Saturday, Oct. 17th, William and Mary (4-3, 3-1 CAA) scored a thrilling 26-21 victory over Elon (4-4, 2-2 CAA) on homecoming weekend at Zable Stadium in Williamsburg, Va. Despite a challenging first half, the Tribe dominated the third quarter and completed an impressive comeback that improved its home record to 4-0.
“You know, we’re not trying to go into the half with the deficit, but we keep finding a way to come back and overcome,” William and Mary head coach Mike London said after his team’s second consecutive comeback victory. “And that’s a very, very, very good football team.”
The Phoenix posed a significant challenge to the Tribe. Elon entered Saturday’s matchup with a 2-1 conference record that placed it in the upper echelon of the Coastal Athletic Association standings. It also sported one of the league’s top ground offenses, averaging 190.3 rushing yards per game. On the day, the visitors outgained the Tribe 161-70 on the ground, including 131-43 in the first half.
This advantage allowed Elon to build an early lead. After both teams went three-and-out to start the game, the Phoenix used runs from redshirt freshman quarterback Landen Clark and junior running back Jimmyll Williams to advance deep into Tribe territory. With 8 minutes, 42 seconds left in the first quarter, Elon redshirt sophomore receiver Zimere Winston took advantage of a coverage bust to stroll into the end zone untouched.
In response, sophomore quarterback Noah Brannock led William and Mary to the visitors’ goal line, but an uncharacteristic offsides penalty forced the Tribe to settle for a field goal. Less than four minutes later, another open receiver found the end zone for Elon, leaving the homecoming crowd stunned.
William and Mary’s response came in the form of graduate student receiver Deven Thompson, the team’s premier deep threat. After junior quarterback Tyler Hughes gave the Tribe great field position with a scramble into the Elon red zone, he tossed a pass in the direction of Thompson, who was setting up position in the corner of the end zone. William and Mary’s tallest receiver high-pointed the ball and came down with a highly contested catch, cutting his team’s deficit to 14-10.
London praised Thompson, who finished the afternoon with 81 receiving yards and two touchdowns, for his ability to make game-changing plays down the field.
“[Thompson] has got the height, he’s got the arm strength, he’s got the vertical ability,” London said. “You know, something you want to say, ‘You’ve gotta stop this guy from catching it.’ And he’s proven time and time again that ‘Put me in the game, throw the ball to me, I will get it.’”
Despite Thompson’s touchdown, William and Mary entered halftime down 14-10, a problem that was immediately rectified by another Thompson touchdown, this time a 39-yard strike from Hughes. According to Thompson, he made the grab despite the fact that the defender managed to get his hand on the ball.
“It did hit his hand, but I just had control of it with my left hand and pinned it with my right,” Thompson said. “So basically it was just, I pinned it on his helmet.”
Thompson, who averages a team-high 18.21 yards per reception, described his route-running mindset as “see ball, get ball.”
“Whoever is the quarterback, whoever it is once I see that ball, I feel like it’s 50-50,” Thompson said. “But to me, it’s 80-20. I want to go get that, you know?”
William and Mary expanded on its 17-14 lead later in the quarter, when Elon fired a snap through the end zone for a safety, senior receiver Damian Harris took a pass 40 yards to the Phoenix 6-yard line and Hughes ran for a touchdown.
London lauded the Tribe’s defense, which made several mistakes in the first half but recovered to shut out the Phoenix in the third quarter.
“[The first-half touchdowns were] two blown coverages,” London said. “Guys that got the initial call didn’t see the additional parts of what’s important. So, you know, we’ll get that corrected, but to be able to come back, and then be resilient. And then just down the stretch, man, defensively, they played awesome.”
However, the battle was not yet won. A Clark score set up a dramatic final drive during which Elon attempted to erase its 26-21 deficit, advancing to the William and Mary 45-yard line before stalling out. The game came down to an attempted fourth-and-7 conversion — one that sophomore linebacker Clayton Dobler snuffed out by recording his second sack of Clark.
Dobler said the final play was the culmination of a game-long effort to chase down the mobile Clark, who finished with a team-high 83 rushing yards.
“We had just had a third down, and we’re trying to get after the quarterback,” Dobler said. “A big emphasis the entire game because the quarterback was such a strong runner — we had to do a lot of speed-to-power on the edge and keep him contained, and we had been struggling with that. I know towards the end of the game, I was really trying to focus on compressing the pocket, and then I was able, on that fourth-down stop, to compress it and then he tried to escape outside.”
London and Dobler both acknowledged the noisy homecoming crowd of 12,841 — the largest Zable has seen this season.
“Words can’t describe the win, the way we won, who we won against, and the crowd that’s out there,” London said. “We go to the student section all the time now, you know? And so it’s all those things, you know, make it great for our players to experience that kind of love and that kind of noise, that kind of energy.”
William and Mary’s next game is Saturday, Oct. 25, at Wildcat Stadium in Durham, N.H. The Tribe will take on New Hampshire (4-4, 2-2 CAA), a team that has lost to the CAA’s elites but will nevertheless present the Green and Gold with a test. If William and Mary wins, it will move closer to the top of the conference standings, but London said his squad is thinking about nothing but the next game right now.
“The goal is always to win a championship,” London said. “We’ll have opportunities, perhaps, to play postseason, but the main goal right now is to watch the film from this game and make the necessary corrections, because it doesn’t get any easier. You know, UNH is a really, really good football team as well, so it doesn’t get any easier.”
