In a flash, halftime turned into a holding pattern at Delaware Stadium on Aug. 29.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens were in control against Bryant, leading 34-10 at the break in the football season opener for both teams. The video board lighting up Tubby Raymond Field remained fixed on the lopsided score throughout a 75-minute lightning delay that evacuated all fans.
Some fans huddled in the Bob Carpenter Center to wait for the resumption of play, hoping it would occur before midnight despite a questionable weather radar in the tri-state. In the same building, Delaware players kept spirits high in the comforts of their home locker room.
“I’ll tell you what, if you were in the locker room the last 15, 20 minutes [of the delay], you would have felt OK going out with that team,” Delaware head coach Ryan Carty said postgame.
The uncertain-turned-energetic waiting game paid off in the form of the Blue Hens’ 48-17 romp over the Bulldogs.
“We let them turn the music back on, which is normally not a halftime thing,” Carty said of the prolonged break. “And all of a sudden, I went back in there and it was ‘Club Tub’ before the dub.”
Senior starting quarterback Ryan O’Connor helped make it a party in the end zone for Phil Lutz, Marcus Yarns, Nick Laboy and Jalyn Witcher, each of whom collected a Delaware touchdown pass by O’Connor.
O’Connor finished with those four scores and no interceptions while tossing 29-of-41 for 245 yards. He further benefited from the Blue Hens’ success on the ground as Yarns, Jo’Nathan Silver and Saeed St. Fleur all eclipsed 50 rushing yards. Each running back had a rushing touchdown to add to the onslaught.
It was the Delaware defense that ensured Bryant was mismatched in its first game since joining Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) Football. Hens sophomore safety KT Seay intercepted a Jarrett Guest pass and returned it 38 yards to the Bryant 1-yard line. The takeaway was just short of a pick-six but was enough to set up Yarns’ single-yard dart that put Delaware up 14-3 with senior Nate Reed’s kick at 2:12 in the first quarter.
Delaware won its third straight season opener under Carty after wins at Navy and Stony Brook in 2022 and 2023, respectively. This 1-0 start, though, is met by a bye week right away for the Blue Hens.
With the Hens playing 11 games in the first year of their FBS transition and not the 12 games afforded by this fall’s FCS calendar, two open dates occur on their schedule – the first being Saturday.
“It’ll be beneficial for us as long as we use it correctly, right?” Carty said. “We have to make sure we recover. We also have to get better. It’s early, so we can’t be sitting there thinking that this [one win] means much in an 11-game season.”
Carty entered the bye week expecting Delaware to practice “about four times this week.” Extra preparation time for North Carolina A&T, Delaware’s host on Sep. 14, is also a plus. The Aggies will oppose Division II Winston-Salem State on Saturday after dropping to Wake Forest 45-13 in their opener.
Delaware’s bye will not be enough of a cushion to bring back starting center Brock Gingrich at NC A&T. The graduate student injured his knee in the victory over Bryant and was relieved by junior Steven Demboski, who will start against the Aggies barring anything unforeseen with his own health through practices.
“He’ll play again this year,” Carty said about Gingrich on Monday during the CAA coaches’ teleconference. “It might be a minute. He will not play this week.”
After the thumping of Bryant, Carty credited Demboski as the Blue Hens’ designated next man up in the interior offensive line.
“We’ve been ready for Steven to be one of those guys,” Carty said. “He’s good enough to be a starter in this league and he’s proven that over the course of practice…Trust me, if anybody inside had gone down, he would have been the next guy in somewhere [at center or guard].”
Continuing this theme of next-in-line to begin the season, Delaware’s new cast of pass-catchers looked deep while beating Bryant. The Hens had nine receivers with at least one catch and five who hauled in three or more. Junior JoJo Bermudez led in receptions count with seven and Rutgers senior transfer Max Patterson’s 53 receiving yards paced the Blue Hens.
It was sophomore Nick Minicucci who closed the game for Delaware at quarterback, mopping up in his seventh appearance in his career.