Next stop, third-and-long. Malik Overstreet here, MARTA card in one pocket, third-down chart in the other, typing this from a train car somewhere under downtown Atlanta. If you're new: I rate every opponent by Atlanta traffic. A light opponent is a Sunday-morning Downtown Connector. A tough one is I-285 at 5:15 on a Friday in the rain. Let's ride.
Part 1: The Harrisonburg Detour
I'm a policy-school guy, so we start with the honest report. James Madison beat us 49-22 last Saturday at Bridgeforth Stadium. The Dukes are 7-0, they've won 12 straight Sun Belt regular-season games according to AP, and they played like it. Traffic rating: I-75/85 through Midtown during a Falcons game. Nobody's getting home on time.
It started fine. JMU scored first, and then Lanear McCrary Jr. ran it in from a yard out to tie it 7-7 in the first quarter. That was a nice merge. Then JMU scored four touchdowns in the second quarter alone, and Samer Layous's 33-yard field goal was our only answer before halftime. It was 35-10 at the break.
The second half had some good rides. Cameran Brown hit Rodshaun Dorsey for a 32-yard touchdown in the third quarter. Late in the fourth, Ayden Pereira scored on a 1-yard run. Brown finished 13 of 25 for 134 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and he ran nine times for 71 yards. DJ Murray Jr. added 56 yards on nine carries. As a team we ran for 188 yards at 5.1 a carry against the best defense in the league, and we had the ball for 30:09, a hair more than they did.
The bad news: we went 4-for-13 on third down, and that's my department. We missed both two-point tries. And we turned it over twice. That's how you lose by 27 to an unbeaten team in its own building. We're 4-2 and 1-1 in the Sun Belt. And let's keep the whole route in view: before Harrisonburg, this team beat North Carolina A&T 59-10, won 31-17 at Kennesaw State, beat Northern Illinois 35-14 and handled Old Dominion 42-10, with a loss at UCF in there too. Before last weekend, the Panthers had a week off to rest. One bad trip on the Connector doesn't mean you give up on the car. Next stop, Jonesboro.
Part 2: The Ridge Route
Saturday, 7 p.m. Eastern, on ESPN+, Georgia State visits Arkansas State at Centennial Bank Stadium.
Let me be fair to the Red Wolves first. They won 23-13 at Southern Miss last Saturday, held the ball for 40:08, didn't turn it over and got three field goals from Clune Van Andel. They went 3-for-3 on fourth down. AP's preview has them 34th in FBS in turnover margin at plus-3, and 31st against the pass. Joe Drew leads them with 64 tackles. That's a real defense in the air. I respect it.
Now let's look at the map.
The Run Game Express
AP's preview lists Arkansas State 124th in FBS in run defense, at 195.4 yards a game. It's 129th on third-down defense, letting opponents convert 45.9% of the time, and 113th in red zone defense, letting opponents score on 91.3% of trips.
Georgia State runs for 206.0 yards a game, 26th in FBS. We convert 47.5% of our third downs, 26th, and we score on 92% of our red zone trips, 24th. We average 452.7 yards a game, 23rd in FBS, and 36.5 points, 26th. McCrary has 385 rushing yards and four touchdowns. Brown has 1,291 passing yards, 13 touchdowns and a 65.4% completion rate. Dorsey has seven touchdown catches.
Traffic rating for that Red Wolves run defense? Peachtree Street at 6 a.m. on a holiday. Green lights all the way down.
The Pass Rush
Xavier Esqillion has seven sacks this season. Seven. Arkansas State quarterback Trey Owens has thrown six interceptions, and the Red Wolves just ran 51 times for 2.6 yards a carry at Southern Miss. If they have to throw, Esqillion is going to be the Hartsfield-Jackson security checkpoint at Thanksgiving: you're not getting through quickly, and you're going to think about your choices.
Honest Commuter's Note
Arkansas State has had our number. CollegeFootballData.com has the Red Wolves 7-2 against us, and they won 27-20 in Atlanta in 2024. And our turnover margin is minus-4, 113th in FBS, per AP. That's the pothole on this route. Hold onto the football, and the ride's smooth. And yes, the Red Wolves just lost a 56-49 shootout at home to South Alabama on Oct. 8. Fifty-six at home. Traffic rating: no traffic at all, just open road for the other guys.
Big City vs. The Ridge: A Tale of Two Towns
Atlanta. Welcome to my city, population 498,715 in 2020. Atlanta's Latin motto is "Resurgens," rising again, after the phoenix. Our skyline runs north to south along Peachtree through Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead. We have the headquarters of Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Delta and Chick-fil-A, and Hartsfield-Jackson is the world's busiest airport. Georgia State is the largest in-person university by enrollment based in Georgia, per Wikipedia, with 53,144 students.
And our stadium has a story nobody else in the Sun Belt can tell. Center Parc Stadium was built as Centennial Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympics. It became Turner Field, home of the Braves, from 1997 to 2016. Now it's ours. Your stadium has hosted football games. Ours hosted the world.
Jonesboro. Now, Jonesboro. Lovely place, 78,576 people in 2020, and I mean that kindly. It sits on top of Crowley's Ridge, which I'm told is the high ground in northeast Arkansas. We have skyscrapers. They have a ridge. The ridge is very proud of itself.
Here's my go-to fact, straight from Wikipedia: the Mall at Turtle Creek, which opened in 2006, was the largest mall in northeast Arkansas and the only enclosed mall built in the whole country that year. The only one! In 2006, every developer in America looked at the map and said, "Not here." Jonesboro said, "Hold my shopping bags."
And traffic? I tried to rate Jonesboro traffic and my scale broke. On my system, an Atlanta Tuesday is a 9. A Jonesboro Saturday is a red light that turns green while you're still finding your sunglasses. Wikipedia lists one parkway through town, the Crowley's Ridge Parkway. We have I-285, which has its own weather.
I'll give Jonesboro this: Centennial Bank Stadium seats 30,406, and those folks bring duck calls. I've been warned. I'm bringing earplugs and a playbook full of run plays. And when it's over, I'm taking the long way home through Memphis, because after a win you want the scenic route, and from Jonesboro, honestly, every route is the scenic route. There's just a lot of scenery and not much else in the way, which, for a commuter like me, is its own kind of paradise.
Last Stop
Here's my route map. Georgia State is a top-30 offense in yards, scoring, rushing and third downs. Arkansas State is in the bottom 10 in FBS against the run and on third-down defense. The Red Wolves will try to hold the ball like they did in Hattiesburg. That works great until you face a team that also likes to hold the ball, 32:34 a game, 25th in FBS. Hold onto it, run it, and let Esqillion hunt.
Next stop, Jonesboro. Mind the gap, and mind the ridge.
My call: Georgia State Panthers 30, Arkansas State Red Wolves 29.