Dayton football: Flyers play Davidson at Welcome Stadium after bye week

Trevor Andrews uses the word “discipline” often with his Dayton Flyers football team. It’s an especially useful word when preparing for Davidson, which runs an option offense that can confound defenses.

Andrews coached the scout team offense himself in preparation for a noon game Saturday against Davidson at Welcome Stadium. He got the young players in that group fired up for an important job. They had a good grasp of the offense by the end of the week, but Andrews knows it will be different for his defense on gameday.

“You have to move some bodies around to give yourself the best look,” Andrews said. “You cannot simulate the speed that they’re going to run at, so you’ve got to just be prepared for it. It’s going to happen fast, and you’ve got to execute. But our scout team has been doing a good job and working at it.”

Dayton (3-1, 1-0) got extra time to prepare for Davidson (4-1, 2-0) because it had its second bye week last Saturday. Davidson did not have the same luxury. It beat Marist 42-19 in a home game in North Carolina. That followed a 48-37 victory against Presbyterian at home the previous week in its first Pioneer Football League game of the season.

Davidson ranks second in the PFL in scoring offense (41.0 points per game) and first in rushing offense (368.6), a number that leads the nation in the Football Championship Subdivision.

Mari Adams leads Davidson with 134.5 yards per game. Mason Sheron averages 75 yards. Quarterback Andrew Frazier averages 47.4 yards rushing and has completed 16 of 20 passes for 303 yards.

“Anytime you play an option team, you’ve got to be sound fundamentally,” Andrews said. “We talk about pad level and getting off blocking and tackling, all those fundamental things we work on all the time. It just gets amplified. Discipline and execution is what I think of when you play an option team.”

Dayton leads the series against Davidson 14-3. Two years ago, Davidson won 24-23 at Dayton when a victory would have given Dayton the PFL’s automatic playoff bid. A missed extra point cost the Flyers in that game.

Last season, Davidson had a chance to earn a share of the PFL championship but lost 45-14 at home to Dayton in the final week of the season.

“We’re returning a lot of guys on defense who were younger last year,” defensive tackle Jack Wardzala said, “but we’re a year older and they know how to play against this team. So I think with the confidence that we gained from last year from being able to beat them and handle their style offense, we’ll be able to transition to this year that much easier.”

SATURDAY’S GAME

Davidson at Dayton, Noon, 1290, 95.7

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