2022 G5 Preview: Old Dominion Is Built For A Jump
The Monarchs found their groove down the stretch last season, and return nearly every contributor from that bunch.
This is part of the Sun Belt Preview, the third conference in the Outside Zone’s Group of Five season preview package. Check out the preview landing page for all previous stories. All previews and the entire Outside Zone archive are available for only $5 a month or $50 a year.
Old Dominion’s circumstances entering the 2022 season are unlike any other.
The most normal thing about the Monarchs currently is the 2021 season from which it has just emerged, which is a testament to everything else around this program, because they won five games in a row to end that campaign and qualify for the program’s second bowl game. That’s one hell of a baseline, standard storyline.
At least, until compared to all other circumstances.
The 2021 season was head coach Ricky Rahne’s first in town, despite being named as the head coach on Dec. 9, 2019. The former Penn State offensive coordinator went 21 months between being hired and coaching a football game in Norfolk, as Old Dominion announced just ahead of the COVID-impacted 2020 season that it would be abstaining and canceling its season.
For reference, Lane Kiffin was hired the same day at Ole Miss and has 23 games under his belt in Oxford. Jimmy Lake, who was hired a week prior at Washington, has already been fired – as was Steve Addazio at Colorado State, who was hired on Dec. 12, 2019. Kalen DeBoer, who was hired at Fresno State a week after Rahne was introduced here, took over at Washington this offseason.
I don’t know that anyone has ever had 21 months at the helm of a program to prepare for their first season as a head coach before. I don’t know where I would even go to find that information. I can’t imagine it’s especially common. Connecticut and New Mexico State also canceled their 2020 seasons, but both coaches there were previously entrenched.
There could be an example at the FCS level, but those teams played a spring season, meaning that none waited as long as Rahne did. The only league where this feasibly could have happened was in the Ivy League, which skipped the 2020 season and the spring campaign in 2021, but there were no new coaches out there in 2020. You get the point. We’ve talked before about “year zero” for new hires. Rahne may have just had the first-ever “year two” opening season.
And now, with that missed season, Old Dominion has generated an entirely bizarre and extremely strong roster. The Monarchs will return nearly their entire 2021 team with nearly a dozen underclassmen who started or seriously contributed to what could be vaguely described as a youth movement all expected to step into larger roles.
Beyond that, as with Southern Mississippi and Marshall, Old Dominion is fighting to move out of Conference USA and into the Sun Belt ahead of this season, and it’s hard to say definitively which league that bunch will play in come September.
So, in short, Old Dominion’s second-year coach is entering his third year with the team, has back nearly every member of a roster that won its last five regular-season games last season and might be joining a different conference… unless it doesn’t, which would require a schedule change on the fly in the middle of the offseason. Cool? Cool.
All of that serves as a fun sideshow because the main event here is, believe it or not, the football team. The Monarchs clicked into a unique offensive scheme in the back half of the season while a young defense jelled and enter this season with immense continuity on both sides of the ball.
Sun Belt contention seems optimistic given road trips to Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina and Georgia State within the East division and a cross-divisional trip to South Alabama, but another bowl game is nowhere near as distant. ODU could certainly find a friendlier non-conference slate than (at) East Carolina, Liberty, (at) Virginia and Virginia Tech, but it does have extremely winnable home conference matchups against Arkansas State, Georgia Southern, James Madison and Marshall.
Two non-conference wins, one road league win and three or four league home wins feels like a reasonable ask – though I’m not sure the ceiling is a whole lot higher than that. ECU, Georgia State, James Madison, Liberty, Marshall, South Alabama and Virginia all feel like hinge games, with likely wins against Arkansas State and Georgia Southern and likely losses to Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina and Virginia Tech.
I guess VT could struggle early under new leadership, but winning every single one of those hinge games and that one is a hefty, hefty lift just to get to 10-2, which feels like a hard ceiling because these guys aren’t winning in Boone or Conway yet unless Coastal Carolina completely falls apart with its attrition. Still, 4-3 in those hinge games with the expected results elsewhere is a bowl game. For a program with two (2) of those, I think you take that with joy and look forward to hosting the two best teams in your division next season instead of visiting them.
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