A little less than two weeks ago, the James Madison Dukes were one of the toasts of the college football world.
The Sun Belt darlings were 7-0, and new head coach Billy Napier looked like he had exorcised all of the demons that plagued him at his previous stop in the Sunshine State.
The Dukes were lighting up the scoreboard, and talks of a College Football Playoff appearance were starting to crop up all around Harrisonburg.
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Since then, the mood has soured considerably in the Shenandoah Valley, thanks to a two-game losing streak that has effectively ended any CFP dreams that purple and gold-clad fans had swirling around in their heads.
But it isn’t just the number in the loss column that has JMU fans vexed, it’s how those losses happened and who they happened against that is causing all of the consternation.
Both games were almost identical to one another in terms of how they went, as the Dukes were healthy favorites against both Appalachian State and Troy and raced out to considerable first half leads before stagnating in the second half, losing both games in overtime.
What’s even more damning is that the second half swoons have been happening quite a bit this year, with James Madison being outscored in the final 30+ minutes in four of the eight games they’ve played against FBS competition.
In other words, this isn’t a new development.
If only someone could have warned Dukes fans before they hired a guy like Napier.
Oh wait…
If you read my buddy and fellow Gator fan Zach Dean’s latest edition of Nightcaps, you’re already aware that there is somewhat of a mea culpa happening on social media between James Madison fans and Florida supporters.
My Orange and Blue brethren spent all offseason repeatedly cautioning the JMU faithful about Napier’s tendencies and pig-headed nature when it came to coaching.
Dukes fans were confident the issues had been fixed, even pointing to the fact that a self-reflective Napier went on a speaking tour talking about how he “looked in the mirror” and took ownership of how things fell apart in Gainesville.
He even hired an offensive coordinator, something he was practically begged to do for four years while coaching at Florida.
The national media got on board, too, wondering if Florida really was just some toxic situation where even the best coaches went to kill their careers.
The media and Dukes fans even doubled down when JMU got off to that aforementioned 7-0 start.
Then it all came crashing down, and the same issues that sank Napier in The Swamp reared their ugly head in the Commonwealth.
Poor clock management, stagnant second half offenses, head-scratching play calls in high-leverage situations.
You can find a handful of Florida games from 2022-25 that resemble the two most recent JMU losses to a T, so much so that many Gator fans were accurately predicting what would happen next.
A tiger can’t change its stripes, and although Napier went out and hired an OC and did some reflecting in the offseason, this is who he is.
In his final season at Louisiana as the head coach of the Ragin’ Cajuns, Napier uttered the now infamous “scared money don’t make money” catchphrase that made him a hot candidate during the 2021 hiring cycle.
Ironically, every coaching moment for Billy after that has been the definition of “scared money.”
This latest masterpiece sums it all up perfectly.
Napier coaches with a style that offers the lowest possible margin for error.
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It’s why, even in games he was dominating while at Florida, the game would always usually come down to one score in the fourth quarter.
His swan song in The Swamp, a shocking 29-21 upset over then-top-10 Texas, saw the Gators bludgeoning the Longhorns on both lines of scrimmage.
Any coach worth his salt would have put his foot on Texas’ throat and put the Longhorns away early, but Napier and company “turtled” in the second half, making a few boneheaded decisions in the process, to allow the Bevo Boys to have a chance to tie the game late in the fourth.
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And perhaps the worst part of it all is who came before Napier at James Madison.
The coaches directly preceding Billy in Harrisonburg were Curt Cignetti and Bob Chesney, two of the most calculated, ruthlessly efficient coaches in the game of college football right now.
Everything they did made sense from an analytics standpoint, and their teams were (and are) well coached and almost never “play with their food.”
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I’m sure Dukes fans are experiencing some form of shock having to go from coach Cig and Chesney to Sun Belt Billy, but as I mentioned above, they were warned.
It’s nice to see the JMU faithful finally coming around, but it might be too late to save them at this point.