5 things to know about Lafayette

Saturday night’s game at Wallace Wade Stadium will be a couple of teams coming off of thrilling wins full of momentum swings.

Duke’s next opponent is FCS-level Lafayette, which notched a 19-14 win over Sacred Heart in its season opener last week. Lafayette scored the game-winning touchdown with 7:24 left and picked off a fourth-down pass in the last two minutes when Sacred Heart was at the Leopards’ 5-yard line.

Here are five things to know about the Leopards ahead of Saturday night’s game:

Jamar Curtis was Lafayette’s leading rusher as a freshman last season, with 465 yards and a touchdown in 11 games.

He had more yards by halftime of the season opener than his game-high last year.

Curtis had 181 yards on 19 carries against Sacred Heart and scored a touchdown, the first of the game. He had 71 yards on the opening drive, capping it with a 28-yarder for the score.

The 5-8, 164-pound sophomore from Waldorf, Md., had 115 yards at halftime, passing his career-high of 108.

Ryan Schuster won the starting quarterback job as a freshman entering last season and suffered a season-ending injury in the Leopards’ fourth game. He scored the game-winning rushing touchdown in a 6-0 win over Sacred Heart to start the season.

He started Lafayette’s opener against Sacred Heart again and completed 6 of 12 passes for 40 yards last week. Schuster was sacked twice on a three-and-out late in the third quarter and didn’t reenter the game.

In his absence came Dean DeNobile, also a second-year QB, who didn’t play last season. On the game-winning drive, DeNobile led an eight-play, 75-yard drive — converting a third-and-3 with a short pass and recording a 21-yard run to get Sacred Heart to the 1-yard line.

Lafayette was 4-7 last season and scored 12.6 points per game; the most points it scored in a game was a 24-14 win at Bucknell.

Lafayette also didn’t give up many points, which is how it won four games.

Lafayette’s 21.7 points allowed per game last season was second-best in the Patriot League, trailing Holy Cross (21.5). The 111 rushing yards per game last season was the best clip in that league, as was the 3.3 yards per carry allowed.

Against Sacred Heart, the Leopards had 10 tackles for loss. That included three sacks, two of them by freshman defensive end Michael Vaughn.

Lafayette is playing an ACC opponent for the first time since before the ACC existed.

OK, so let’s explain.

Lafayette’s last game against a current ACC member was a 1951 game against Syracuse—two years before the ACC was founded and several more decades before Syracuse joined the league.

The Leopards’ history against current ACC members is 10-11-2, though those games obviously were played before modern-day football.

Lafayette also has a second-year coach in John Troxell.

Troxell was named the coach at his alma mater four days after Mike Elko was named Duke’s new coach back in December of 2021.

Troxell came to Lafayette after coaching Franklin & Marshall, a Division III program, for 16 years. His teams were 92-67 at F&M.