There is no such thing as a neutral football weekend in the DMV. Not with James Franklin trying to drag Virginia Tech out of its own rubble, not with Michael Vick standing on a Norfolk sideline getting outscored 90-13 across two weeks, not with James Madison quietly assembling the best two-game résumé of anyone in the region under a first-year head coach who, six months ago, was running a very different program in the SEC. Sixteen Division I football programs call this region home — from Charlottesville to Annapolis to Lynchburg — and after this weekend’s slate, the gap between the top and the bottom of that group has never been more obvious.
Here’s how they stack up.
1. Virginia (2-0)
Tony Elliott’s Cavaliers are ranked, they’re 2-0, and the 59-3 dismantling of Norfolk State on September 11 wasn’t just a beatdown of an overmatched crosstown FCS program — it was the largest margin of victory for the program since 1990. UVA has now scored 93 points across two games while allowing 11. That’s not a “good start.” That’s a team playing at a level Scott Stadium hasn’t seen in decades, and it’s the reason Virginia heads into Charlotte this weekend for the Duke’s Mayo Classic against a fellow 2-0 West Virginia squad as the unambiguous favorite. The Cavaliers have not looked vulnerable once. Everyone else in this region has.
2. James Madison (2-0)
Billy Napier’s first season in Harrisonburg opened with the kind of white-knuckle win that tells you more than a blowout would — a 20-13 escape against a Liberty team that had JMU on its heels for most of the night. Then came Wagner, and JMU treated the Sun Belt fixture as target practice: 87-3, the only FBS team in the country to crack 80 points in Week 2, a program record, and a special-teams unit — dormant and mediocre a year ago — that scored on a blocked punt, two punt returns, and a kick return in a single afternoon. That’s two wildly different tests answered two wildly different ways, which is precisely what you want to see from a new coaching staff still figuring out who it is. JMU is undefeated, it needed everything it had to get past a Liberty team that pushed it to the final minutes, and it is quietly building a case as the best program in the DMV not currently ranked in the AP Top 25.
3. Virginia Tech (2-0)
James Franklin’s Blacksburg tenure has opened about as well as it could have: a 73-3 humiliation of VMI to open the season, followed by a 44-21 win over an Old Dominion team that, on paper, was supposed to be the tougher out — the same Monarchs team that had just handled Norfolk State by three touchdowns a week earlier. Two blowout wins to open an era is about as clean a start as a new coach gets, and it came against real competition, not just tune-up games. The bigger test is next, and it’s on the road: ranked, undefeated Maryland is waiting in College Park on September 19 for the first real measuring-stick game of the Franklin era. Two wins over overmatched-to-solid competition put Tech in this range. What happens against the Terps will tell us whether it belongs any higher.
4. Maryland (2-0)
Michael Locksley’s Terrapins have been almost boringly efficient through two weeks: 62-0 over Hampton in the opener, then a 38-14 handling of UConn on the road that Locksley himself, tellingly, called “an audit.” Malik Washington completed 34 of 41 passes for 347 yards in that game — the kind of surgical, mistake-free performance that suggests Maryland’s passing offense is ahead of schedule. The Terps have outscored their first two opponents 100-14 and haven’t had to sweat either result. The audit gets a lot harder September 19, when Virginia Tech visits SECU Stadium in what amounts to a de facto elimination game for whichever team wants to claim it’s the best FBS program in the Commonwealth-and-Maryland corridor this September. Both teams are unbeaten. Only one leaves that Saturday still able to say it.
5. Old Dominion (1-1)
Don’t let the loss to Virginia Tech obscure what ODU actually is: a Sun Belt program that opened its season by handling Norfolk State 31-10 behind a two-touchdown-passing, two-touchdown-rushing debut from sophomore Quinn Henicle, then went into Lane Stadium against an ACC opponent and lost by 23. That’s not embarrassing this month — it might be the single toughest thing an ODU opponent will do to the Hokies all season, at least until Maryland tries. The Monarchs get East Carolina at home next, then JMU comes to Norfolk on September 26 in what should be the best game in the entire region this month.
6. Richmond (1-1)
The Spiders’ season so far is a tale of two very different levels of competition: a gritty 13-12 comeback over Howard to open the year, then a 73-0 humiliation at NC State on September 11 that will not show up on anyone’s Top 25 ballot but also shouldn’t be held too heavily against an FCS program that had no business being competitive with an ACC opponent in the first place. Richmond’s actual FCS-level output — the win over Howard — is solid, unspectacular work. The NC State score is what it is: a scheduling decision, not a program indictment. Georgetown comes to Robins Stadium on September 19 for the more meaningful test, a Patriot League game Richmond should be favored to win.
7. William & Mary (1-1)
The Tribe opened with a workmanlike 22-15 win over Delaware State, then ran into a genuinely good Lehigh team ranked No. 8/9 nationally in FCS and lost 44-20 on the road. That’s not a game that should worry anyone in Williamsburg — Mike London’s program lost to a ranked opponent by three scores in a game it was never expected to win. The bigger story for W&M is what’s ahead: Fordham comes to Zable Stadium on September 19 for Family Weekend, and this is the kind of game the Tribe needs to win to keep its CAA positioning respectable.
8. Navy (1-1)
The Midshipmen’s American Conference opener went about as badly as it could have. Navy dominated Towson 42-15 in the season opener behind three rushing touchdowns from Braxton Woodson, but Florida Atlantic hung five touchdown passes on Brian Newberry’s defense and got a program-record 60-yard field goal right before half, holding off Navy 38-30 on September 12. That’s a real conference loss against a real conference opponent, and it complicates Navy’s path in a league that isn’t going to hand out style points. The Midshipmen get a bye before UAB on September 25 — time to figure out why a defense that shut down Towson couldn’t get a stop when it mattered against FAU.
9. Liberty (1-1)
Jamey Chadwell’s Flames opened the Battle of the Blue Ridge trailing JMU for most of the night and fell 20-13, a game in which Liberty’s offense simply couldn’t finish drives against a divisional rival that’s clearly better right now. The response was better: a 24-23 win over Gardner-Webb to open Williams Stadium’s home slate, a game that needed a late touchdown from Darius Copeland to hold up. Liberty is a program that’s a tier below JMU in Conference USA’s neighborhood right now, but a one-point road escape isn’t nothing — it’s a team that found a way to win an ugly one, which matters more in October and November than it does in September.
10. Morgan State (1-1)
The Bears opened with a 17-7 road win over North Carolina A&T behind Jordan Barnett’s 114 rushing yards, then traveled to Tempe and lost to Arizona State in a game that was never going to be competitive and wasn’t meant to be — it was a paycheck trip, full stop. Morgan State’s home opener against Virginia University of Lynchburg, an NCCAA program and not a Division I opponent, doesn’t move the needle either direction here. The real test for Damon Wilson’s group comes September 19 at Towson in the Battle for Greater Baltimore, a rivalry the Tigers have owned for most of the past decade.
11. Howard (1-2)
Ted White’s first season as Howard’s head coach opened with a genuine signature win: a come-from-behind 31-24 victory over Alabama A&M in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge on August 29, capped by a 51-yard touchdown with under three minutes left. That result got buried by what came next — a 13-12 nail-biter loss to Richmond in the home opener, defensible against a solid CAA program, followed by a 55-0 defeat at Indiana on September 12 so lopsided that the Hoosiers’ own coach shortened the fourth quarter as a courtesy. Josh Hoover threw four touchdown passes in barely more than a half before Indiana pulled its starters. There’s no shame in losing to a top-five team like that. But Howard is 1-2 with a signature win already spent, and real work left to prove that August 29 was the start of something rather than a one-off.
12. Norfolk State (1-2)
Michael Vick’s second season has been defined by a stark split: a competent-enough win over Winston-Salem State to open the year, then back-to-back annihilations in-state — a 31-10 loss at Old Dominion, followed by a 59-3 blowout at the hands of a ranked Virginia team on September 11, the worst margin UVA has hung on anyone in 36 years. Norfolk State has been outscored 90-13 across those two FBS road trips, which is a brutal but not unusual reality for a MEAC program stacking Power-neighborhood games to open a season. The schedule turns MEAC-and-manageable on September 19 against Hampton in the “Battle of the Bay,” and that’s the game that actually tells us something about where this program stands.
13. Towson (0-2)
The Tigers are winless through two weeks, and it hasn’t been close: outscored 87-24, first by Navy in a 42-15 season-opening loss and then, far more painfully, by South Carolina 45-9 on September 12 in a game defined by Vicari Swain’s record-setting punt-return day for the Gamecocks — two touchdowns on punt returns alone, including one where Towson’s own punt from its own end zone turned into six points the other way. Pete Shinnick’s program has now lost its two biggest paycheck games by a combined 54 points. The schedule turns to the Battle for Greater Baltimore on September 19 against Morgan State, a rivalry the Tigers have owned for most of the past decade — which makes it as close to a must-win as a Week 3 game gets for a program still searching for its first W.
14. Georgetown (0-1)
Georgetown’s season opened with one of the stranger results in college football this month: the Hoyas were leading Lafayette 13-7 at halftime of their Cooper Field opener when prolonged lightning strikes forced a two-hour delay and the game was eventually called a no contest — no makeup date, no result on the books, just gone. Their first game that actually counted went about as badly as it could have: a 45-14 loss to Lehigh, ranked 10th nationally in FCS, in which Luke Yoder scored four touchdowns and Georgetown’s only points came on a fourth-quarter garbage-time score. A Week 3 bye leaves Rob Sgarlata’s team with a genuinely tiny sample size heading into the real swing game of its season — a road trip to Richmond on September 19 that will tell us a lot more than the weather-shortened opener ever could have.
15. Hampton (1-2)
Van Malone’s first game as a college head coach was a good one — a 45-0 win over Virginia University of Lynchburg on August 29, Hampton’s first shutout in 88 games. It’s been all downhill since, and the record flatters the reality: that win came against a non-Division I opponent, and against actual competition Hampton is 0-2 and has been outscored 93-3. Maryland ran the Pirates off the field 62-0 in Hampton’s first-ever game against a Power Four opponent, then Bryant beat them 31-3 at home in the CAA opener. That’s a program still finding its footing under a new staff, and the Battle of the Bay at Norfolk State on September 19 is the first real chance to find out if there’s more here than the shutout suggested.
16. VMI (0-3)
Nobody in the region has had a rougher start than VMI. The Keydets opened by losing 37-17 at Idaho State, got run off the field 73-3 at Virginia Tech the following week, and then, in their long-awaited Foster Stadium debut under new head coach Ashley Ingram, led Bucknell 3-0 into the fourth quarter before the Bison scored twice in the final seven minutes to steal it, 14-3. That’s a program that has now been outscored 124-23 and hasn’t found the end zone once against a Division I opponent all season. There’s a real argument the Bucknell loss is the most discouraging of the three — a defense that played well enough to win for 53 minutes has nothing to show for it. VMI opens Southern Conference road play at Davidson on September 19, still searching for its first win of any kind.
What to watch this weekend: Virginia Tech at Maryland on September 19 is, by a wide margin, the biggest game the region produces all month — two unbeaten FBS programs, an early measuring stick for James Franklin’s first season in Blacksburg, and a genuine claim to being the best team in the DMV on the line. JMU’s cross-country trip to San Diego State and Old Dominion’s home date with East Carolina matter too, but nothing else this month carries the stakes of that one.
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