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NORFOLK — Over the past month, Old Dominion has used 15 precious spring practices to partially install a dynamic new offense, answer questions at some positions while finding more at others and generally work toward improving upon last season’s unsightly 3-9 record.
Yet the Monarchs’ most significant development in that time may have come off the field.
It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to credit coach Ricky Rahne’s interior design instincts with it, but it wouldn’t exactly be wrong.
ODU’s players, citing subtle tweaks Rahne has made throughout the program this spring, believe they’ve achieved the coach’s goals of cohesion and brotherhood.
The former Penn State offensive coordinator, who’s entering his third season on the Monarchs’ sideline, takes it a step further.
Asked what his team’s biggest accomplishment was this spring, Rahne only hesitated for a short beat.
“I think we bought in to everything,” he said after Saturday’s Priority Charity Bowl Spring Game, an 80-minute situational scrimmage. “I think we came more together as a team. This team’s as tight as I’ve ever seen a team.”
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If those seem like strong words from a man who’s been in college coaching since 2004, consider the takes of some of his players.
“We’re a family out here,” junior defensive tackle Devin Brandt-Epps said. “Everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows everything about everybody.”
Added junior receiver Javon Harvey, a former Lake Taylor High star: “This is the closest we have been since I’ve been here at Old Dominion. It’s just a sense of together.”
The Monarchs were together on the field Saturday for the final time until fall camp. A scattering of fans and family members watched in warm, sunny conditions as ODU gave its first glimpse of the spread offense brought from Fordham by first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Decker.
With Rahne standing behind the offense, the Monarchs often lined up with five wideouts and an empty backfield or four receivers and one back.
Two candidates for quarterback, Fordham junior transfer Grant Wilson and redshirt sophomore Jack Shields, split reps, zipping passes both short and deep while demonstrating in flashes the ability to escape trouble.
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Highlights included a pair of touchdown catches by Harvey. On the first, he managed to get a foot inbounds in the back left corner of the end zone while diving to catch a Wilson pass.
On the other, Harvey leapt in the same corner to snatch a Shields delivery away from a pair of defenders despite being held.
When he finished his postgame speech to his players, Rahne announced to them that Shields, a former walk-on, was going on scholarship.
Nearly the entire team left the field behind Shields, forming a blue-and-white, rollicking, hollering wave of humanity.
It was just one more hint at the team’s closeness, something cultivated quite deliberately by Rahne.
In the offseason, Rahne took a good, hard look at what could use fixing in his program. Realizing that his team was practically segregated by position, he made his players mix and mingle away from their position groups during team meetings.
When it occurred to him that not many players were visiting his office, he essentially turned the room around to make it more inviting.
Both plans have worked, and the results continue to feed themselves. Rahne’s new office configuration gets plenty of company. And away from the football complex, players who might not have otherwise befriended each other are hanging out together.
“In practice, I’m not going to go up and talk to the receivers as much as you think,” Brandt-Epps said. “We don’t really see each other much in that sense. So now that I’m sitting next to a receiver [in a meeting], it sparks more conversation between us. Honestly, it does feel like those little meetings and stuff like that does bring us closer together as a family.”
That core will be especially important this fall on a team that will have as many as 35 new scholarship players and another 15 or so preferred walk-ons, not to mention the six to 10 transfers Rahne hopes to bring in before the season.
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“So half the team, basically,” Rahne said.
It’s why gathering at a teammate’s apartment is as beneficial as a receiver and a defensive lineman sitting together during a meeting, and the interactions play off each other.
Put those encounters in the context of a group of players who endured last season’s sorry six-game losing streak down the stretch, as well as many who sat out the 2020 season after ODU canceled it over COVID-19 concerns, and the need for common ground becomes obvious.
“We’ve been through a lot,” said junior receiver Jordan Bly. “It’s definitely done formed a lot closer bond with all of us.
“We just know each other inside and out. So it’s easy to play with each other.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com. Twitter @DavidHallVP.