In 2023, the Lafayette football team was in no hurry to leave Goodman Stadium after it beat Lehigh 49-21 for the program’s eighth Patriot League title.
In 2024, the Leopards had no desire to linger at Goodman after a 38-14 defeat to the Mountain Hawks allowed Lehigh to celebrate its 13th league crown on the same field that Lafayette celebrated a year earlier. The Mountain Hawks’ celebration included the tearing down of the southernmost goal post by students and a journey through south Bethlehem that ended with the goal post in the Lehigh River.
There’s no question which postgame scene the Leopards enjoyed more, and it wasn’t last year.
As college football’s most-played rivalry returns to Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium for the first time since 2022 at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, it is guaranteed that one of the Lehigh Valley’s Division I programs will get to celebrate another league championship and a berth in the FCS playoffs.
It’s meeting No. 161, and it’s hard to fathom any of the previous 160 games being more special than this one.
For the first time in the Patriot League era, which goes back to 1986, the two teams are entering this spectacle with unbeaten marks in the league.
Their combined records are 19-3, with Lehigh owning an 11-0 mark.
But remember, two of the three Lafayette losses are against FBS-level opponents, Bowling Green and Oregon State. The Leopards’ lone FCS loss was to Princeton, 38-28, on a day that star running back Kente Edwards was injured.
Lehigh is ranked No. 4 in both national FCS polls, and Lafayette is No. 24 in the AFCA Coaches’ poll.
So, this one has just about everything you’d want in a game that is always among the most well-attended sporting events on the local sports calendar.
“They’re a huge challenge for us,” Lafayette coach John Troxell said. “Obviously, they don’t have many weaknesses. There’s a reason they are 11-0. The biggest challenge is going to be their defensive line. Their two ends get after you and they’re big in the middle. Trying to control that line of scrimmage is going to be critical to try to help Kente gain some yards. I don’t know if you control the line of scrimmage against them because nobody has been successful doing it so far. So, that’s going to be the biggest challenge.”
Many of the stats of the two teams look similar.
Lafayette is scoring 33.7 points per game, Lehigh 33.1. The Leopards are rushing for 210.3 yards per game, Lehigh 225.8. In total offense, the Leopards have averaged 422.4 yards per game and the Mountain Hawks 426.4.
But the one stat that jumps off the pregame notes is that Lehigh has allowed just 66.8 yards rushing per game and 268.6 total yards, and 12.3 points.
The X-factor could be Edwards, who missed two games and parts of a third with an injury and still set a school record with 17 touchdowns and 1,297 yards, the sixth-best single-season total in school history. He is averaging 144 yards rushing per game and 8.2 yards per carry.
While the two starting quarterbacks in this year’s game, Lafayette’s Dean DeNobile and Lehigh’s Hayden Johnson, have taken turns winning the MVP award the past two years, there’s a good chance that if the Leopards win the game, Edwards will be the MVP.
“That’s a great defense we’re going up against, but we’re also a great offense,” DeNobile said. “They’re very sound and we have to play mistake-free football. If we do that and we prepare the best we’ve ever prepared, we’re going to come victorious.”
DeNobile, who has thrown for 6,681 yards and 53 touchdowns in his career, has seen it all after playing in this game two years in a row, and he knows how great it is when you win and how much it hurts when you don’t.
“It’s a new year, and they could be the best team in the country, and we could be the worst team in the country, and anyone could still win,” DeNobile said. “It’s my job and our job as a team to make sure we’re put in a good position.”
The best position for DeNobile will be upright if his offensive line can protect him. Lehigh’s defense puts a lot of pressure on quarterbacks. The Mountain Hawks’ Matt Spatny set the school’s sack record and was an AP honorable mention All-American selection last year.
“We’re excited and preparing as hard as we can,” said left guard and senior captain Brian Baucia. “The biggest strength of their team is their front seven on defense. They’re very talented as a group, and they play hard and they play for each other. We’ve just got to match their energy and play hard. Sean Wilson [an Easton High graduate] is my left tackle, and Sean Kinney [a Nazareth grad] is on both sides of me, and we’ve come a long way. They have taught me a lot, and I’ve taught them a lot. We lean on each other a lot in a tough game like this one.”
No matter what happens, it is likely to be the final game for the Lafayette seniors at Fisher Stadium.
The Leopards, who will run out for the final time just before kickoff on Saturday, know it will be emotional, but are determined to focus on the task at hand.
They know they have the program in a much better place than where it was when they first got to Easton.
“We still have a little more to go so I will save the emotions for later,” said senior receiver Elijah Steward, who will go down as one of the top pass-catchers in school history. “It’s time to focus on the business at hand. But it has been great here. It has been an experience going through the ups and downs. I wouldn’t change anything. The culture we have built is special and the next guys coming up take a little bit of what they have learned from you and they build their own culture. I am just excited to leave behind what I believe is a special legacy. But there is more work to do.”
Fifth-year defensive tackle Phillip Peiffer has experienced a coaching change and a lot of ups and downs in his time on College Hill. He knows how he’d like to go out.
“We won three games my freshman year, so to be at this point now has been a massive change and fun to be a part of that change,” Peiffer said. “This is the game of a lifetime and it’s our job to go out thee and make it read in the history books the right way.”
