The red-zone problem from App State never showed up. Georgia Southern put up 14 in the first quarter, 7 in the second, 14 in the third and 14 more in the fourth. It was the same steady, ball-control offense, except this time the drives ended in the end zone instead of with a Tripp Bryant kick. The weather didn't matter either: 74, cloudy and almost no wind at kickoff.
Marshall's plan was takeaways, short fields and points off chaos, the same way it won at Old Dominion. The one box-score search didn't show the Herd's turnover count. The scoreboard shows they never got the swing they needed, though: 13 points, and none at all between the end of the first quarter and the fourth. Whether Carlos Del Rio-Wilson played through his game-time decision also isn't in the stats available here. Either way, the offense couldn't put together the long drives the preview said it would need.
For one quarter this looked like a game. Marshall scored 7 in the opening period and went into the second down by 7. After that the Herd were shut out for more than 2 quarters while the Eagles scored 21 straight. A 7-point game became a 35-7 rout before Marshall got its last 6 in the fourth. Once the takeaways didn't come, nothing else on the Marshall side held up.
The results against common opponents pointed to Georgia Southern, and Saturday backed that up. The Eagles have won 3 straight, they're 4-1 in the Sun Belt, and the only league loss is by 3 to James Madison. Marshall drops to 5-4 and 2-3 in conference after a 2-game win streak. That's 3 conference losses now, including 45-17 at JMU and this one, where the Herd got pushed around from the second quarter on. Both teams are 5-4 overall, but they aren't headed in the same direction.
