JMU Prepares For Stout Bison Defense

FRISCO, Texas — It’s what Donnie Kirkpatrick calls the fun part of preparation for Saturday’s FCS championship showdown between No. 1 James Madison and No. 2 North Dakota State.

“The strategy of it,” the second-year JMU offensive coordinator said.

Since the Dukes’ 51-16 thumping of South Dakota State in the semifinal, Kirkpatrick has spent the last three weeks — other than taking a few days off for Christmas — trying to figure out the best way for his offense to attack the Bison defense.

NDSU gives up just 11.5 points per game, which is the second-best rate nationally behind only James Madison (10.7 points per game). The Bison top the country for total defense, yielding 237.1 yards per game.

And the last time NDSU gave up more than 200 rushing yards in a contest was when JMU rushed for 201 yards against the Bison in the 2016 semifinal at the FargoDome.

“The thing about their scheme is that it’s very complex,” Kirkpatrick said. “They do a little bit of everything with a lot of sub packages, a lot of nickel, a lot of dime.

“They’ve been running this scheme, I guess, for a while. And they know it well, so they’ve got a lot of different things that they do to you. A lot of teams can’t do that and be very good at it, but they can do a lot of different things and they do them all well.”

NDSU defensive coordinator Matt Entz is in his third year at the school, but had worked with coach Chris Klieman previously when Klieman was the coordinator at Northern Iowa.

Kirkpatrick said finding success against Klieman and Entz’s 4-3 defense isn’t as simple as applying last year’s semifinal game plan to this year’s title bout.

He said NDSU has likely learned and adjusted after studying the Dukes’ 27-17 win over and over again.

“What they do so good defensively is they take away what you like to do,” Kirkpatrick said. “They make you play left-handed a little bit, so whatever you’re really good at —whether it’s a certain play or certain formation or a certain player doing a certain thing — they’re going to really, really attack that and take it away and make you go to something else.”

Throughout this postseason, JMU has thrived through offensive balance.

In the semifinal, junior running back Marcus Marshall tallied scoring rushes of 87 yards and 65 yards. He had a 43-yard run in the quarterfinal against Weber State. Senior quarterback Bryan Schor has combined for six total touchdowns (five passing and one rushing).

“[North Dakota State] only averages playing 57 plays per game on defense,” Kirkpatrick said. “That’s not very many, so we’re going to have to find a way to get out there and stay out there and get some drives going to try to wear them down a bit to make them have to defend a little more than they’ve had to do this year.

“In last year’s game, we lived on the big play. Bryan had four or five huge plays where he scrambled and made some big plays. He had the big throw to [wide receiver] John Miller. [Former running back] Khalid Abdullah had four or five huge runs that were all big plays, but we didn’t have a very consistent game. We just got away with big plays, so we’re going to try to be more consistent this year.”

What worries Kirkpatrick the most is NDSU’s ability to create negative plays, he said.

More than 10 percent of snaps for the opposing offense have resulted in a loss of yardage against the Bison this season. The NDSU defense has racked up 96 tackles for loss this year.

“They get you behind the chains and then they can do all these exotic defenses on you in second-and-long and third-and-long,” Kirkpatrick said. “So we’ll have to do a great job on first down to get ahead of the chains.

“We’ve got to stay on schedule.”

Klieman said his defense feeds off of sacks and tackles for loss.

“If you get people in second-and-10 or second-and-12, you just open up the whole playbook,” Klieman said. “If you’re going to be in a third-down defense, so to speak, you can pressure more or you can decide to sit back. There are just so many things you can do.”

NDSU linebacker Chris Board has 50 total tackles this season and he said moving the line of scrimmage backward play after play is an emphasis against the Dukes.

“Having the ability to create negative plays gets the offense off schedule, so it’s definitely nice,” Board said. “And it narrows down what the offense can do, which is a bonus and it’s helped us a lot this season.”

Kirkpatrick has relayed the message to Schor.

“If they get you in third-and-long, they feel really confident that they’re going to get their defense off the field,” Schor said. “The way their offense has played this year is they’ve kept the ball most of the game and I think it’s something we need to be aware of.”