School is back in session, and with it, William and Mary football is here at last.
After spending over 270 days away from the gridiron, the Tribe (0-0, 0-0 CAA) will kick off the 2025 campaign Saturday, Aug. 30, as it travels to Eugene E. Stone III Stadium in Greenville, S.C., to take on the Furman Paladins (0-0, 0-0 Southern). With the program losing a group of core offensive players, the game will ring in a new era of Green and Gold football, and William and Mary is in for a letdown if it harbors any hopes of easing into its transitional period. Since the pandemic ended, Furman has posted a winning percentage of 60.4%, going 10-3 in both 2022 and 2023 and claiming the Southern Conference championship in the latter year. The Paladins slipped to 3-8 in 2024, but they return plenty of experienced players and have never suffered back-to-back losing seasons during the nine-year tenure of head coach Clay Hendrix. ESPN’s SP+ metric ranks Furman the 62nd-best team in the Football Championship Subdivision, making it William and Mary’s toughest opening FCS opponent since 2022.
The Tribe and the Paladins both joined the SoCon in 1936, but the regional nature of the era’s schedules and the conference’s significant size — it consisted of 16 members at the time — prevented the schools from meeting on the field for another 23 years. Considered a significant underdog before its inaugural trip to Williamsburg in 1959, Furman shocked the Green and Gold with a late passing touchdown and put the nail in the coffin with a dramatic two-point conversion, spoiling William and Mary’s homecoming by a score of 8-7. Turnovers doomed the Tribe in the 1960 edition of the budding rivalry, but the program avenged itself as the decade progressed, rattling off four consecutive blowout victories.
However, future matchups would occur only sporadically and were often uncompetitive in nature. The teams next faced off in 1972, when William and Mary accumulated 340 rushing yards in a 31-7 pasting of Furman; two years later, the Paladins responded by forcing eight Tribe fumbles in an ugly 10-0 victory. Furman scored two more lopsided wins over the Green and Gold before William and Mary departed the SoCon after the 1976 campaign, putting the series on indefinite hiatus.
Since then, the programs have occasionally exchanged punches, with one blow always being followed by a proportional response. Furman ended William and Mary’s season in the 1989 FCS playoffs, but William and Mary upset the No. 7 Paladins less than a year later. William and Mary scrapped its way to a road triumph over Furman in 1994, but Furman stomped the Tribe 52-6 in 1999. The result remains the Green and Gold’s worst home loss since 1958. “As Saturday’s football game progressed, the outcome went from bad to worse to just plain awful. The Tribe were humiliated,” a former edition of The Flat Hat wrote in the aftermath of the defeat. During the following campaign, the Paladins recorded a 34-10 victory that went unanswered until last season, when William and Mary staged a 14-point comeback to even the all-time series at eight wins apiece. The Tribe racked up 384 yards on the ground during its 34-24 home win, but with its top three rushers having graduated, head coach Mike London’s squad must devise a new blueprint to beat Furman.
The Paladins did not meet their lofty standards in 2024. Despite being ranked No. 9 in the preseason FCS Coaches’ Poll, Furman opened the campaign with a 76-0 loss at Ole Miss before handing Charleston Southern its only victory of the year and recording just two SoCon wins. Hendrix’s bunch, dragged down by bad close-game luck and a rash of injuries, was likely better than its 3-8 record. Nevertheless, a tepid offense, a porous defense and an inexperienced roster that turned the ball over a whopping 23 times gave the Paladins little chance at sustained success.
“Golly, we weren’t very good at anything, to be honest with you,” Hendrix said at the 2025 SoCon Football Media Day. SP+ rated Furman the 94th-best team in the FCS, the program’s worst finish since 2015.
However, statistical models and media polls alike project a return to competence from the Paladins not because of transfer portal additions — Furman brought in fewer transfers than almost any other team in the SoCon — but rather because of retention. Due to a massive wave of graduations and injuries, the program was forced to start several underclassmen last season, almost all of whom return in 2025. Hendrix is cautiously optimistic that the increase in experience will produce better outcomes.
“[Last year], I knew we were a lot younger, a lot less experienced, and then I just never dreamed the number of injuries that we’d have,” Hendrix said. “We ended up starting guys I really weren’t even sure would play a year ago, but hopefully that pays off for us this year. I think we’ve recruited well. I think we’re retained well. I think our coaches do a great job of developing players; we’re that kind of program. I think it’s always great when you’ve got a returning quarterback. We may be the only school in America that has all three quarterbacks back from a year ago. I know they’re clearly better, I think night and day just from what I’ve watched them.”
Of Furman’s returning quarterbacks, sophomore Trey Hedden is the presumed starter. A SoCon All-Freshman team selection in 2024, Hedden earned the starting role three games into the season and recorded 1,767 passing yards, 13 passing touchdowns and nine interceptions on the year. He was up-and-down during Furman’s loss to William and Mary, tossing two touchdowns and two interceptions while completing 13 of his 26 pass attempts for a total of 264 yards. Most of his production came in the form of an early 84-yard touchdown strike; outside of that explosion, Hedden posted a mediocre 7.2 yards per pass attempt. The story of the game mirrored the story of Hedden’s season: flashes of excellence combined with stretches of fair to middling play.
The passing attack proved far more effective than its ground game counterpart, which is typically a prominent feature of the Furman offense. The Paladins do not deploy the pure triple option in the style of military academies, but they are accustomed to having a quarterback who is dangerous on his feet: Hendrix, a former Air Force offensive line coach, is a proponent of designed QB runs. During the 2022 and 2023 campaigns, signal-caller Tyler Huff ran for a combined 1,285 yards; in both seasons, he ranked second on the team in rushing. Hedden, conversely, is pocket-bound, gaining just 93 ground yards in 2024. Multiple injuries to running backs further limited the Paladins’ options, and Furman finished the season having accumulated a paltry 988 rushing yards, the fifth-lowest mark in the FCS. Against William and Mary, the Paladins ran for 84 yards to the Tribe’s 384.
Hendrix acknowledges his squad’s offensive shortcomings but expects to see improvement, claiming Hedden has greatly improved both his physical and leadership abilities. As the sophomore enters his first full year as Furman’s starting quarterback, the team’s offense has been tailored to Hedden’s skillset, something that wasn’t the case in 2024.
“As long as I’ve been around, we’ve got to be able to run the football,” Hendrix said. “We’ve taken great pride in that. [We were] not very good for a number of reasons a year ago, and to be honest with you, I put a lot of that on me. I think we were still largely doing a bunch of Tyler Huff stuff without Tyler Huff playing quarterback, and Trey’s a different guy, but a really talented guy in a lot of areas. I don’t think we probably adapted to that. We’ve made some changes structurally.”
Supporting Hedden will be a running backs room Hendrix describes as “young but really talented” and a receiving corps the coach claims is among the most solid he’s had at Furman. Leading rusher Myion Hicks departs, but sophomore Gavin Hall, named to the SoCon All-Freshman team last season after racking up 321 yards on the ground, is poised to step into a featured role. During a November contest against VMI, Hall rattled off a 46-yard run, the team’s longest of the year, and became the only Furman player of 2024 to eclipse 100 rushing yards in a single game. Hall also averaged five yards per carry to Hicks’ 3.6.
Behind Hall on the depth chart sit redshirt junior Jayquan Smith and freshman C.J. Nettles, both of whom are expected to see playing time. Smith is a veteran who was in the midst of a solid 2023 campaign before he suffered a knee injury that sidelined him for nearly two years, while Nettles rushed for 3,886 yards and 62 touchdowns in high school.
Furman brings back five of its top eight receivers and adds two transfers: graduate student Kerry King from East Carolina and graduate student Nick Ragano from Wake Forest. The former Football Bowl Subdivision players will provide depth for an experienced unit headlined by senior Ben Ferguson, who racked up 349 receiving yards and three touchdowns in 2024. Praised by Hendrix for his steady hands, Ferguson is best known for a viral circus catch he made against Samford during the 2023 season. Alongside him returns redshirt junior Ethan Harris, who has 20 career receptions. The receiving room is augmented by star sophomore tight end Jackson Pryor, a preseason All-SoCon first team selection who hauled in two catches for 88 yards against William and Mary in 2024, and graduate student tight end Joshua Burrell, who missed most of last season with an injury after transferring from Florida State.
The Paladins’ reclamation project could potentially hinge on the performance of the offensive line. Although the group allowed 35 sacks last year, four of its starters return, including redshirt senior Luke Petit and redshirt junior Eli Brasher. Both are preseason All-SoCon selections; the former is a jack of all trades who has made starts at all five line positions over the course of his career, while the latter was a mainstay at left tackle in 2024. The remainder of the line will be filled out by redshirt sophomore Chris Luna, redshirt senior Ryan Lamb and graduate student Jaydon Collins, a Wake Forest transfer. Going into last season, the Furman offensive line was the program’s least experienced unit, bringing back just one starter; now, it owns a collective 57 career starts. Hendrix describes it as the most improved group on the team and claims it could reach the heights of the 2022 Furman line, which gave up just 15 sacks and helped the Paladins run for 5.1 yards per carry.
The Paladins didn’t receive a significant talent infusion over the offseason, but it’s safe to predict their experienced offense will attain some level of improvement. By all accounts, Hedden has gotten better since the Tribe last saw him, and unlike in 2024, he’ll be at the helm of a system that takes the rushing burden off his shoulders and plays to his strengths. By Hendrix’s own admission, William and Mary should expect to see a run-first attack that creates opportunities for Hedden to throw out of play action and get the ball to playmakers like Pryor and Ferguson. Although it’s too early to tell to what extent Furman’s reliance on internal development will pay off, the Paladin offense should look much more cohesive than it did last November, cutting down on the turnovers and penalties that plagued it throughout last season. The William and Mary front seven, which was occasionally shaky against the run in 2024 and loses many of its starting linebackers, faces an early test: an opponent that isn’t elite, but that is certainly capable of doing damage if it returns to the form it displayed in 2022 and 2023.
After once being considered the class of the SoCon, Furman’s defense also experienced a steep fall from grace last year, giving up a league-worst 426.6 yards per game and struggling against both air and ground attacks. Opponents scored points on the Paladins in a number of different ways: William and Mary romped to 384 rushing yards, Western Carolina quarterback Cole Gonzales put up a SoCon record 620 passing yards, and Mercer turned in a balanced effort of 213 rushing yards and 290 passing yards. That’s not even to mention the 76-0 drubbing Ole Miss handed Furman in the first week of the season, a result Hendrix said drained the confidence from his young defense.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been part of a game, a first game where you felt like we could take absolutely nothing from that game other than our guys hung in there,” he said. “I really felt like that set us back. We had a young team anyways, and it just kind of set us back.”
Furman’s defense wreaked little havoc in the backfield, recording 20 sacks, 64 tackles for loss and six forced fumbles; each mark ranked in the bottom two of the SoCon leaderboard. The Paladins were also among the 30 worst teams in the FCS at preventing explosive plays. In Hendrix’s eyes, the unit’s struggles could be boiled down to these main failures, which he believes are remediable.
“We just gave up too many big plays for probably a couple different reasons,” Hendrix said. “Got to be better at rushing the passer, which I think we are. I still think we’re able to redshirt some guys, I think that can help us. We’ve plugged a guy here and there that I think can help us. We’ve been a group that plays great team defense, that’s kind of been our history. Certainly didn’t do that as good a year ago.”
Like its offense, Furman’s defense focused on retaining depth rather than importing transfers. The line is tasked with replacing All-SoCon first team selection Luke Clark and longtime Paladins Jeremiah Jackson and Xavier Stephens. Luckily for Furman, it boasts nearly ten returning linemen, five of whom have starting experience. It’s currently unclear exactly what combination of players the Paladins will put in the trenches against William and Mary, but the Tribe will likely see lots of defensive tackle Caldwell Bussey, a 2024 SoCon All-Freshman team selection who racked up five starts, 15 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss and two sacks a year ago.
The linebacking corps is in much the same spot, losing All-American Evan DiMaggio and productive veteran Amaah Achina but bringing back several starters and up-and-comers who gained experience off the bench in 2024. According to Hendrix, the group was “thin and young” last season and “certainly lacked any depth;” however, he believes the unit now “looks different in terms of numbers, overall skill level and competition.” Furman’s linebacker room is led by redshirt sophomores Ryan Earl and Raleigh Herbert, who combined for 80 tackles in 2024. Hendrix expects Earl, a preseason All-SoCon first team selection, to pace his position group as it attempts to return to effectiveness. Alongside the young duo will likely be graduate student transfer Jordan Burrell, who saw significant game action during his career at Lenoir-Rhyne, and veteran redshirt senior Brandt Babin.
In the secondary, almost all of Furman’s cornerbacks depart, but the newcomers may be more promising than those who left. Junior Eddie Jackson III and graduate students A.J. Seay and Keon Jones, each of whom transferred in over the offseason, accumulated large amounts of playing time at their last stops. Their additions instantly make the corner position one of the most experienced on the team. The Paladins’ outlook is even better at safety, where graduate student transfer Taylen Blaylock, holding 35 career games under his belt, joins three returning starters, one of whom is SoCon All-Freshman team selection Billy Lewis. Taking into account the recoveries of redshirt sophomore AK Burrell and graduate student Justin Hartwell, two projected starters who suffered injuries during the 2024 preseason, Furman’s secondary could rank among the better units on the team.
There are cases to be made for and against the Furman defense. On one hand, the inexperience issues that plagued the Paladins last season will be greatly mitigated, the roster is much deeper in case the injury bug strikes again, and Furman doesn’t have to open the campaign as an SEC team’s sacrificial lamb. The Paladins bring back multiple starters and over a dozen players who are old enough to have seen game action but young enough to still have development ahead of them. It’s conceivable that Earl, Bussey or one of their compatriots could become Furman’s next defensive star. The line is far deeper than it was in 2024, the linebackers boast talent, and the secondary is quite experienced. On the other hand, the Paladins lose their top-level star power in Clark and DiMaggio, and continuity from a bad unit might not necessarily be a good thing. Indeed, Furman brings back a host of players; it’s also true that those players were contributors to the Paladins’ disappointing 2024 showing. The returners have likely gotten better, but just how much better remains to be seen.
All things considered, Furman is probably a favorable first matchup for new William and Mary quarterback Tyler Hughes, as the Paladins’ pass rush was by no means formidable last year. If all goes according to plan, the junior signal-caller will get time to breathe in the pocket and flash the dual-threat potential that electrified Tribe fans during last season’s win over Hampton. However, William and Mary won’t be able to trample the Furman defense like it did in 2024; each of the Tribe’s top three rushers from that game has departed, and Paladin defensive coordinator Duane Vaughn said that William and Mary’s thrashing of his unit “stuck in his craw.” London, Hughes and company will have to get creative against a defense that will likely pay special attention to the ground game; how they choose to attack Furman will provide insight into the Tribe’s offensive philosophy going forward.
This weekend’s game provides William and Mary the opportunity to begin the 2025 campaign with a bang, taking down a traditionally strong opponent on the road. The Tribe is the slight favorite, and a victory would go a long way towards establishing confidence among the new-look position groups. The game kicks off Saturday, Aug. 30, at 2:00 PM in Eugene E. Stone III Stadium in Greenville, S.C.
