2026 Football Schedule
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We finished last season on a positive note.... According to RollSpides.com
"The 2025 squad ended the season doing the two things they do best – playing in one-possession games and beating the William & Mary Tribe. A thriller down in Williamsburg ends the season on the high note and gives the Spiders a third straight win over W&M."
"The 2025 squad ended the season doing the two things they do best – playing in one-possession games and beating the William & Mary Tribe. A thriller down in Williamsburg ends the season on the high note and gives the Spiders a third straight win over W&M."
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Five Teams That Could Shake Up The FCS Playoff Picture In 2026
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Five Teams That Could Shake Up The FCS Playoff Picture In 2026
Five Teams That Could Shake Up The FCS Playoff Picture In 2026
Which FCS teams are primed to shake up the playoff picture next season?
Hope you are right.
I've been steadfast that with a little luck (health and a bounce or two during the season) Lehigh should be able to put together a 10-2/9-3 type season considering the improved strength of the PL and Ivy League. I remain bullish on Colgate given their coaches track record (I know someone directly affiliated with Cortland football) and retention. Holy Cross is the wildcard. The talent is there for a 6-6/8-4 type year but the coaching staff remains a huge question mark. Lafayette is a steady ship under Troxell so they'll be in the "mix" barring a rash of injuries. Villanova has dominated the PL legacy programs (43-4 iirc since 1987) so it's hard to envision them not being at or near the top. Granted, the Wildcats got hit really hard by the graduation and the portal.
Chuck Burton's take on where Lehigh is.....
To me, and probably to new Lehigh head football coach Rich Nagy, the theme of this year's spring football season could simply be "keep the engine rolling."
"[Offensive coordinator] Dan Hunt and I are really close, he told me right off the top when I talked to him earlier this spring. "And we basically had a conversation, if they hire within,, it's going to be one of the two of us. And we were both on the same page: whoever gets it, let's do it together. Like I told him, hey, we got a great thing here, let's just keep this going."
While head football coaching changes are always disruptive, it was an odd changing of gears for both the players and coaching staff.
The sudden end to the Kevin Cahill "era" at Lehigh put the Mountain Hawks in an awkward position on the eve of spring football.
I remember the announcement of Kevin Cahill as head coach back in late 2022 was an orchestrated event, done with weeks of deliberation and a fairly large press conference in Cundey Field House.
On his departure, things moved so quickly that everyone was caught flat footed to a degree.
“I’ve told some people that a week ago I was just looking at how we were going to play man-free coverage on defense, and now I am looking at how I could help lead this team back to another Patriot League championship,” Nagy told Keith Groller of The Morning Call a few weeks ago. “I have a much broader perspective on what I am doing now.”
Lots of credit still needs to be heaped on athletic director Jeremy Gibson for not only choosing coach Nagy but also promoting most of the existing staff and seeing all of the same coaching structure here that brought Lehigh back-to-back Patriot League championships and an undefeated regular season in 2025.
It provided a surprising amount of stability, all things considered, something that one should really pause and note.
Take, for example, what happened at James Madison when their head guy, former Holy Cross head coach Bob Chesney, was hired away by UCLA and Dukes fans saw their entire starting team entering the portal.
No such exodus of players or coaches occurred.
That's not to say Lehigh was completely unscathed by the portal - more on that in a future newsletter - but it's hard to escape the idea that this could have been much, much worse.
So what does that have to do with spring ball, and preparation for Lehigh's quest for a third consecutive Patriot League championship and/or FCS Playoff game?
In the middle of Lehigh's run to the NCAA men's basketball tournament, coach Nagy was made available to fans and media members to announce his hiring - or more of like a job promotion.
I talked with him.
*****
Coach Nagy, of course, came to Lehigh as the former head coach of Allegheny College, the Division III school in western Pennsylvania that counts Oberlin, Wittenberg, and Washington & Jefferson as peer institutions.
He had been an assistant coach for most of his career, too, at a huge variety of stops, from Fordham and Hofstra to Western Michigan and Old Dominion, assisting such head coaches as Kirk Ferentz and Dave Clawson.
When he came here as defensive coordinator, he found the existing defensive coordinator - Mike Kashurba - still here.
Both were tasked with fixing a defense that back then had been victimized by big plays and struggled mightily, giving up almost 30 points a game in 2022, allowing more than 262 yards passing per game, and forced only 12 total turnovers all season.
Over the course of their combined time the last three years, Lehigh's defense has been transformed into the best in the Patriot League.
"We have an unbelievable staff, you know," coach Nagy told me, "and with our success, obviously Kevin did a great job of organizing everything, I've had a chance to work with Mike the last two years on the defensive side, and he's an unbelievable coach, and I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity, He stayed because he just wanted to be successful, you know, and the role has changed a little bit now in that I'm the head coach, he's back to being the defensive coordinator."
The unusual circumstances regarding Cahill's departure back to Yale means that Lehigh not only has a defensive coordinator that has been here for many years - it also means that the same offensive coaches are exactly in place that were involved in Lehigh's success.
"Keeping Dan and [assistant OC/offensive line coach] Mike Morita here on our offensive side are just invaluable," Nagy continued. "They've been instrumental in the success along with all our other coaches, so it's great to go to work every day with guys like that and a team full of players who just love working hard and love being around each other."
As all good Lehigh football fans know, Hunt turned around the offense, taking a team that struggled to score points and making it into a dangerous force. The offensive coaches are all still here.
In fact, the only thing truly different is that it's a different guy who's the public face of the program.
That's not a minor thing, but it does mean that there's a remarkable amount of continuity of staff - and of culture.
"I think the same culture, first and foremost, is what we have to have," he said. "You know, we have to have players who really are accountable to what it takes to be successful, and that's what our culture has become. Like I said, you go out and find guys who love football and then work on the other attention to detail things, the accountability pieces, and they hold themselves accountable to those things. It's more player-led than coach-led when it comes to the culture that's been built, and it's up to us as coaches to keep finding players that believe in that system and believe in that type of thing, because that's what's going to win us football games. You know, the X's and O's are important, but how our kids go out every day and learn, how our kids pay attention to little things, how they understand the details of the things, that's what's going to allow us to be successful, and that part's not going to change."
****
Following that thread, it seems likely that Nagy's spring preparations aren't that much different than the last three. In terms of the 2026 Mountain Hawks, that means moving to the next thing, despite the success of the past two years.
"It's more about the process than the outcome," he told me. "Because if our process is correct, we'll have the outcomes we want. So what's happened in the past is over, obviously. So now it's back to the process of how we got there. And the focus is not on winning 12 games. The process is on doing things right that day. And if we can continue to do that on a daily basis, the success will follow."
Is there a lot of pressure following the success of Cahill?
"I don't look at it as pressure, and I don't think our players look at it as pressure," he said, "because they understand that and have been through that and have seen the success. When we stay focused on the process and how things should be done day-to-day, we will have success. Like I told the players, we're not going to change who we are. We're Lehigh. We're going to do things the way we do it.
"I may tweak practices here and there, because now my job is to how can we get better, or how can we do things more efficiently, and those types of things. But we're not going to change who we are. We're not going to change how we think. We're not going to change how we work. All those pieces are already in place. When coach Cahill hired the staff, we were finding people who were like-minded in this thought process, and that's what's been brought in as our staff. So staff's not going to change how they feel. They're not going to change, and they're unbelievable people, unbelievable teachers and mentors to our players."
Chuck Burton's take on where Lehigh is.....
To me, and probably to new Lehigh head football coach Rich Nagy, the theme of this year's spring football season could simply be "keep the engine rolling."
"[Offensive coordinator] Dan Hunt and I are really close, he told me right off the top when I talked to him earlier this spring. "And we basically had a conversation, if they hire within,, it's going to be one of the two of us. And we were both on the same page: whoever gets it, let's do it together. Like I told him, hey, we got a great thing here, let's just keep this going."
While head football coaching changes are always disruptive, it was an odd changing of gears for both the players and coaching staff.
The sudden end to the Kevin Cahill "era" at Lehigh put the Mountain Hawks in an awkward position on the eve of spring football.
I remember the announcement of Kevin Cahill as head coach back in late 2022 was an orchestrated event, done with weeks of deliberation and a fairly large press conference in Cundey Field House.
On his departure, things moved so quickly that everyone was caught flat footed to a degree.
“I’ve told some people that a week ago I was just looking at how we were going to play man-free coverage on defense, and now I am looking at how I could help lead this team back to another Patriot League championship,” Nagy told Keith Groller of The Morning Call a few weeks ago. “I have a much broader perspective on what I am doing now.”
Lots of credit still needs to be heaped on athletic director Jeremy Gibson for not only choosing coach Nagy but also promoting most of the existing staff and seeing all of the same coaching structure here that brought Lehigh back-to-back Patriot League championships and an undefeated regular season in 2025.
It provided a surprising amount of stability, all things considered, something that one should really pause and note.
Take, for example, what happened at James Madison when their head guy, former Holy Cross head coach Bob Chesney, was hired away by UCLA and Dukes fans saw their entire starting team entering the portal.
No such exodus of players or coaches occurred.
That's not to say Lehigh was completely unscathed by the portal - more on that in a future newsletter - but it's hard to escape the idea that this could have been much, much worse.
So what does that have to do with spring ball, and preparation for Lehigh's quest for a third consecutive Patriot League championship and/or FCS Playoff game?
In the middle of Lehigh's run to the NCAA men's basketball tournament, coach Nagy was made available to fans and media members to announce his hiring - or more of like a job promotion.
I talked with him.
*****
Coach Nagy, of course, came to Lehigh as the former head coach of Allegheny College, the Division III school in western Pennsylvania that counts Oberlin, Wittenberg, and Washington & Jefferson as peer institutions.
He had been an assistant coach for most of his career, too, at a huge variety of stops, from Fordham and Hofstra to Western Michigan and Old Dominion, assisting such head coaches as Kirk Ferentz and Dave Clawson.
When he came here as defensive coordinator, he found the existing defensive coordinator - Mike Kashurba - still here.
Both were tasked with fixing a defense that back then had been victimized by big plays and struggled mightily, giving up almost 30 points a game in 2022, allowing more than 262 yards passing per game, and forced only 12 total turnovers all season.
Over the course of their combined time the last three years, Lehigh's defense has been transformed into the best in the Patriot League.
"We have an unbelievable staff, you know," coach Nagy told me, "and with our success, obviously Kevin did a great job of organizing everything, I've had a chance to work with Mike the last two years on the defensive side, and he's an unbelievable coach, and I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity, He stayed because he just wanted to be successful, you know, and the role has changed a little bit now in that I'm the head coach, he's back to being the defensive coordinator."
The unusual circumstances regarding Cahill's departure back to Yale means that Lehigh not only has a defensive coordinator that has been here for many years - it also means that the same offensive coaches are exactly in place that were involved in Lehigh's success.
"Keeping Dan and [assistant OC/offensive line coach] Mike Morita here on our offensive side are just invaluable," Nagy continued. "They've been instrumental in the success along with all our other coaches, so it's great to go to work every day with guys like that and a team full of players who just love working hard and love being around each other."
As all good Lehigh football fans know, Hunt turned around the offense, taking a team that struggled to score points and making it into a dangerous force. The offensive coaches are all still here.
In fact, the only thing truly different is that it's a different guy who's the public face of the program.
That's not a minor thing, but it does mean that there's a remarkable amount of continuity of staff - and of culture.
"I think the same culture, first and foremost, is what we have to have," he said. "You know, we have to have players who really are accountable to what it takes to be successful, and that's what our culture has become. Like I said, you go out and find guys who love football and then work on the other attention to detail things, the accountability pieces, and they hold themselves accountable to those things. It's more player-led than coach-led when it comes to the culture that's been built, and it's up to us as coaches to keep finding players that believe in that system and believe in that type of thing, because that's what's going to win us football games. You know, the X's and O's are important, but how our kids go out every day and learn, how our kids pay attention to little things, how they understand the details of the things, that's what's going to allow us to be successful, and that part's not going to change."
****
Following that thread, it seems likely that Nagy's spring preparations aren't that much different than the last three. In terms of the 2026 Mountain Hawks, that means moving to the next thing, despite the success of the past two years.
"It's more about the process than the outcome," he told me. "Because if our process is correct, we'll have the outcomes we want. So what's happened in the past is over, obviously. So now it's back to the process of how we got there. And the focus is not on winning 12 games. The process is on doing things right that day. And if we can continue to do that on a daily basis, the success will follow."
Is there a lot of pressure following the success of Cahill?
"I don't look at it as pressure, and I don't think our players look at it as pressure," he said, "because they understand that and have been through that and have seen the success. When we stay focused on the process and how things should be done day-to-day, we will have success. Like I told the players, we're not going to change who we are. We're Lehigh. We're going to do things the way we do it.
"I may tweak practices here and there, because now my job is to how can we get better, or how can we do things more efficiently, and those types of things. But we're not going to change who we are. We're not going to change how we think. We're not going to change how we work. All those pieces are already in place. When coach Cahill hired the staff, we were finding people who were like-minded in this thought process, and that's what's been brought in as our staff. So staff's not going to change how they feel. They're not going to change, and they're unbelievable people, unbelievable teachers and mentors to our players."
