Hard jobs remain hard.
Catch up on previous 2025 opponent previews!
Last year I wrote 2,000+ words about how difficult it was to coach FBS-level football at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. That quality remains the same:
There isn’t a ton of natural football-playing talent nearby and, even if there was, UMass has been an FBS afterthought ever since they left their Playoff-finishing careers from the FCS level and leapt to the tippy top in order to get a taste of that sweet, sweet TV money.
Remember, Don Brown was a coach who got UMass to the quarterfinals and championships of the FCS Playoff in the early 2000s…he knew how to succeed there! It’s just that the Minutemen are not equipped to play with the FBS at any level of consistency at this point.
Since making the leap up in 2012, UMass has been ranked in seven of those twelve seasons as the worst team in SP+. They’ve won 1, 1, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 1, 0, 1, 1, 3, and 2 games in those 13 years respectively.
They’ve never beaten a team from a power conference. Their only FBS wins since making the leap up are as follows:
- Akron (x2)
- Miami (Ohio)
- Kent State
- Eastern Michigan (x2)
- Ball State
- FIU (x2)
- Buffalo
- Georgia Southern
- Appalachian State
- BYU
- Charlotte
- Connecticut (x2)
- Liberty
- New Mexico State
- Army
Oh! And they’ve lost to an FCS team as an FBS team four times.
But hey, they didn’t do that last year!
UMass sees your FCS-over-FBS upset dreams, Central Connecticut and Wagner, and counter with a 35-31 squeaker of a win and an absolute 35-7 beatdown over…two middling FCS teams. Yeesh.
As far as FBS matchups go, they came close against Miami (Ohio), Liberty, and UConn but failed to finish off the win and, subsequently, Don Brown was fired from his post.
And in comes yet another coach to try and pick up the pieces of this fallen FCS empire. The energy is there and he hasn’t lost a game yet so vibes are better than they were last year! But whether the vibes turn into wins is a separate question altogether. And now UMass plays in the MAC, the conference that kicked them out over a decade ago. With conference affiliations comes more money, yes, but also more expectations as well as a slate of opponents who see you much more frequently. Good luck!
Coaching Staff
David Butler II-Imagn Images
Joe Harasymiak – 1st Year – 0-0
I will say this… I actually like the hire that UMass made. They’re even willing to pony up over a million dollars per year to compensate him! Progress!
Coach Harasymiak is a defensive guy who has taken a long, northeastern-flavored trip to the FBS head coaching ranks. Most of his experience comes in the booth at Maine where he coached DBs, then coordinated their defense, than went 19-15 as head coach, finishing with a 9-win season in 2018. He then joined P.J. Fleck’s staff at Minnesota as co-coordinator before moving back to the east coast to be the DC at Rutgers, overseeing a hefty improvement in defensive SP+. He’s no Don Brown but he’s young and learned to do more with less and, yes, is a good hire for UMass. Let’s just hope it doesn’t derail his promising career.
Assistant Staff
As would be expected of a coaching staff that won 6 games in three years, the new guy came in and cleaned house of all existing coaching positions.
Except for tight ends coach Matt Layman. For whatever reason he got to keep his job and his entering his fifth season in Amherst and third as the tight ends coach. Weird, huh? Must be a good hang or something.
Anyway, everyone else on this staff is still figuring out their direct deposit at this point in the year and is tasked with rebuilding a truly awful team from scratch. Mike Bajakian is a long-time offensive coordinator who’s had stops with Butch Jones at Central Michigan and Cincinnati, as well as calling plays for similarly under-leveled smart-kid schools at Boston College and Northwestern. What he lacks in…uh…effectiveness?…he more than makes up in experience…which is about the nicest way I can explain my thoughts on his hire. On the defensive side, Harasymiak tapped his long-time partner in crime, Jared Keyte, to manage the defensive side of the ball, a task he should be well equipped to do since he has been Harasymiak’s lieutenant for five years.
Roster Movement
Much like the coaching staff, the roster saw a mass exodus of players once the new head coach was in place, with 23 players hitting the portal and six still remaining unclaimed.
UMass answered the departure of 23 players with an incredible import of 33 transfers in to the program. Thirty three! P4 players, G5 players, FCS stars, career backups…there’s no real connecting line for the flavor of what this staff is looking for other than a good majority hail from the east coast.
And this is what it looks like when you attempt to flash-rebuild a terrible roster with portal players and blow your budget on acquiring experienced pieces rather than signing a bunch of high schoolers. How many schools play at the FBS level in 2025? Do you know?
I know there’s been a lot of movement.
Think about it.
Ready?
For the 2025 college football season there will be 136 teams competing at the FCS level.
UMass’ 2025 high school recruiting class ranks 145th. Whoops.
Offense
Last year’s UMass offense was the strength of the team and ranked 110th in the nation. So, to me, there’s really no need to waste any time on what they did last year.
Instead let’s talk about Mike Bajakian offenses. To be it simply, they’re usually bad. To flesh that out a little further, Bajakian likes to run the ball, have his quarterback throw safe passes, and hold on to the ball to let defenses rest and then thrive when they are on the field. He’s had two offenses not stink too bad – his 2014 Tennessee offense was pretty good as was his 2019 Boston College squad.
But his Northwestern tenure was truly awful as the Wildcats regressed each year and subsequently scored fewer points, held the ball for less time, and struggled with penalties. We’re talking “bottom 110s” level of bad offenses.
And now he’s UMass’ new signal caller. Hmm.
Who knows? Maybe his shtick plays better at a MAC level rather than P4. Or, hey, maybe he’s been able to sit and watch as an analyst for long enough that he has some new, fresh ideas to implement.
Regardless, his goal is to not be worse than 110th, which is where the Minutemen ended last year…and would rank as the 4th-best Bajakian offense of the his past seven college-level offenses.
Quarterback
Matt Bush-Imagn Images
The hubbub heading out of spring practices is that A.J. Hairston – last year’s backup – was the most impressive in term of replacing the departing Taisun Phommachanh. Over 4 games Hairston managed a 54% completion rate, 5-0 TD/INT ration, but took six sacks and only managed 2.6 sack-adjusted yards per carry. Not bad for a freshman with last year’s team but certainly not a thunderous endorsement for upward progression.
Running Back
Andrew Dieb-Imagn Images
You know how I said A.J. Hairston wasn’t very mobile?
Yeah.
He’s UMass’ leading returning rusher.
Lol.
I guess that’s what happens when three of your top four running backs transfer out and the fourth graduates, huh?
Now, they bring in former UTSA/Vanderbilt rusher Rocko Griffin and pair him with interesting North Texas speedster Juwan Price but there’s isn’t much proven rushing experience among this group.
And the new OC likes to run.
Receivers
One decent UMass receiver returns in Jacquon Gibson, otherwise – much like the running backs – anyone who mattered portalled out or graduated. Interestingly enough, the Minutemen only brought in three receivers with any modicum of college experience, and two of them were tight ends and all three combined for less than 50 targets last year. Max Dowling is an interesting target at tight end, however: his 62% catch rate with a 7.5 yards per target is a good efficiency tool, as well as the five touchdown catches over his 23 passes caught.
Offensive Line
UMass utilized six offensive linemen in several different lineups over the year and four of them are now gone. Starting right tackle Ryan Mosesso has the most returning experience but also suffered from the worst pass protection and run blocking numbers from the six-man unit. Backup Benjamin Roy should slot in at one of the interior spots, while Ivy League standout Mike Entwistle should get a nice platform to show off his skill set at the other guard position.
Defense
Again, UMass’ 110th-ranked offense was the strongest unit of last year’s team. So what did the defense ranked?
123rd. Yeah.
Moving on.
We know what a Halasymiak defense can do, and he likes an offense that runs the ball a ton, so it makes since that he hired Bajakian as OC and most likely means his defensive footprint will be similar.
Halasymiak defenses tend to let college offense move the ball but in a manner where they need to string together 12-15 plays in order to do so. His Rutgers defenses could be run on, moved on, pushed around…but not passed on, and certainly had a tough time converting third downs.
In a nod to his history as a defensive backs coach, Halasymiak’s defenses tend to have his best athletes in the defensive secondary, where they rank among the nation’s best in havoc rate and pass defense. But it’s all a product of dropping back, creating a shell, and rushing to the ball once the carrier is identified. They don’t generate a ton of TFLs or turnovers, they just play back and let a college offense be a college offense and make some screw ups. It can work, especially at lower levels, but requires competent secondary play at a consistent level. Which is probably why he focused on bringing in proven, experienced secondary defenders in from the portal, including a few Rutgers transfers.
So what does it all mean?
UMass is giving the MAC a second go and, frankly, this is a pretty good time to do it. Long gone are the golden years of “MACTION”, replaced with boring, defense-first programs with boring coaches who are cashing checks with no hope of getting a power-level job. The quality of the conference has dipped far enough down that even eternally-doormatted UMass can probably nab a few in-conference wins to start building back up momentum.
As for their matchup with Missouri? Well…it’s a new coaching staff that has never worked together, coaching a team that has experienced 44 transfer losses in two years that’s starting a new quarterback, completely new running back stable, new offensive line, new defense…basically no consistency from the team that got wiped Missouri last year. Eli Drinkwitz’s boys should mop the floor with these fools.