By BRANDEN MELLO
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KINGSTON — Rhode Island wide receiver Shawn Leonard caught touchdown passes from junior quarterback Chris Paul-Etienne to start and end Saturday’s Colonial Athletic Association contest at Meade Stadium.
Everything that happened in between those two plays went the way a college football game should go when the No. 5 team in the country brings one of the best defenses in the country to face an inexperienced team struggling to find an identity on offense.
William and Mary, which beat ACC squad Virginia to start the season, held the struggling Rams to a mind-boggling minus-44 yards of rushing, while Tribe running back Courtland Marriner rushed for 91 yards and three touchdowns in the Williamsburg, Va. based squad’s 39-14 win over the Rams.
“They don’t have a unit that can be exposed, offense, defense or special teams,” URI coach Joe Trainer said of the 7-1 overall and 3-1 in the CAA Tribe. “They’re much better than they were a year ago. Defensively, they are very athletic and they are playing with a lot of seniors, particularly up front. That’s a model where we want to get to.”
The Rams, who are in the midst of playing three of top seven teams in the country in three straight weeks, are now 1-7 overall and 0-5 in the CAA North, are now the only winless the team in the conference after James Madison upset Delaware Saturday afternoon. Saturday, Rhody didn’t make too many mistakes and didn’t turn the ball over, but they could get nothing going against a Tribe defense which features NFL prospects Adrian Tracy and Sean Lisamore.
William and Mary coach Jimmye Laycock said his team came into the game planning to make the Rams’ one dimensional and that is exactly what they did. URI freshman running back Iyo Isijola led the Rams with 17 yards on 10 carries. Ryan Lawrence and Anthony Ferrer combined for minus-one yards on four carries.
“We have a good defense, it’s not a surprise we come out and put up those numbers,” Laycock said of a group which came into the game with the fifth best rush defense in the country. “We’ve got a good front four. They basically gave up on the run, I don’t think they felt like they could run the ball against us so they gave up on it. We were just teeing off.”
In URI’s blowout losses to UMass, UConn and Villanova, the Rams gave up big plays at the beginning of the game and could never recover. Saturday, the Tribe made the first mistake of the game and the Rams’ capitalized. After a Tribe penalty negated a solid punt by David Miller, the Tribe proceeded to turn the ball over on a bad snap.
URI took over at the plus-26 and eight plays later the Rams were in the end zone. Paul-Etienne, who went 19-for-34 for 195 yards, connected with the senior wide receiver for a five-yard score. The Rams earned three first downs on the drive, but they would only earn one more for the rest of the first half.
The visitors, who had a strong wind at their back in the first quarter, tied the score late in the quarter when Marriner scored a nine-yard touchdown. Quarterback R.J. Archer was the catalyst on the drive as he completed two passes and ran the ball once to bring it to the URI 8.
Archer’s biggest plays, however, came in the second quarter when the game was still a competitive contest. The senior signal caller connected with Cameron Baker on a third-and-3 midway through the second quarter. The Tribe eventually scored a touchdown to take a 14-7 lead. Two drives later, Archer ran for five yards on a third-and-5 and he connected with Cameron Dohse on a fourth down to keep another scoring drive alive.
“Good teams don’t make those mistakes,” Trainer said of getting off the field on third and fourth down. “You’re going to look back at the game and there are a total of 10 plays that are either made or not made that kept drives alive or inhibited our ability to keep drives alive. It’s a sign of a good team. We only had four penalties, so we are making an improving there.”
After Mariner scored his second touchdown of the game the start of the third quarter to make the score 27-7, the Rams committed one of those four penalties. URI, for the first time in a while had stopped Archer and Tribe to force a Miller punt. But, URI was offside and the second life allowed Brian Pata to kick a 19-yard field goal.
The only positive for the Rams in a third quarter where they ran just nine offensive plays and earned one first down was the punting of Tim Edger. Edger used the wind at his back to kick punts of 68 and 46 yards. For the game, Edger punted the ball 10 times for an average of 41.5 yards.
Marriner scored his third touchdown 2 minutes, 28 seconds into the fourth quarter when he took a draw play 38 yards for a touchdown. William and Mary, which sacked Paul-Etienne six times and hurried the junior countless more times, earned two more points when Kyle O’Brien sacked the Rutgers transfer in the end zone.
URI, which couldn’t move the ball for most of the game, actually moved the ball on the final drive. Paul-Etienne completed passes to Joe Bellini and Tom Lang before throwing a 29-yard touchdown pass to Leonard.
Life doesn’t get much easier for the Rams because they must travel up to Durham, N.H. this Saturday to take on a top-10 New Hampshire squad which scored 51 points against the Rams last year thanks to the play of quarterback R.J. Toman and running back Chad Kackert.