Fordham's brutal 2025 season crashes into Coastal Carolina's brand-new era on Saturday, September 12 — two programs starting over, just at very different levels of talent.
−Entirely new QB room with no in-game snaps together
−Lost two starting tackles to the portal
This one's a mismatch on paper before a single snap gets played. Fordham is coming off a 1-11 season that landed the Rams dead last in the Patriot League, and there's no marquee arm or skill piece to point to that changes the trajectory overnight. Coastal Carolina, meanwhile, enters year one under new head coach Ryan Beard, who left Missouri State after guiding that program's FCS-to-FBS jump. Different tiers of college football, different levels of urgency — and Fordham's the team on the wrong end of both.
Beard didn't just get a fresh whistle, he got an almost entirely new roster. All five Chanticleer quarterbacks from a year ago hit the transfer portal, so this is a from-scratch QB room — Missouri State transfer Deuce Bailey has the early edge after the spring game, with Arkansas transfer Trever Jackson and true freshman Osiris Lopez still in the mix. Beard has also added more than 50 new players to the roster, which is the definition of an offseason teardown. None of it is settled science yet, and depth up front took a hit too — Coastal lost starting tackles Nick Del Grande (Duke) and Julius Tate (USF) to the portal, so however this shakes out, the offensive line will be feeling its way through September.
None of that instability changes the gap in resources and roster talent between an FBS Sun Belt program and an FCS Patriot League team that just went 1-11. Fordham gutted its way through a miserable 2025 under eighth-year coach Joe Conlin, and there's little in the public record suggesting a quick turnaround is coming. The Rams also have to survive a trip to North Dakota State — a 10-time FCS national champion — the week before this one, which is not exactly a get-right game heading into Conway.
Coastal Carolina's defense is retooling too, with seven new defensive backs in the fold, headlined by safety Jalen Lee and corner Damill Bostic Jr. A defense that green isn't usually one to fear on paper, but against an FCS offense that struggled to move the ball at all last season, rawness on the back end likely won't matter much.
Fordham gets a look at North Dakota State first, which should be a brutal gut-check, then turns around for this trip to the Sun Belt. Coastal Carolina, by contrast, gets to open its Ryan Beard era at home in front of its own crowd, working out its new-QB kinks against a Patriot League opponent before Sun Belt play gets serious. That scheduling spot alone tells you where the pressure sits — and it's not on the home team.
