James Madison opened its season with an 80-7 win over Morehead State and now turn its attention to Saturday’s Week 2 matchup with Central Connecticut State.

This is the second edition of the DN-R’s weekly JMU football mailbag. Each week I’ll take your questions – you can submit the questions via email to gmadia@dnronline.com, on Twitter using #JMUTalk or on the DukesofJMU.com’s message boards. Let’s get started.

Email from Jonathan K.

How is team chemistry through Week 1 and is Connor Mitch enthusiastic and supportive of Bryan Schor or has he been disengaged until his number is called?

As you could imagine, through one week of the season the team’s chemistry is extremely good. It helps that JMU set school records during their blowout victory, but from my evaluation, having watched the team go through training camp, I’d say chemistry among players and coaches has been positive since the start of camp. One thing to remember is that both the offense and defense are full of juniors and seniors that have played together for a long time – that always helps, but maybe even more so in the case of JMU since they have been through multiple coaching changes together.

To answer your second question, I actually asked JMU coach Mike Houston earlier this week about how Mitch has handled the role of being the backup after losing the starting job to Schor. Houston said Mitch has shown nothing but support for Schor and that he has had “a really positive attitude.”

Email from Michael E.

Two questions: Should we be worried about Khalid Abdullah? He looked a little shaky on his last carry coming off the field. And do we have concerns about our outside pass rush with Ankrah/Carter/Daka/Brown/Ezeagwu or were we just in base defense? Neither registered a sack Saturday and seemed to have trouble getting off blocks in third-and-long situations.

Abdullah is fine. He’s been in full uniform for practice throughout the week. Now as far as the pass rush goes, I don’t think JMU should worry after one week. Morehead State’s offense featured a quick-drop passing concept, which combats against a team with a good pass rush. Additionally, just because JMU didn’t get sacks doesn’t mean the pass didn’t affect the game. On Raven Greene’s interception, the Morehead State pocket began to collapse in the lap of Eagles quarterback Austin Gahafer. I think the sacks will come as the season goes along.

The first part of this answer is that scheduling is extremely difficult at both the FBS and FCS levels. A few weeks ago I met with JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne and he said that football scheduling was the hardest part of his job. Right now, JMU is booked with FBS games through 2019. The team plays at North Carolina next week, at East Carolina in 2017, at N.C. State in 2018 and at West Virginia in 2019. In most years, JMU is going to play one FBS opponent per season. The other non-conference dates will be used to host FCS opponents at Bridgeforth Stadium.

Email from Charles F.

In your article earlier this week, you mentioned that the blocking scheme was moving away from a "finesse" scheme. I often hear the term finesse applied to a zone-blocking scheme, while man blocking seems to be described as more of a power-blocking scheme. Is that what is happening here? Or is it really just a transition from a running game that focuses on sweeps and runs off the edge to one that focuses on runs between the tackles?

Good question, Charles. As Houston described, JMU has moved to a more physical approach. The blocking and overall run scheme is interesting because it’s actually multiple offensive schemes that the coaches molded together. Offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick brainstormed with run-game coordinator and tight ends coach Bryan Stinespring as well as offensive line coach Jamal Powell. The run game is a bit of what Kirkpatrick did at ECU, some of what Stinespring ran at Virginia Tech and even some of what Powell was doing with the Dukes last fall. The attitude Houston wants from his offensive line is another difference. Houston wants his offense to be able to run the ball at any point during the game, which is why there has been so much emphasis on a downhill blocking at practice and you can see that in the concepts too.

That’s fair especially since you didn’t see much of Schor throwing the ball in his start Saturday against Morehead State. Having watched him in practice and a preseason scrimmage, I think he does maintain a good enough arm to win a game by throwing the ball if he has to. I’ve written about this throw a few times, in the preseason scrimmage he threw a great ball to Rashard Davis on a post-corner route that went for a 33-yard touchdown against JMU’s No. 1 defense. To answer your second question, I do think tight end Jonathan Kloosterman will become valuable for the Dukes in the red zone to pair alongside Domo Taylor in the passing game.