ODU Football 2025 Opponent Preview - Marshall

By David Asbury

Who are you and what did you do with the Sun Belt Champs?
The Monarchs have faced the Marshall Thundering Herd ten times, the most of any school since ODU restarted football in 2009 (ODU played East Carolina twelve times since 1934 with just 5 of those occurring since 2009).  But the series has been awful for ODU losing nine of the ten matches.  The only victory was in 2016, ODU's best football season, and Marshall's worst season since 2007.  Can the Monarchs get their second win in the series this October?  Will it be difficult to do that against a squad that just won the Sun Belt Championship?

Wait a sec, this is NOT the same team that won the championship last year.  After winning the SBC, they lost their star quarterback, top five rushers, top four receivers, four starting offensive linemen, sixteen of their top seventeen tacklers on defense, their head coach, coaching staff, and even their athletic director.  This is a brand new team from head to toe and the new guys have massive shoes to fill.

The transition is mostly due to head coach Charles Huff's departure.  He had a solid tenure in Huntington, going bowling in each of his four seasons, getting big wins against Notre Dame and Virginia Tech, and of course winning the Sun Belt in his final game there.  But neither he nor Marshall was interested in an extension and Huff took half the team with him to Southern Miss.  For instance, USM will have more Marshall starters on their team than Marshall will.  So, in comes Tony Gibson, the defensive coordinator from NC State.  This will be the West Virginia-native's first year head coaching.  He really has not been apart of a rebuild of this magnitude before.  He will have his work cut out for him and it might take time.

The quarterback position is up for grabs with the battle being between Zion Turner (Jacksonville State/UConn transfer) and Carlos Del Rio-Wilson (Syracuse transfer).  Rio-Wilson is the favorite to win the job after a good Spring.  He spent three years at Syracuse, but did not play in 2024. Over two seasons, he went 48/102 (47.1%) passing for 624 yards, four touchdowns and eight interceptions. Del Rio-Wilson also rushed for 148 yards on 46 attempts (3.2 average) and one touchdown.  These are not great numbers but it was against mostly ACC competition. So hopefully he can receive some help from the rest of the O and the move to the Sun Belt improves his output for Marshall's sake.

The Sun Belt Newcomer of the Year, Braylon Braxton is following Charles Huff to Southern Miss. The Marshall quarterback situation is in flux. Photo courtesy of CB Sports Photography

The only two returning starters for the Herd offense will be guard Jalen Slappy and West Virginia-native tight end Toby Payne.  Last season Payne caught six touchdowns.   Reserve center Eric Meeks looks to start this season and made the first start of his career in the win over Old Dominion last year.  Everything else on offense appears to be brand new. 

New offensive coordinator Rod Smith (previously at Jacksonville State) is basically starting from scratch.  Besides quarterback, there will be new faces at running back (Tony Mathis from Houston, Jo’shon Barbie from McNeese State, and Michael Allen from NC State) and at receiver (Antonio Harmon from Mississippi State, Jakolbe Baldwin from NC State, and Zavier Short from Appalachian State).  It is just going to be tough to match last years' production when it looks like every position group is in rebuilding mode.

Eric Meeks (57) and Toby Payne (81) are almost all that return from the 2024 championship team. Photo courtesy of CB Sports Photography.

The defense fares no better.  The only returning starter is safety Jadarius Green-McKnight.  He finished last season with 38 tackles and one interception.  That is good production but it is far from the star power of Mike Green and J.J. Roberts that made the Marshall D electric in 2024.  So just like the offense, the defense is basically starting from scratch with at least eight starters being new transfers.  I will not sugar coat it.  This defense could see a massive drop off from the championship squad of last season.

Overall, with so much lost production this team has a ton to prove to show this it not a rebuilding year.  The prognosticators tend to think it is and expect the Herd to struggle in the best division in G5 football.  Phil Steele predicts they will finish last in the SBC East and CFBudge ranked them last in the entire Belt.  Vegas predicts 5.5 wins.  That's doable with the very soft nonconference schedule (Missouri State, MTSU, and EKU).  They would just have to win three conference games to be bowl eligible.  But that looks really hard after drawing the best two teams in the SBC West Louisiana and Texas State and if the Herd lose any of those three soft nonconference games, it is going to be a very long season for them.  Frankly, the under looks pretty appealing.  This Marshall team may miss a bowl game for the first time since 2016.

So that means this is the year!  It has to be.  Old Dominion is rising and the Marshall Thundering Herd are rebuilding, which is very similar for both squads in 2016; the last and only time the Monarchs beat the Herd.  If ODU cannot beat the Herd this year in October, I am just not sure they ever will.