Fordham (6-1, 2-0 Patriot League) enters its open date during the 2022 season in Week 8.
Fordham’s only loss this season took place Sept. 24 against FBS, Mid-American Conference opponent Ohio. Ohio defeated the Rams, 59-52.
Fordham plays in the Patriot League at the Football Championship Subdivision level.
The Rams are in year two of heavily installing Josh Heupel’s offensive scheme.
The Rams have scored 40-plus points in all seven contests this season. Fordham has totaled 344 points, while averaging 49.1 points per game.
Offensive coordinator Kevin Decker and the Rams have totaled 4,373 yards (3,058 passing, 1,315 rushing) entering its open date.
Decker has served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Fordham since 2019.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Fordham did not play games in 2020. The Rams played three games during an abbreviated spring 2021 season. Fordham went 6-5 in a traditional fall campaign in 2021.
The coronavirus pandemic allowed time for Decker to install a new offense. Decker, a 2012 New Hampshire graduate where he was the Colonial Athletic Association’s Player of the Year and a finalist for the Walter Payton Award in 2011 as a quarterback, installed Josh Heupel’s offense during Fordham’s downtime.
“The goal of this whole thing, is I love the spacing aspect,” Decker told Vols Wire following the 2021 fall season. “I think it puts your players in the best possible situation, to go and do what they do, and that’s to make plays. I absolutely love it.
“Basically in 2019 we were not doing this. Then our spring covid year we only played three games, we dabbled in it. We started calling some of that stuff, but we were maybe 20 percent of our offense was wide splits — but I want to live in the big splits.”
The 2022 season is David Weeks second as a position coach with Fordham.
Weeks was brought in to help install Heupel’s offense. He was hired as a quality control coach in 2020 and was elevated to tight ends coach in 2021.
Weeks came to Fordham after serving as a student assistant quarterbacks coach from 2018-19 at UCF under Heupel. At UCF under Heupel, Weeks was responsible for helping provide input and breaking down opponent and self-scout film, creating cutups of opponents and self-scout specific film, creating weekly post-game packets and charts, a weekly red zone report, and drawing weekly installs.
“It really came from Weeks who works for us now,” Decker said of Fordham’s offense. “He is our tight ends coach. He was a student assistant at UCF with Josh Heupel.
“I would just be messing around with him in the office late at night to draw up some of this stuff that Heupel is doing down there. I was like, ‘Wow this actually is really, really good stuff’.”
Decker further detailed how the coronavirus pandemic allowed time to install Heupel’s offense at Fordham, everything from wide splits, tempo, rubs, verticals, stack receivers and the use of H-backs.
“In 2019 we would study it, but wouldn’t run it,” Decker said of Heupel’s offense. “Then covid happened and we were still able to get in 10 practices in the fall without a season. I said this is an opportune time to get this stuff on film and see how it looks. It’s really different, but the biggest thing to stress to your guys is to don’t overthink it, run fast and make full speed decisions, you’re always right and run to green grass — that’s it. Our kids really loved it, and because it allowed them to play fast and to play without thinking.
“We kind of made the full blown adjustments and we obviously reaped the benefits with some success (in 2021). I love it, and as a play-caller, when you spread a team out wide, you really get to see what their attention is.”
Below is a look at Fordham’s offensive production by the numbers through seven games this season as the Rams have an open date this week. Like Heupel and Tennessee in the FBS, Fordham is in year two of an install with the same scheme and is at the top of many FCS offensive categories.