Bennett Conlin is sticking with JMU football in Week 1. After saying he missed on the Dukes last fall by calling a 10-2 record and a Sun Belt title, Conlin now expects JMU to beat Liberty in 2026 at Bridgeforth Stadium.
That prediction matters because Conlin is not treating the opener like a tossup. He says both teams have quarterback questions, decent lines on paper and stacked running back rooms, but he still gives JMU the edge at home. For a season built on uncertainty, that is a firm first swing.
The confidence comes from where the game is being played and what JMU has brought in around the edges. Conlin said the Dukes should be better in the trenches, pointing to Tyler Brown as an offensive guard addition and Rasheed Lovelace as a defensive tackle addition through the portal. He went even further, saying some of those additions make JMU look close to an FCS All-Star team. That is a striking way to describe a roster still sorting itself out, but it tracks with the sense that JMU wants to win the line of scrimmage before the quarterback questions even matter.
There is a reason Conlin is betting on the opener with more conviction than the rest of the schedule. Last fall, he thought JMU would go 10-2 and win the Sun Belt title. Instead, the Dukes finished 11-1 and then won the conference title game. That miss did not lead him to lower the bar. It pushed him to frame this season as another test of whether JMU can keep turning roster turnover into immediate results.
That is the friction inside the prediction. Conlin likes JMU over Liberty, but he also says both programs are chasing conference titles and both are carrying the same kind of quarterback uncertainty that can wreck a clean forecast. Even with strong offensive and defensive lines and running back groups that look deep, one shaky position can change the shape of a season. He is effectively betting that JMU’s home field and trench edge are enough to separate it in a game that otherwise looks close on paper.
The rest of Conlin’s schedule projection shows how narrow the margins can be. He said JMU should handle Wagner because Wagner is not a great FCS team, pointing to its Week 0 loss to Robert Morris, when it managed less than 100 total yards of offense and used two quarterbacks. He also said San Diego State’s offense should be better and its defense should slip, with Jayden Denegal’s 9 passing touchdowns and 8 interceptions and Lucky Sutton’s 1,297 rushing yards part of the frame. Later, he called JMU’s first road game of the Billy Napier era a flight-and-time-zone test, warned about Old Dominion’s defense, and said a bounce-back win is possible at Marshall, where Carlos Del Rio-Wilson’s 23 total touchdowns and nearly 2,700 total yards make the matchup dangerous.
The hardest stretch may still be Georgia Southern, where Conlin said JMU has never won. Even so, he does not see that game as a season killer, saying Georgia Southern should not be a scary team and that its defense has major question marks. The full prediction leaves JMU with room to build, but the opener against Liberty is the first proof point. If Conlin is right, Bridgeforth Stadium is where the season starts to look like another JMU run instead of another reset.
