Pop Watson out, Aedan McCarthy starts for UMass vs. Miami

The news landed about 4 hours before the 2 p.m. kickoff in Amherst, and it came from Pete Thamel.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

Sources: UMass quarterback Pop Watson will miss the game against Miami University today. He’s dealing with an ankle injury. True freshman Aedan McCarthy will make his first career start for UMass. He's appeared in two games for the Minutemen this year.

This is a big loss. Watson has carried this UMass offense all year. Through the first 4 games he had 10 touchdowns, good for 60 of the team's points, which put him 2nd in the MAC in that stat. Miami's own student paper called him a true dual threat ahead of this game, and he has thrown at least 1 touchdown pass in every game this season. Now the RedHawks' whole week of prep for him goes in the trash.

Watson's story is also why this one hurts. He's a Springfield kid who went to Springfield Central and was the 2022 Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year. He spent 3 seasons at Virginia Tech, where he made 11 appearances and started only the last 2 games of 2024. He came home through the portal in January with 2 years of eligibility left, finally got the starting job, and turned UMass into a 4-1 team. That's a real football team, and that has not been something you could say about UMass very often.

So the keys go to McCarthy. He's a true freshman who has appeared in 2 games this season, and that is pretty much his entire résumé. He has never started a college game, and now his first one is a MAC game in October with UMass trying to keep a good start alive. The Minutemen will almost certainly lean on the run game and keep his reads simple, because asking a true freshman to beat a conference defense from the pocket in his first start is a lot.

Miami needs this game badly. The RedHawks are 2-3 and 0-1 in the MAC after a gut-punch loss to Bowling Green, where they took a 20-17 lead with 1:47 left and gave up a touchdown with under 10 seconds to go. That defense also gave up 305 passing yards to the Falcons. Facing a freshman making his first start is about the best thing that could have happened to them this week.

For bettors, this is a news-moves-the-number situation. Miami was already favored in most previews, and losing the guy who accounts for most of UMass's offense should push the line further toward the RedHawks. If you grabbed the Minutemen early, you were betting on a QB who isn't playing.

What to watch: how long Watson is out. An ankle injury that keeps him out of 1 game could be nothing, or it could be the kind that lingers through the middle of the MAC schedule. If McCarthy can keep UMass afloat today, the Minutemen's season survives. If he can't, a 4-1 start starts to look a lot shakier really fast.