Preseason Predictions Midseason Recap

With every CSFL team having played either three or four regular season games, we’re at the midpoint of the season, meaning it’s time to take a look back at my preseason predictions. I’ll start with the one thing I got dead wrong: my inclination that this would be a year of greater parity. I thought that the presence of fifth-year seniors on teams besides the Ivies and service academies would somewhat lessen the dominance of Army and Navy, but I missed the mark hard there. Excluding the game they played against one another, neither Army nor Navy has won a game by fewer than 25 points, and even Army’s 38-13 Week 1 win over Penn was the largest margin of defeat for Penn in any game since October 2014 (when I was still in high school). As it stands right now, the title race is clearly those two schools, and then the rest, and I was wrong about how big that gap would be.

Outside of that, I’d say the predictions are looking pretty good. In an August 2021 piece for the site, I wrote that one of the major storylines to look out for in 2021 was the improvement of the North Division, and that’s arguably been the story of the season so far outside of Army’s and Navy’s dominance. Caldwell is one of two undefeated teams left in the league (albeit with an easy schedule) alongside Navy, while Mansfield, led by freshman phenom QB Cahsid Raymond, has scored at least 28 points in every single game en route to a 3-1 start. Halfway through the season, it’s impossible to argue that three of the league’s top five teams don’t belong to the North Division (with the South still claiming Navy and Penn). This is a stark contrast to 2019, when the South inarguably had four of the league’s best five squads. Even after one accounts for Cornell’s incomprehensibly quick decline, which has to be considered the biggest disappointment in the league, the rise in quality of the North division has been undeniable, and it’s a great sign for the future of the league.

Among my other preseason predictions was that Army LB David Dickerson would win CSFL MVP, and while he’s certainly in the mix, MVP looks like a crapshoot at this point. Among those in contention just on the offensive side include Cahsid Raymond (195.3 pass YPG, league-high 168.3 rush YPG), Penn QB Andrew Paolini (12 total TD, 0 INT, league-high 180.8 passer efficiency rating), and Penn WR Brendan McCaffrey (league-high 177.7 all-purpose YPG), with Navy QB Brandon Atwood also in the conversation if healthy (he did not play in a Week 4 win over Alderson Broaddus). 

As one of two players in the CSFL with 9.0+ tackles per game and 1.0+ sack per game (also STAC’s Tyreke Smith), Dickerson has as good of a shot to win as any defensive player, but I’d have to say Raymond is the favorite as of now. What he’s doing strictly on the ground is preposterous, averaging 11.4 yards per carry (remember, sacks count as negative rushing yardage in college football), and that’s not to mention that he ranks near the top of the league in most passing metrics too. Because Mansfield doesn’t have a bye this season (meaning it gets eight games instead of seven), Raymond is on pace for 1,346 rushing yards in 2021, which would set the CSFL’s single-season record since at least 2003 — and he’s doing that as a QB. He has made his team competitive in every game, and the 2019 season with MVP Eddie Jenkins proved that playing on the league’s champion or runner-up team isn’t a prerequisite for winning MVP. He, and Mansfield by extension, have been the league’s biggest surprise of 2021.

At the team level, I wrote that Army was my favorite to repeat as league champions, and though they did lose their annual “Star Game” to Navy, the Black Knights are still right up there at the top of the league. Navy’s 14-6 Week 3 win over Army was a dogfight as it almost annually is, with Army actually winning in first downs and turnover margin (and only losing in total yards by 14). But with Army’s JC Watson being sacked eight times, it looks like Navy is the league’s top team in the trenches right now, a positive sign for its hopes to dethrone Army as league champs. 

In the preseason predictions, I wrote that Watson starting at QB for Army would give the Black Knights the overall edge over Navy with its unproven QB situation, but it turns out that Brandon Atwood has only improved the Navy passing game from where it was in the past few seasons. I won’t backtrack from my preseason pick for the sake of competition, but if I were to make a fresh pick today, I’d take Navy to win it all. With its dominance in the trenches and a vastly improved pass attack compared to the 2017-20 period, it’s tough to see Navy going down.
Regarding Penn, I hit the nail on the head with what the Quakers would be, writing in September that “Penn’s going to be a good team, as it’s simply what the program does; there have only been two losing seasons in the entire 21st century, and that standard shouldn’t change following the coaching transition from Bill Wagner to Jerry McConnell. But … I believe the team’s losses in the trenches will be too much to overcome in terms of title contention.” That’s exactly how it’s played out so far. Penn has still been an unquestioned top-3 team in the league, with its skill position players playing as well as anybody’s; Brendan McCaffrey leads the league in receiving yards, Laquan McKever leads all RBs in rushing yards, and Andrew Paolini leads the league in passing efficiency and pass yards per attempt. But seeing Penn’s 38-13 loss to Army, in which the Quakers trailed 38-0 after three quarters and Paolini was sacked six times, it’s hard to envision Penn quite on the same tier as Army and Navy like it has been in recent years. While I hope I am eating these words in a month when the season is over, the CSFL in 2021 looks like it did for most of the 20th century: Army and Navy, and then everybody else.