They were scheduled to reconvene today.

Instead, COVID-19 has forced James Madison football, like almost all programs across the country, to cancel spring practice.

“Spring football to me is always about developing players,” second-year Dukes coach Curt Cignetti said, “the fundamental skills, consistency and performance and improving players on a daily basis, and sort of improving your team to develop those intangibles with guys stepping into new roles.”

With no players to work with, Cignetti said he has to allocate his time to parts of his job that he can do. He said he plans to watch film of JMU’s opponents for this coming fall, keep in contact with his players to make sure they’re staying academically eligible while they aren’t on campus and continue tape evaluation of prospects for the 2021 recruiting class.

“There’s still things to be done,” said Cignetti, who led JMU to a 14-2 mark and an appearance in the FCS national championship game last season.

But none of those involve taking the field at Bridgeforth Stadium with his team to practice for the first time since falling to North Dakota State in the title bout in Texas this past January.

So let’s call this the hypothetical spring. If the coronavirus never became a pandemic and JMU was able to hold spring football, these likely would’ve been the storylines worth paying attention to throughout the entirety of drills for the Dukes:

Earlier in their careers, they were each tabbed as the future starting quarterback of the program.

But redshirt senior Cole Johnson has only served as a career backup and redshirt junior Gage Moloney took rare meaningful snaps when he was used as a wildcat quarterback in the title-game loss to the Bison.

This spring, they were expected to begin competing for the No. 1 job considering JMU seeks a replacement for Ben DiNucci, the 2019 Colonial Athletic Association Offensive Player of the Year.

“Cole and Gage are obviously the frontrunners,” Cignetti said earlier this month before he knew spring practice would be canceled. “And [redshirt junior Patrick] Bentley has got talent, too. … But Cole is a guy who has been here a long time and waited for his chance and did well when he came in. Gage has got a lot of talent and so I’m anxious to see how those guys progress on a daily basis.”

Moloney was the more heavily recruited prospect of the two favorites. Prior to signing with JMU as part of its 2017 recruiting class, he previously was a verbal pledge of FBS Ohio University and gained offers from Appalachian State, Colorado State, and East Carolina during his senior season at Northwestern (Rock Hill, S.C.) High School – the same prep program that produced former Tennessee quarterback Justin Worley and former Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph.

“And I think having that experience does something for me,” Moloney said about his championship appearance after rushing twice for eight yards during a fourth-quarter scoring drive in that title game, “and it probably builds some confidence that I don’t know about, and so I’m looking forward to the future.”

In the last four years, Johnson played in 22 games and started once while largely entering in mop-up circumstances. For his career, he’s completed 64 percent of his throws for 1,099 yards, six touchdowns, and six interceptions.

Senior offensive lineman Liam Fornadel said he had been eager to start spring for a variety of reasons, but one reason in particular stuck out to him.

“Wrobo made a joke about it,” Fornadel said, referring to Dukes offensive line coach Damian Wroblewski. “There’s not a new face in that chair, so there’s continuity and it’s nice.”

JMU was set to embark on spring drills after minimal changes to its coaching staff this offseason.

For the first time in his career, Fornadel was ready to begin practice with the same offensive line coach he had the year before. Wroblewski is the first offensive line coach to stay consecutive years at the school since former assistant Jamal Powell did it in 2015 and 2016.

In addition, the entire offensive staff stayed the same, which would allow for Cignetti, Wroblewski, offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery and the rest of the staff on that side of the ball to tweak their system or incorporate new wrinkles after finishing third nationally for scoring offense (40 points per game) and tenth in FCS for total offense (465.8 yards per game) this past season.

“Now we’ve been with this offense and these coaches, and we didn’t lose any offensive coaches,” Fornadel said, “so we have that continuity from not only the scheme but from the relationships with the coaches we have, so it’s just understanding the little things we can improve to make our offense even better.”

On defense, coordinator Corey Hetherman is back as well as linebackers coach Bryant Haines and cornerbacks coach Matt Birkett. While the staff likely could’ve used the spring to acclimate new safeties coach Eddie Whitley Jr. and new defensive tackles coach Marcus Hall-Oliver, with three key returning members, Hetherman could have implemented any changes he wanted to over the 15 practices.

This time of year is always ideal for those third- and fourth-teamers from the year before to make names for themselves.

Last year, then little-known running back Solomon Vanhorse was a spring standout and used his strong showing to catapult himself into significant reps in August training camp which led to playing time come the regular season. Vanhorse scored the first JMU touchdown of the 2019 campaign when he scampered into the end zone from nine yards out against West Virginia at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, W.Va.

“In spring your numbers aren’t quite as large as they are in the fall, so everybody gets plenty of reps,” Cignetti said. “And obviously there are some guys that have played good football here and they’ll start out as [first-teamers], but maybe there’s some positions where guys will get a little more opportunity and there is a rotation. But getting enough reps is never a problem in the spring.”

With JMU graduating 13 starters from its offense and defense off last year’s team, the chance to start earning more playing time was there for so many on the roster. For example, voids left behind by departed linebackers Dimitri Holloway and Landan Word would’ve given the first crack to redshirt junior Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey, who appeared on special teams and as part of JMU’s nickel package last year, for more reps this spring.

Beyond those returning to the Dukes’ roster, JMU added mid-year transfers defensive lineman Abi N-Okonji (Minnesota), offensive lineman Stanley Hubbard (Connecticut) and safety Joe Joe Norwood (Massachusetts) as well as early enrollee freshmen defensive back AJ Webb, defensive back Sammy Malignaggi, defensive lineman Mikail Kamara and wide receiver Antwane Wells.

For all but Kamara, who was expected to have surgery on a preexisting injury from high school and miss the spring, these practices would’ve provided an initial opportunity to make an impact and prove that they could help the Dukes in their first year with the team.

Fornadel said he thought it would begin to happen this spring – that the Dukes would start developing leaders for the 2020 season.

JMU graduated its four captains from last year – Holloway, Ron’Dell Carter, Rashad Robinson, and Mac Patrick.

“[Safety D’Angelo] Amos has a big voice in the locker room and tries to get everybody under wraps,” Fornadel said. “But it might to be too early. I think it’s been a collective effort so far to get control of the groups [during winter workouts], and make sure you have everybody calling out something that somebody did or to pay attention. It’s a collective effort for now, but as the offseason goes on we’ll see more of the individual leadership.”

Cignetti said he expected it to start to happen this spring, too, with returning starters like Amos, Fornadel, defensive tackle Mike Greene and others.

“Those guys have a body of work and we expect them to keep improving,” Cignetti said. “And now they step into a little more of a leadership type role.”