Holy Cross Football Looks For Bounce Back Win Against #10 Fordham

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Joe Calabro, GoLocalWorcester Sports Team

Holy Cross Football

The Holy Cross Crusaders (2-3,0-1 PL) travel to the Bronx, New York to take on (5-1, 1-0 PL) #10 Fordham. The winner of the game will receive the Ram-Crusader Cup, a trophy that has first dedicated in 1951. The Crusaders have won the cup 16 times in the 29 years it has been awarded.

“So far this season, Fordham has been playing up to expectations. They are the defending conference champions, and they remain the team to beat in the Patriot League," said head coach Tom Gilmore.

Overall, Holy Cross leads the all-time series 27-23-2, however Fordham has won the last three games.

What Holy Cross Needs to do to Win

For the Holy Cross Crusaders to pull off the upset on the road, they are going to need their defense to come up big.

The Fordham Rams come into the game averaging 38 points per game and 468 offensive yards per game. Running back Chase Edmonds has 125 carries for 884 yards and 11 touchdowns on the season.

Last week the Crusader defense gave up 102 yards rushing and 412 yards passing for a total of 514 yards of offense in their 25-24 loss to Brown at home.

Offensively

On the offensive side of the ball, quarterback Peter Pujals and the rest of the offense will need to focus on not turning the ball over. Fordham's defense leads the Patriot League with a conference high 16 turnovers forced.

For the most part this season, the Holy Cross offense has not had many issues moving the ball so as long as they don't kill their momentum by turning the ball over and get reasonable protection from the offensive line, they should be okay.

The bottom line though is that this game is going to be won on defense for Holy Cross, they will need a big game.

Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. and a live stream of the game can be found here.