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As UMass football opens its final independent season, the schedule is a glimpse into the future
“We’ve been working all summer for this, and it’s finally here.”
The 2024 season is the end of an era for UMass football, which will play its ninth and final season as an FBS independent ahead of a 2025 return to the Mid-American Conference.
Those nine years have been a struggle. Back-to-back four-win seasons in 2017 and 2018 were the high point before the program cratered under Walt Bell, with two wins in three seasons.
But after going 3-9 last season, including wins at Army and a bowl-bound New Mexico State, coach Don Brown enters his third year back at the helm in Amherst with a more stable group than most in an ever-shifting college football landscape.
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“We’ve got some players now that have been here as long as we have, and that’s hard to do in this day and age,” Brown said. “We’ve been able to hold on to some of our key players. Those guys are playing at a certain level, and we’re excited about the way they’re going about doing their business. I just think familiarity breeds success.”
The Minutemen will open the season at home against Eastern Michigan on Saturday, a game reflective of a schedule with a little more cohesion than in recent years.
After nearly a decade of wandering the desert in independent uncertainty, playing a mishmash of other independents and teams from every conference under the sun, the Minutemen will get a preview of their future, with five of their first six games coming against MAC opponents. They also are slight favorites against Eastern Michigan. It’s the first time UMass has opened a season at home since 2018.
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The schedule can be looked at in halves. The opener will be followed by trips to Toledo and Buffalo, a home game against FCS Central Connecticut State, and two road games against MAC opponents in Miami (Ohio) and Northern Illinois, before a home game every player has circled on the calendar: No. 11 Missouri comes to Amherst Oct. 12.
The Tigers will be the first of three SEC opponents the Minutemen face, with trips to Mississippi State (Nov. 2) and No. 1 Georgia (Nov. 23) on the slate for later in the fall.
“It’s nice when you have teams like [Missouri] coming to this building,” Brown said. “It’s good for our players. And like I tell people all the time, when you have to get ready to play Missouri, Mississippi State, and Georgia, you don’t have to work real hard emotionally to get the guys ready to play. They get themselves ready to play.”
UMass will finish the season against fellow independent UConn.
Much of the Minutemen’s success will hinge on the health and performance of quarterback Taisun Phommachanh, who transferred in 2023 after stints at Clemson and Georgia Tech. Phommachanh starred in the upset win over New Mexico State to open last season and led an impressive early touchdown drive in the second game against Auburn before injuring his knee.
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Phommachanh missed three games and struggled to make the same impact through the rest of the season as he battled the lingering injury. He had 130 rushing yards and two touchdowns through the six quarters, and either zero or negative yardage in each of the last seven contests — and he missed spring ball this year.
“He’s ready,” Brown said. “Non-issue. He’s had a great summer, has not missed a practice, has gone about his business. You can tell he’s confident putting the ball where it’s got to go and doing it as fast as he wants to do it.”
Phommachanh and the offense will have a new look with the departure of offensive coordinator Steve Casula, who returned to Michigan. Shane Montgomery has taken over as offensive coordinator, a role he most recently held at Buffalo from 2021-22.
There are some question marks around Brown’s defense, which struggled in 2023. The Minutemen finished last in FBS in scoring defense, though the numbers are somewhat skewed by particularly heavy defeats on the road at Auburn and Penn State.
If Brown can get his defense back to respectability and Phommachanh can return to his early-2023 self, an improvement on last year’s three-win campaign is certainly on the table.
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“I feel ready to go,” Phommachanh said. “Man, we’ve been working all summer for this, and it’s finally here. So now we’ve just got to go out and take the preparation that we did and just perform.”
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