Almost the entire two-deep that started last season's 3-9 nosedive is gone, and the transfer portal hit the defense hardest — 10 departures over the winter window left Mason patching together a unit with very little returning experience. That's the tension of this opener: a offense with a name to watch behind a defense the coaching staff can't yet vouch for.
Murray State enters having already been picked to finish last in the Missouri Valley Football Conference's preseason poll, and its Week 0 trip against Eastern Illinois did nothing to push back on that — the Racers fell 28-14 in Charleston. The one bright spot for third-year coach Jody Wright is a defense that returns its top three tacklers from a year ago in Dylan Rowsey, Conlee Crossno and Klayton Ingram, even as the roster around them turned over almost completely with 67 newcomers.
This is also a night built for a crowd — White Out, Faith and Family Night, and Community Night all stacked onto the home opener at Floyd Stadium, with temperatures still sitting in the low 90s at kickoff. None of that changes the math on the field: an FBS team replacing almost its whole roster is still an FBS team, and an FCS team that just got outscored by two touchdowns is walking into a tougher matchup, not an easier one.