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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/hythloday1 on 2025-12-19 15:02:11+00:00.

For more than a decade I’ve been posting write-ups to /r/CFB after watching an upcoming Oregon opponent’s full season, and I’ve been delighted with the responses to my questions that I get from fans of each team. Eight years ago I started writing for SB Nation’s Oregon site, Addicted to Quack, but I’ve continued to post them here along with my questions for fans. Here’s my film study preview of James Madison in 2025, including video documentation, a podcast interview with Purple Antics, and charting data from the entire season:

addictedtoquack.com/…/duck-tape-film-analysis-of-…

My questions for JMU fans:

  1. Any trends I’ve missed, or players I’m being unfair to?
  2. The irony I saw in the way defenses attacked JMU’s offense was that they were enabling the super-explosive plays by crowding the line to stop efficiency runs, but they didn’t need to because the offense had a much harder time sustaining methodical drives than it did just hitting a single play that ran the field. Do you think that’s OC Kennedy’s offense working as intended, or is there something else going on with the absence of methodical scoring drives?
  3. How’s the kicker? I don’t really study special teams but I did run a drive efficiency analysis, and it stuck out that the team has only successfully kicked three field goals at the end of a meaningful full-field drive all season. Is that an ideological decision – we don’t kick, we’re all in for TDs – or do they not trust the special teams unit?
  4. Knight is a stud of a running back of course, and it’s understandable that he took the top spot from Pettaway, but what do you think happened that dropped Pettaway’s numbers so far? When Fuller got hurt, Pettaway continued with his formal 2-3 carries per game and Malary, who struck me as a short-yardage specialist though he’s doing pretty well, took over as the second man in. And what’s up with Adeyi’s redshirt, he could have played in the conference championship game but didn’t, is he available?
  5. A certain number of targets for Knight totally makes sense, especially as the punisher on outside screens when the offense crowds the line to take away Barnett on QB power. But running the numbers, I think he’s being over-targeted during regular play and a lot of his should get redistributed to someone like Dippre who’s got way higher per-target success and YPT. What do you think?
  6. I think Ellis is a cheat code, qualitatively different than the rest of the WR corps, and potentially an NFL receiver. Do we know any more about his status for the game … not just if he’ll be on the field – I’m sure he’ll suit up like he has in the last couple games, but that was just as a decoy – rather if he’s full-go?
  7. My impression was the secret on defense was having a full rotation of effective tackles and ends on the line that the staff was comfortable with - that it explained the defensive strategy of forcing the issue up front and leaving the back end to fend for itself, and the 1st half / 2nd half differentials because JMU avoided fatigue while opponents who were less deep didn’t. Was that a deliberate reaction to the line depth, or was that aggression always going to be the plan?
  8. What do you think the linebacker role switch between Weathersby and Spinogatti was about?
  9. I noticed against Texas State that by the second half, JMU had changed up and was playing a lot more zone coverage than usual. What do you think the odds are we’ll see something similar on Saturday?
  10. When I was working on my Indiana 2024 preview, I filled out a JMU roster database for Coach Cignetti’s years in Harrisonburg to figure out which guys he was and wasn’t coming with him, and it was interesting to see during this project so many of those developmental players who remained turn into starters for this year’s JMU squad. How do you think that the merger has gone between the cultures and players that were in place when Coach Chesney arrived and the ones he’s recruited and brought over from Holy Cross and others?