Lafayette Survives Marist's 291 Passing Yards, 13-9
Marist threw for 291 yards, outgained Lafayette 364 to 324, never turned it over, and lost 13-9. Flip nothing, change nothing, and you still get a loss for the Red Foxes (0-2 now). I do not have a good explanation, but I have some numbers.
The first one is 9-0. Marist got a 21-yard Luke Stenson field goal in the first quarter and a 5-yard touchdown from Sonny Mannino to Zach Garmont in the second, and the extra point on that touchdown failed. Hold on to that missed kick. It left Marist at 9 instead of 10, and then it turned out 4 points was the final margin anyway.
The second is 3. Lafayette sacked Marist three times, and the Leopards (1-0) answered the 9-0 hole with two Jack Simonetta field goals, a 22-yarder with 5:03 left in the second quarter and a 32-yarder as the half ran out. That made it 9-6. Then Jason Penza, a quarterback who completed one pass for 5 yards, ran 38 yards for a touchdown with 5:03 left in the third quarter, and Simonetta's kick made it 13-9. Nobody scored again.
The third is 183 to 73. That was Lafayette's rushing yards against Marist's, on 29 carries against 30, and it is the cleanest way to explain a game in which the passing numbers went the other way. Daniel Lipovski was 12 of 31 for 136 yards. Mannino was 26 of 38 for 291. The team with the ground game won.
For fantasy, the top three are all Marist: Mannino at 19.2, Jayden Taylor at 16 and Garmont at 14.8. That is what it looks like when one side owns the passing game and the other owns the scoreboard.