Delaware wins in weird spring version of historic football rivalry with Villanova | Mike Jensen

Perfect football weather, a breezy but not quite chilly fall afternoon that just happened to be in April. Saturday afternoon, a small crowd was allowed inside Villanova Stadium to watch Villanova-Delaware, as good a local football rivalry as you’re going to find in any month, any circumstance.

That proved true to the final drive when a Delaware interception ended Villanova’s season. Even after, when the two teams gathered at midfield for more than mere pleasantries, the rivalry kicked into overdrive.

In this weird pandemic spring season, Delaware earned the better of it, 27-20. The Blue Hens will move into the FCS playoffs at 5-0, while Villanova knows it is done at 2-2. The Wildcats had somehow gotten the better of this one eight straight times, and 13 of the last 14. They’ll try to start a new streak in the fall when the second football season of 2021 gets going.

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To earn the win, Delaware had more big plays, and a stouter defense, and sharper QB play. There was a huge pass play for a TD just before halftime that gave the Blue Hens a lead they never relinquished. All in all, it probably added up to the right final count.

There were signs of increasing but not quite normalcy, from Villanova’s band playing from a corner of the visiting stands, to seniors being honored pregame, their parents asked to stay in the stands. There were pleas from the stands after flags … “No way, pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up.”

The play stands.

BOOOOOOOO.

It all felt … normal, boos barely muffled by face masks in the crowd.

There were weird plays. We’ll let Villanova quarterback Daniel Smith describe the craziest one, which gave the Wildcats late life, for a TD with just over three minutes left.

“As I’m rolling out, they covered everybody, and I’m getting chased down by one of their linebackers,” Smith said of his acrobatic effort. “He went to tackle me and as I’m falling down, I just kind of threw it over my shoulder.”

You saw him going down … he kind of twirled, legs in the air, back about to hit the ground. Wait, no whistle.

“I couldn’t see anything that was in the end zone,” Smith said. “As soon as it happened, I was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. That’s not good, that’s going to get picked.’ I got up and turned around and saw Charlie [Gilroy] catch it. I was like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, we scored.”

The official stats merely show: “GILROY, C. 1 YD TD PASS from SMITH, D.”

“It went from being one of the stupidest decisions I think I’ve ever made to one of the most insane decisions I’ve ever made, all in maybe two seconds,” Smith said.

No miracle at the end. Delaware got one first down, which milked enough clock to leave Villanova with 68 seconds to try to go 77 yards. First down, a miscommunication with a receiver, a Delaware pick, season over.

“We shot ourselves in the foot a lot,” Smith said. “We had a lot of pre-snap penalties on first and second down, we were in a lot of third-and-longs. I think we ran the ball well for the most part throughout the game, but when you get in third-and-long, and you have a team that’s able to get a pass rush with three or four games and drop [the rest] into coverage, it makes it difficult to find windows.”

Any playoff chance?

“I would say zero,” Villanova coach Mark Ferrante said.

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Getting four games, at game speed, mixing in younger guys that might not have gotten as many snaps in a normal season, Ferrante said, was all invaluable. His group believes it has a chance to get in the national picture in the fall. Maybe this game was a microcosm of this mini-season: “We didn’t really play consistently in all three phases enough. We had a quarter here, a quarter there, maybe a half here and a half there. But we didn’t play as consistently as we can with the numbers of returners that we have. And part of it was the rotation we had in the first couple of games. We were rotating a lot of guys through, to build that depth.”

“I told all the guys … we have another fall season coming up,” said Smith, Villanova’s QB. “We don’t have to wait another year and a half to play again. Let’s make the most of the opportunity that we have in front of us now.”

At the least, the next time Villanova plays in some fall weather, it should actually be in the fall.