Head Coach: Joe Harasymiak is entering his first season as the head coach of the Minutemen. He comes in after previous stops as the DC for Minnesota and Rutgers. This isn’t his first head coaching job though, he was previously the head coach for the Maine Black Bears where he went 20-15 including an incredible 2018 season where he led the program to their only appearance in the semifinals of the FCS playoffs.
Program Outlook: It’s been a long challenging ride for UMass. This was a top FCS program, they won the FCS National Title in 1998 and in 2012 they made the jump to FBS joining the MAC. They didn’t want to join in all sports and eventually they got booted, having to live life as an independent beginning in 2016. Finally, they got the invite to rejoin the MAC this year and there’s a new excitement around the program now that is has a home once again. There’s still challenges, this isn’t an easy area to recruit to but it seems like funding has kicked up a lot since the move and they might gain momentum on the recruiting trail as a result.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: UMass ranks 97th in the country returning 46.5% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. This isn’t bad considering the coaching change. The offense has some good options at QB, AJ Hairston returns, his stats don’t pop but something changed for the offense when he got the reigns late in the year, his 3 starts were a 35-34 OT loss to Liberty, a game against Georgia where they led in the 1st quarter and were within a score just before halftime and a 47-42 loss to UConn. Clearly something worked. That being said, he will have competition Grant Jordan was a stud for Yale and they also have former Utah QB Brandon Rose. Whoever wins the job has some decent receiving options both Ty Harding and Jacquon Gibson possess game breaking speed, there’s hope that former UCF TE Reece Adkins becomes a safety blanket for the QB too. It’s too bad they lost so much on the offensive line and RB because their run game was really good late in the year, UTSA transfer Rocko Griffin will help at RB but the offensive line will need to come together. The defense will be portal heavy, the defensive line has an intriguing transfer in Joshua Nobles who started at Jackson State last year and Tim Grant-Randall is a good player on the inside. LB Derrieon Craig was the leader tackler last year and he will be joined by a possible trendsetter in Timmy Hinspiter who follows Harasymiak over from Rutgers. S Jeremiah McGill will lead the secondary.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: The schedule is both good on bad. On the positive, when UMass was an independent there were always 3-4 SEC teams that would book them for a buy game, now playing a conference schedule would prevent them from having so many of those. There’s still tough non-conference games at Iowa and Missouri but UMass gets a nice home toss-up with Temple to open the season and Bryant went 2-10 at the FCS level only beating 1 D1 team last year. Now here’s the negative, the MAC schedule features some games against other rebuilding programs like Central Michigan, Akron and Kent State but all of them are on the road! They do get home games against NIU, Western Michigan and Bowling Green who are all on a steadier foundation but lost a ton of production. Overall the schedule still makes wins hard to find.
Final Thoughts: This is one of the most exciting seasons in a long time for UMass. It’s truly a new beginning on all fronts, they have a coach that knows how to find talent in the area and win. This is going to take a little time and 2025 will be about stacking positives. Winning 2 games would be nice but win that opener against Temple and we could be talking about reaching 4 wins which would tie their best season since joining FBS and set the tone for a new era of Minutemen football.
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