5) as they had for the 13 years prior.

Devin Watson is a seasoned veteran for this Wofford team. Image from Wofford Athletics.

The Terriers are led by first year head coach Josh Conklin, who steps into the massive shoes of legendary coach Mike Ayers, who retired after last season. As a former defensive coordinator at power five Pittsburgh, Conklin is a defensive coach first who knows not to ruin a good thing. He’s retained Wade Lang, the offensive coordinator of 31 years, encouraged some tweaks, and the Terriers’ option attack is now averaging more total yards per game than they have in almost a decade.

Conklin has kept Wofford rolling in his first year. Image from Wofford Athletics.

The Favorite: The Kennesaw State Owls

It’s not often that the new kid on the block gets labeled the favorite, but in Kennesaw State’s case, it’s an earned title. The Owls didn’t have a football team in 2014. In 2017, they burst onto the playoff scene upsetting #14 Samford, a team that had beaten them in the regular season. Then man-handling second ranked Jacksonville State in the second round. KSU dropped their quarterfinal matchup to stalwart semifinalist Sam Houston State by a respectable 7 points, but the message had already been sent: The Owls are here to stay.

Coming into this matchup, the Owls are seeded fourth in the FCS playoffs, have won two straight Big South Championships and won 10 games in consecutive seasons. They are led by their first and only head coach Brian Bohannon, a branch off of Paul Johnson’s coaching tree, having stints at Georgia Tech, Navy, and KSU’s de facto Godfather program Georgia Southern. Like the Terriers, the Owls lead the nation in a host of rushing and offensive statistics.

Brian Bohannon has made KSU a contender in only a few years. Image from Kennesaw State Athletics.

The Matchup:

Both teams run every option play known to man, with one main difference: Wofford prefers the shotgun, Kennesaw prefers being under center. When it comes to passing the ball, neither team will do much of it, each averaging under 15 passes a game. Wofford will pass it more often (averaging roughly 14-15 passes per game) and do it primarily through short passes, RPOs, and the occasional deep ball. As a more traditional option team Kennesaw State likes to throw it deeper more often, as they try to catch the secondary napping.

It’s hard to highlight one player in either offense because option offenses gain yardage by committee. It’s hard to find one player that stands out among the rest, but I will nevertheless try.

For Wofford, it’s fullback Andre Stoddard. The 240 pound bowling ball has missed some time in the last two games and may not be 100%, but that hasn’t stopped him from racking up 912 yards rushing on 154 carries in 11 games. Stoddard has had less carries in less games than last year, yet he has already surpassed his yardage. Whenever your fullback is averaging over 6 yards per carry, you’re doing something right. If Stoddard is at 100%, he could be the game-changer.

Andre Stoddard is one hard man to take down. Image from Wofford Athletics.

For Kennesaw State, the player to highlight is quarterback Chandler Burks. Burks is Mr. Everything for the Owls. He’s the field general for one of the best running games in the FCS, while also rushing the ball himself for almost 900 yards and passing the ball for almost 1000 so far this year. The most gaudy stat is the fact that he has 29 touchdowns rushing this year, more than his first three seasons combined. I’ve watched option offenses for over 10 years between Wofford, the Citadel, Georgia Southern, Kennesaw State, Georgia Tech, and the service academies. That stat is unreal. If the Terriers have any hope of winning this one, they have to hold Burks in check somehow.

On defense, both teams run a 3-4, like most teams in the FCS (big, interior defensive linemen are a commodity). The statistics are hard to sift through because KSU played a weaker schedule (more on that in a moment), but the Owls likely have a better pass defense, 150 compared to 211. Even if you think the Owls played weaker competition than the Terriers, they were also involved in more blowouts than the Terriers. In such a situation, opposing teams may pass the ball more to try to catch up. So Kennesaw State probably has a better pass defense, regardless of schedule strength, because they put opposing offenses in situations where passing was more likely, but they still let up less yardage than the Terriers.

When it comes to rushing defense, Wofford is almost certainly better than the Owls. Though the Terriers only allow 10 yards less per game than the Owls, Wofford has easily played better rushing offenses than the Owls. The likes of the Citadel, Furman, Elon and Western Carolina and the rest of the Southern Conference are just better running teams (and offenses overall) than what Kennesaw State has faced. The Terriers weakness is the pass defense, but against teams that prefer to run the ball 60% of the time or more, the Terrier defense usually feasts. Wofford loves defending the run, especially if it’s the option. Since 2016, the Terriers have played multiple option and option-oriented teams that liked to run and didn’t like to pass. Here’s what the defense gave up:

2016 Citadel (regular season): 18 points (3 coming from OT)

2016 Charleston Southern: 14 points

2016 Citadel (playoffs): 3 points

2017 Citadel*: 14 points

2017 Furman (regular season): 23 points

2017 Furman (playoffs): 10 points

*All of the above teams except 2017 Citadel were playoff teams, and Wofford’s defense held them to less than 2 touchdowns on average.

Domo Lemon flies to the ball. Image from Wofford Athletics.

In the course of their existence, the Owls have played 6 teams that made the playoffs, Charleston Southern (2016), Jacksonville State (2017, 2018), Monmouth(2017), Samford(2017), Sam Houston State (2017). The teams that had similar rushing tendencies to a team like Wofford (rushing 35+ times) were Charleston Southern and Sam Houston State, both losses. Admittedly, the team is different now than it was 2 years ago. However, the point is that this is unchartered territory for the Owls, but it’s just another day at the office for the Terriers.

The Pick:

This is going to be a great football game, likely played in inclement weather. Both teams have had amazing seasons and they are the mirror image of each other. Yes, Kennesaw State had a weak schedule, but you’d be crazy to think they wouldn’t have competed for the Southern Conference title had they been in that conference. Similarly, with the exception of Jacksonville State and Samford, Wofford would have blown out the likes of the Big South, Clark Atlanta, Tennessee Tech and Alabama State. Heck, I think they would beat Georgia State just as KSU should have.

Given KSU’s success over a common opponent Samford (KSU won 24-10, Wofford lost 35-20), the Owls are favored in this game, and they should be. But I don’t understand the hype. Vegas originally the Owls by about 10 points. Massey Computer ratings have the Owls favored by 9 with a 76% chance of winning, one of the most certain outcomes they are forecasting this weekend. One publication last week said that Kennesaw State had a “clear talent advantage” over Wofford.

Darnell Holland brings experience to this KSU offense. Image from
Kennesaw Athletics.

This is a lot of hype, and I’m not sure if it’s justified. Any respectable team will look like the Oklahoma Sooners if they play a slate of PC(no Division 1 victories in over a year), Clark Atlanta (not division 1), Tennessee Tech (finished 1-10), Campbell (not at full Division 1 scholarship allotment), Alabama State (who?), Gardner Webb (hasn’t won a single division 1 game out of conference since September 2016), and Charleston Southern (who failed to score 10 points against perennial FCS sacrificial lamb Savannah State).

To be clear, Kennesaw State has some quality wins and the winner of this game will have a good chance to advance to at least the semifinals. They had a respectable run in the playoffs last year, and are a great team. But if you look at the overall resume of their accomplishments, they have no business being more than one-score favorites against a program that knows how to shut down the option in the playoffs and has almost as many playoff wins (9) as the entire Big South has in its history (10).

Kennesaw State can be the better team and not “clearly more talented.” I think the “experts” are wrong because they overvalue KSU’s blowouts. That’s not to say they are overrated, but I think people are underrating Wofford because their accomplishments this season have more blemishes in a tougher schedule. The “experts” are very confident in KSU, but their resume isn’t that much better, if at all.

I expect a good, low-scoring game in the rain, but the Terriers win this one 23-14.

Joe is a graduate of Wofford College and the University of South Carolina. By day, he does communication work for a nonprofit in Columbia, SC; by night, he’s a Wofford super fan, stats junkie and writer.