Head Coach: Ricky Rahne is entering his 5th year as the head coach of the Monarchs but this is only their 4th playing season. Confusing? Yes, that’s because they didn’t play in 2020. He has a 15-23 record with the Monarchs. They’ve made 2 bowls under his watch and his record is weighted down by a 3-9 record in 2022. Perhaps the most strange thing about that 2022 season is they beat Virginia Tech that year in a game that featured a lot of weird plays, then the rest of the season weird plays went against the Monarchs in close losses.
Program Outlook: Old Dominion football is still young but it hasn’t figured things out yet. The Monarchs are still a young program they only brought football back in 2009 and joined FBS in 2014. The Monarchs took FBS by storm with an incredible 2016 season when they won 10 games, it felt like Old Dominion was primed to become the top challenger to the ACC programs in the state. Since then there’s been no winning seasons, Liberty and JMU have both moved up to FBS and already experienced significantly more success. There’s no reason ODU can’t succeed, but when are they going to break through?
How does the 2024 Roster look?: Can Old Dominion develop some consistency? Most people saw the Monarchs in the thrilling one and only Famous Toastery Bowl where they went out to a 28-0 lead but lost 38-35. That game perfectly displayed what this team was all season. They often did this in games which resulted in a ton of one score games, 11 of the Monarchs 13 games in fact. This offense could torch just about anyone when they had blocking. QB Grant Wilson and his receivers were exciting to watch, almost all of that returns with exception of their best deep threat who is now at Arizona. So about that offensive line, far too often there were times in games where it became a swinging gate, set the offense back and got the Monarchs out of rhythm. Seriously the stars are mind boggling the line allowed 105 tackles for loss and 62 sacks last year. There’s some experience back and some guys from the portal to help, but this unit holds the keys to what this offense can do. You can’t talk about this defense without first talking about linebacker Jason Henderson, he’s a freak athlete who’s a tackling machine and ended up here because he’s a little undersized. Still there’s no doubt a ton of bigger programs likely tampered to try to get him to transfer this offseason and we have to celebrate him sticking with the program that believed in him first. Henderson has an NFL future. Whether it’s from the defensive line or elsewhere the Monarchs need someone else who can throw an offense out of rhythm with negative plays. The secondary is a bit of the portal taketh and giveth situation, they lost a few starters via the portal but also picked up some key guys from the portal too.
Screenshot from fbschedules.com1
2024 Schedule Thoughts: This schedule is very tough. There’s no truly easy non-conference game. The Monarchs face South Carolina and Virginia Tech, fortunately the latter is at home but that’s also the more dangerous team. East Carolina struggled last season but is an offense away from being much more dangerous. Bowling Green had a winning record last season, could be more dangerous this season and is on the road. The conference schedule isn’t much better the Monarchs are in the loaded Sun Belt east division and get possibly the worst draw possible from the west with Texas State and Arkansas State who are both expected to be top contenders for that division. It’s actually impressive how disadvantageous this schedule is, their “easiest” stretch is actually 3 straight road games, their home game against Georgia Southern is on 5 days rest. Looking at this schedule I realize there’s a good chance that Old Dominion is a chaos team, it might be too much for them to be contenders themselves but odds are they will be able to mess up the season for others.
Vegas Projection: Old Dominion’s win total is set at 4.5 with the odds geared toward the under. Vegas isn’t super hopeful about the Monarchs it seems. The schedule is tough but I feel like they might be able to squeeze out more wins.
2024 Best Case: Old Dominion comes out firing with better protection than expected and the Monarchs make headline early. They open the season by upsetting South Carolina and avoid a slip up against East Carolina the next week. Then they save their best game for their biggest game of the year against Virginia Tech, the Monarchs continue their undefeated run against the Hokies at home with a huge upset and no Virginia Tech coaches get stuck in an elevator this time either. The Monarchs win 4 of the next 6 games which is impressive considering the logistics. The Monarchs grab another huge in-state victory by upsetting JMU the following week. They stumble against Marshall the following week before beating Arkansas State to finish 9-3. The Monarchs get matched up with Liberty in their bowl game and take down the Flames to go 3-0 against other teams from the state, and Virginia is well out of the picture after another bad season.
2024 Worst Case: Ok this schedule might be too brutal. It gets going the wrong way immediately when the Monarchs are blown out by South Carolina and can’t even beat East Carolina. Then they are squashed by a Virginia Tech team that eventually makes the playoff semifinals. A winless team isn’t ready for a 3 game road trip, the Monarchs still don’t have a win after that stretch and it’s pretty apparent things have gone very wrong. It all culminates in a winless season. JMU also makes the playoff and wins a game, Liberty goes undefeated and even Virginia makes a bowl leaving ODU as the most lost program in the state.
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