A Long Way From On Long Island: Stony Brook Game Preview
If you've been reading Ditch Rich closely, you'll know why the Stony Brook Seawolves are in town this weekend.
Last weekend, the Ducks beat the Ohio State Buckeyes in hostile territory. This weekend, they face a team that is very much not Ohio State, and they’ll do it in territory that is the opposite of hostile.
The Stony Brook Seawolves are an FCS football team that are located on Long Island.
They aren’t a particularly good FCS football team—they lost to New Hampshire, and they just beat Colgate—but they are a living, breathing group of athletes that have travelled nearly 3,000 miles to Eugene, Oregon, to partake in athletic competition.
It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. Mario Cristobal’s goal is to go 1-0.
We wouldn’t want to get caught with our pants down in an FCS game like some other Pac-12 program we know.
So, what does Stony Brook do good?
They run the ball.
Their RB1 is #7 Ty Son Lawton. He carried the ball 16 times for 134 and 1 TD in their win against Colgate. He’s going to be their first, second, and third option on offense—at least to start the game.
It’ll probably be raining in Eugene, too, so it’ll be a great opportunity for the Ducks to find quality rush defense reps for their three-deep/four-deep/five-deep roster along the front seven.
Give me a whole lotta Heaukulani. And a whole notta Sewell.
#3 Seba Nekhet is their other stud rusher, who went for 96 yards himself last week.
Their quarterback, #4 Tyquell Fields, is 6-2, 195 lbs, and is sometimes an option to run it at the goal line—but we’ll talk more about him in another section of this preview.
TL;DR: Stony Brook can run the ball. And we have about two or three full defensive units that would love a chance to stop that run.
What does Stony Brook not do good?
Spend and make money.
I’ll talk about football in a second, but we can’t just not acknowledge the reason why this random football team is coming from New York State for an apparent slaughtering.
You’re looking at an abridged version of the 2018-19 College Finance Rankings from USA Today. It’s the simplest way to explain just how much the haves, have; and just how much the have nots, have not.
In 2021, the State University of New York - Stony Brook actually reported that their football program alone lost about a million bucks. That loss was mostly due to the fact that they didn’t play in the Fall of 2020 at all, and so they weren’t able to play in one of these “Buy Games” against an FBS opponent.
The Ducks are paying the Seawolves $625,000 to play in this one game. That payment alone will allow their small program to basically break even for the year.
“You’re allowed to have a football team, but only if you take your requisite beating.”
All that to say, if Stony Brook appears to have less personnel, less sideline infrastructure, and less of everything else you can possibly have less of, that’s because they do.
But let’s get back to Sticking to Sports™.
I hate to single out one player—because he’ll probably make me eat my words—but I think the Seawolves are weakest at the quarterback position.
Tyquell Fields is talented, and he seems to have a couple of good highlights on YouTube, but I’m just going to present you with his two stat lines so far from 2021.
Loss vs New Hampshire: 21/43, 255 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT.
Win vs Colgate: 7/11, 140 yds, 1 TD, 0 INT.
That tells me that if Stony Brook intends to win, they probably don’t want Fields to throw a lot tomorrow.
Oregon started the season against two QBs that will probably be first team players in their respective conferences—and it shows in the stat sheet.
Ideally, Fields presents Tim DeRuyter with an opportunity to be ultra-aggressive in his coverages, and in his pass rush. The goal will be to take the ball away, to get sharp in all types of schemes, and to instill even more confidence in a wide range of young players who will continue to step up into the mounting injury spots.
Fields is decidely NOT named Haener or Stroud, so I’d love to see Oregon enjoy that fact this weekend.
Everything else I’m looking for:
Let’s get sharp all the way around before heading into Pac-12 play next week.
On offense, let’s just work on getting the play call in faster.
There were too many instances in Columbus where nobody seemed to know that the play clock was at :00. That’s the kind of stuff that’ll come back to haunt us down the line.
Let’s find ways to stretch the field vertcially and get AB to feel good in his progressions for the quarter and a half he’ll be playing. We clearly don’t need to be a lethal team through the air in order to win most of our games, but it’ll be an invaluable thing to work on in real-time.
And I’d just selfishly love to see AB continue to dial in the flashes of deep ball brilliance he has previewed in the first two weeks. The Haters kind of deserve to eat a little more crow.
After AB is done for the day, who’s up next?
It’s the question on everybody’s minds.
It’s probably Ty Thompson? But what happens when Robby Ashford comes in and Jaylon Redd can’t play at the same time since they are both currently listed with the #6 on their jersey?
Will the focus be to simply play QB2 for the rest of the game? Get them the most in-game experience? Or might we spread the reps around by testing and alternating drives between QB2 & QB3 (maybe even QB4)?
The one thing I am nearly sure of is this:
If we see just three quarterbacks tomorrow, the one that doesn’t play may find themselves in transfer portal by January. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the nature of the sport.
Every day with Duck football is a good day, and I have a feeling I’m going to want to enjoy every waking moment we get to spend with this team.
So let’s go out there, play sharp, play a bunch of our backups, and beat up on a football team that is just wildly ill-equipped to compete with Oregon.
If this Stony Brook team shocks the nation tomorrow? They’d deserve it.
But again, I look at those budgets—and I look at what the Ducks did last weekend—and I feel a bit better about speaking with some certainty.
We might as well put up a big number tomorrow, too. No half measures.
64-13.
Go Ducks.
Watch me commit the second I ate foot in this group
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