Tyler Hughes was doomed.
The junior quarterback crouched at William and Mary’s 48-yard line, the arms of a 245-pound Maine tackle preventing him from standing. He had been pressured, chased out of the pocket and spun around. Now, facing his own end zone with the Black Bears’ defense screaming down his neck, Hughes had no choice but to let himself be dragged to the turf, stifling a drive that would ultimately prove game-deciding.
That was what it seemed, at least.
“I just knew I had to make a play,” Hughes said.
In his first signature moment as a starter, the Tribe signal-caller shed Maine junior defensive lineman Chris Bacon, staying upright long enough to escape his clutches. He reoriented himself and reversed fields, turning towards the blitzing front and rolling to his right. He sprinted up the sideline, making a man miss with a devastating hesitation move before outrunning two more Black Bears.
By the time Hughes was finally taken down, he had scurried to the opposing 25-yard line, electrifying what remained of the Zable Stadium crowd while turning a potential third and 7 into a first and 10. Minutes later, he repeated the feat, improvising another mad dash that brought the hosts to the opposing 1-yard line.
The Tribe wasted no time taking advantage of its quarterback’s explosiveness, as graduate student running back Rashad Raymond punched in a go-ahead touchdown that helped secure William and Mary’s (1-1, 1-0 CAA) dramatic 28-27 victory over Maine (0-2, 0-1 CAA) Saturday, Sept. 6. On the following drive, graduate student linebacker Luke Banbury deflected a Maine pass into the hands of senior cornerback Jalen Jones, whose teammates engulfed him in a celebratory mob as William and Mary prepared to run the clock out.
“This one tastes good,” William and Mary head coach Mike London said after the victory. “I’m happy and grateful for it.”
The game’s frantic final moments stood in stark contrast to its monotonous beginnings: originally slated to kick off at 6 p.m., the Tribe’s home opener was delayed by lightning multiple times. After roughly an hour of waiting, the teams played three scoreless minutes of football before another flash on the horizon forced players and fans alike to vacate the stadium. The players retreated to their locker rooms, but many members of the audience went home. By the end of the night, the loudest remaining supporters were William and Mary students. The game began in earnest at 8:30 p.m. and concluded 30 minutes before midnight, nearly six hours after it was scheduled to start.
“My Fitbit watch just ran out because we’ve been out here all day,” London said. “It’s almost 12 o’clock.”
Before taking on the Black Bears, the Tribe wrestled with a more unique opponent: boredom. Fired up and ready to take the field at the end of the first delay, William and Mary was forced to linger in its locker room, figuring out how to warm up for a game with no definite start time. According to London, the whiplash between activity and passivity took a mental toll on the Tribe, but his squad did an admirable job of remaining focused during the break. When play eventually resumed, William and Mary took over at its own 46-yard line.
“When we had to go in, it was third and 3, and [we] just had to start over again whenever they said, ‘Spot the ball,’” London said. “Our mindset is, ‘You know what? Just spot the ball. Put it down wherever you want to put it. Parking lot, wherever you want to put it, and then we got to play.’ I thought the guys did a great job of responding to the moment and controlling the controllables. You can’t fight Mother Nature, so we just had to adapt to it and get ready, and that’s what the guys did.”
Despite London’s praise, William and Mary wasn’t particularly sharp when it first reentered the field, committing several of the errors that hampered the Tribe during its loss to Furman. Taking advantage of two Maine penalties, the Green and Gold quickly advanced to the Black Bears’ 23-yard line, where its drive died. On fourth and 7, graduate student kicker Keegan Shackford lined up a 40-yard field goal attempt, but for the second consecutive week, a mismanaged snap forced senior holder Andrew Piercy to tuck the ball and run. He was tackled 11 yards behind the line of scrimmage, kick-starting Maine’s first drive of the night.
The Black Bears made it to the Tribe’s 33-yard line before losing steam, but a William and Mary facemask penalty gave them new life. With 2:15 remaining in the first quarter, the visitors took a 7-0 lead as graduate student quarterback Carter Peevy completed a short pass to junior running back Sincere Baines on fourth and goal. The Tribe’s next two possessions went nowhere, and Peevy struck again at the second quarter’s 9:30 mark, breaking free for a 45-yard touchdown run that put the Black Bears up 14-0.
In response, Hughes led William and Mary on a five-play, 70-yard drive during which he completed two passes of 23 or more yards, including a touchdown strike to graduate student receiver Deven Thompson. However, the Tribe was unable to sustain its momentum, surrendering a field goal before going three-and-out on its final possession of the half. An uneasy mood hung over Zable Stadium as William and Mary jogged into its locker room trailing 17-7.
At the break, the Tribe had accumulated 110 yards to Maine’s 172, but perhaps more concerningly, it had been beaten in the margins for the third half in a row. After the Tribe’s loss to Furman, London spoke of the team’s need to improve its attention to detail. Through the first two quarters of the Maine game, the Tribe did not quite fulfill London’s directive, committing a special teams blunder and giving away 37 costly penalty yards. William and Mary also failed to convert a third down while allowing the Black Bears to convert three fourth downs.
However, the second half proved to be the cleanest display of football the Tribe has put on this season. Sparked by sophomore linebacker Stephon Hicks’ punt block, which gave the Green and Gold a short field and allowed it to record a touchdown on its first drive of the half, William and Mary eliminated nearly all of the mistakes it had made earlier in the day. The Tribe had struggled on special teams all season, and it was plays like the block that London said turned the game in William and Mary’s favor.
“Our guys [did] the things necessary to win the game: block a punt,” London said. “You block a punt, your odds of winning a game are very high [with] the element of continuing to do the technical things that are going to allow us to be successful.”
After it emerged from the locker room, the Tribe was called for just one penalty, scored touchdowns on three of its four drives and converted 67% of its third downs. Although London’s group still wasn’t perfect — on the last drive of the third quarter, a holding call nullified a fourth-down sack and allowed Maine to find the end zone — the coach was greatly encouraged by their performance.
“Things weren’t happening the way we wanted to happen in the first half, but [we] settled down and just identified those things that can help us move the ball,” London said. “[Hughes] did a fantastic job of orchestrating that in the second half. Made a lot of corrections. One of the things was only having three penalties. That’s been our Achilles’ heel for a while, having too many penalties that would kill drives. So we minimized that to [give us] an opportunity to let drives continue on. We had individual players make plays, we had group effort.”
Trailing 24-21, a sloppy possession at the beginning of the fourth quarter nearly ended in catastrophe for William and Mary, as a trick play went wrong and Hughes was forced to jump on a fumble. On the subsequent drive, Maine marched down the field, settling for a field goal after being stonewalled by the Green and Gold at the goal line. Nevertheless, the Tribe found itself down 27-21 with 7:19 left on the clock despite its strong half.
With the game on the line, Hughes proceeded to rip off his electrifying runs, propelling his team to a 28-27 advantage and draining four minutes away in the process. Against Furman, William and Mary was given a number of late-game scoring opportunities, but the Tribe frittered them away with self-inflicted mistakes and penalties. This time, William and Mary’s signal-caller was singularly focused on delivering in the clutch.
“We finished,” Hughes said. “That was the emphasis going into this week. Last week, it was pretty tough. We were up late, and we couldn’t finish. This week, that’s all it was about. We didn’t have the turnovers, we didn’t have the penalties late, we were able to muscle out drives, finish them. It was tough, gritty.”
The clock read 2:28 when Peevy’s final pass of the game was batted into the air by Banbury, who finished the game with a career-high 16 tackles and was named the Coastal Athletic Association Defensive Player of the Week, and was intercepted by Jones. London praised the teamwork of Banbury, Jones and redshirt freshman defensive lineman Brady Echols, whose pressure contributed to Peevy’s errant throw.
“We were doing a stunt,” London said. “The defensive lineman comes around, puts his hands in the throwing lane and the quarterback puts air underneath the ball because he doesn’t want the ball knocked down. Luke Banbury does a great job going to the curl, outside route. He tips the ball, and then Jalen Jones, because he’s running to the ball when it’s in the air, he catches it for an interception and ends the game. We’re going to have to continue to keep doing things where it’s not just about one player, it’s about the multitude of players that are up front, that are in the secondary, that are in the linebacker core, special teams or whatever it may be.”
The game wasn’t quite over when Jones picked off Peevy, as the Tribe was tasked with the remaining 2:28 off the clock, but five consecutive rushes from Raymond forced Maine to use the last of its timeouts. With 1:14 left, William and Mary took two knees and began to celebrate.
“That last drive, when we were trying to kill the clock, end the game, not give the ball back — we finished,” Hughes said. “That was the emphasis all week, and that’s what we improved on.”
The William and Mary rushing offense was largely ineffective throughout the game, averaging 3.2 yards a carry on 39 attempts, but the Tribe found success behind Hughes’ arm. On the day, Hughes outdueled his counterpart through the air, finishing with 129 passing yards to Peevy’s 97. Production was distributed almost evenly throughout the receiver room, with sophomore wide receiver Garrett Robertson, junior tight end Sean McElwain, senior wide receiver Isaiah Lemmond and Thompson all racking up more than 20 passing yards. In the face of significant adversity, William and Mary found a way to grind out 28 points.
“It was a great learning lesson for us,” London said. “We talked about fate whispering to the warrior, ‘You cannot handle the storm,’ and the warrior whispered back, ‘I am the storm.’”
Saturday, Sept. 13, William and Mary continues its campaign with its most difficult test of the season, taking on Virginia (1-1, 0-0, ACC) at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Va. London, who coached the Cavaliers from 2010 to 2015, still watches the program from afar, but he says he’s singularly focused on preparing his players for a win, undistracted by any personal connections.
“There are humanistic elements to it, but we’re football coaches, and we’re charged with coaching our players and providing them with experiences where they can experience an opportunity to win on that stage,” London said. “I’ve been here before, and we’ve played [Football Bowl Subdivision] teams and had some success as a [Football Championship Subdivision] school, but all that matters is what happens on Saturday.”
