Week 1 Football Preview: New Coach and QB Lead JCU into Season Opener of Season 100

9/2/2022 2:16:00 PM | By: Garrett Siegel, Senior Staff Writer

John Carroll looks to open this special season off on a winning note.

WASHINGTON, PA -- The John Carroll Football team returns for their 100th season in the fall of 2022. The Blue Streaks will head to Pennsylvania to play Washington & Jefferson to open this special season.

The Presidents went 8-3 last year and beat John Carroll in the home opener last season 21-14.

This will be the 31st meeting between the two teams, with an all time series tie of 15-15. While both teams are usually in the mix of d3football.com's Top 25, neither team cracked the preseason rankings and were in the "others receiving votes" category.

Drew Nystrom has changed roles from offensive coordinator, a role he held the last three years, to the 19th head football coach in school history. Nystrom led the offense to 28.2 points per game last season, but is now looking to improve the team as a whole. JCU went 7-3 last season, their three regular season losses were the most since 2017.

After serving as backup since 2019, Joe Collins will be the starting quarterback for the beginning of 2022. Collins follows two stars of the Blue & Gold in Jake Floreia and Anthony Moeglin. Collins has not thrown a pass for JCU since 2019, but is a career 9-of-16 with a touchdown and no interceptions.

The offense is looking to take another step forward behind the arm of Collins with two big targets back at wideout, Joe Torok and Brendan Fugh. The Blue Streaks return running backs who made serious contributions last season in Demerius Goodwin and Evan McVay. The Blue Streaks also have a returning red zone target in Tadas Tatarunas, who returns for his fifth year.

On the defensive side, JCU returns Elijah Chungu and Bricker Thiel to lead the defense. The defense showed out last year against W&J allowing just 300 yards, a scoreless first half, and 21 points, but it was not enough to beat the Presidents.

Washington & Jefferson will have a first year quarterback at the helm, but is returning their second-leading tackler from last season Drew Elrich. Elrich had 67 tackles last year, including a season high 12 tackles against Carroll.

The game is slated to begin at 1pm in Washington, PA. Live stats, video, and a radio broadcast will be available.

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