WEST LONG BRANCH — In the 1986 AFC Championship game, the Broncos’ John Elway manufactured a 15-play, 98-yard touchdown drive that tied the score with 37 seconds remaining before winning in overtime. Dubbed “The Drive,” it went down in the annals of NFL history as the drive of all last-minute drives.
With that in mind, Monmouth University’s final possession Saturday will go down as the Hawks’ version of “The Drive” as they held the ball for the final 6:03 of the game to preserve a 40-33 win over No. 8 Villanova Saturday at Kessler Field in front of a boisterous home-field crowd on Senior Day.
Villanova (8-3, 5-2) had just cut Monmouth’s two-touchdown lead down to seven points and were breathing down the Hawks neck, having scored on their last three possessions.
With Monmouth suffering three late-game losses in the last three weeks, the nagging thought of ‘here we go again’ was hard to ignore even for the most ardent fan.
Holding a now precarious 40-33 lead with 6:03 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Hawks took over at their own 25-yard line, desperately needing to run time off the clock. On third-and-12 from the 23-yard line, running back Rodney Nelson broke free for a gritty 29-yard run and huge first down at the Villanova 48. This was the first of three monumental plays on the drive.
Three plays later, the second game-changing play occurred. Facing a third-and-5 at the Villanova 43, bruising back Sone Ntoh slashed his way to the 35-yard line for another clutch first down. On the drive, the Hawks kept the ball on the ground, running eight straight times while eating up the clock.
On third-and-11 at the Villanova 36, Ntoh picked up five yards, making it fourth-and-6 at the 31-yard line, and here was the clincher. With the Villanova defense expecting another run, quarterback Derek Robinson faked a handoff to Ntoh and fired a perfect strike to wideout T.J. Speight at the one-yard line. With Villanova now out of timeouts, Robertson took a knee, giving the Hawks their first victory over a ranked opponent since beating Villanova – ranked ninth at the time – in 2022.
After three brutal losses in a row where Monmouth had a shot at winning all of them, Saturday’s win gave them a collective sigh of relief for a team desperately needing a win and a boost of confidence.
“Coming from where we’ve been, losing three tight games in a row, and then coming back and playing the way we did today to beat the No. 8 team in the country says a lot about the character and the makeup of these guys, they did an outstanding job,” said Monmouth head coach Kevin Callahan. “We’ve been in that exact scenario the last three weeks. It was the end of the game, with under two minutes left. We had the ball, and we weren’t successful. To the credit of these guys, we were successful today. That shows the growth we’ve made, the resolve that they’ve had, and the determination that they weren’t going to let it happen again against the best team that we’ve played.”
Robertson had a career game and was flawless in his execution the entire day. It was the final drive he engineered to perfection that will be remembered as “The Drive,” with the Hawks holding the ball for the final 6:03 to seal the victory.
“End the game,” Robertson said when asked about his mindset on the drive. “We wanted the ball in our hands to end the game. We’ve come up short a couple of times in that area this season, and we weren’t going to let it happen again. It’s pretty straightforward: we wanted to end the game with the football. The running backs, O-line, T.J. (Speight), unbelievable job by them to end the game; that was awesome.”
Speight was magnificent as well. The 5-foot-11 speedster caught 11 passes from Robertson for 120 yards.
Robertson, who vaulted out of a three-game mini-slump Saturday, threw one incompletion all day: that’s not a misprint. He completed 22-of-23 passes for 358 yards and three touchdowns without an interception: mind-blowing numbers.
“Yeah, I felt good for sure,” added Robertson when asked if he felt like he was in the zone Saturday. “We knew we were going to come out and be aggressive. They’re obviously a very good football team; we knew we had to play a great game. And, like I say, it’s a credit to everyone else. We have unbelievable achievers on this team. I don’t think I was touched once today, so our offensive line did an incredible job. So, it’s really just credit to everyone else.”
All modesty aside, Robertson’s phenomenal day will go down as one of the top performances by a Monmouth quarterback in program history. Something is wrong if he doesn’t grab the CAA Offensive Player of the Week award and, quite possibly, the FCS Player of the Week award.
Villanova’s defense entered the game ranked No. 1 in the CAA in almost every category and Robertson picked them apart. The Hawks hung 40 points on them while racking up 502 total yards on offense, including 144 yards rushing. Nelson finished with 83 yards rushing on ten attempts and one touchdown.
Monmouth scored touchdowns on its first three possessions of the game and trailed just once at 7-6 after missing an extra point, which almost came back to haunt them.
The Hawks won the coin toss and elected to receive the ball. They then drove 75 yards in seven plays to take a 6-0 lead after a missed Calton Jr. extra point kick. On third-and-6 from the Villanova six-yard line, Robertson found running back Ntoh alone in the flat for the touchdown.
Villanova took a short-lived 7-6 lead, but the Hawks answered with another 7-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to take a 12-7 lead. Robertson found wideout Josh Derry alone at the 35yard line, and Derry raced down the left sidelines for the score. Monmouth’s two-point conversion attempt failed, so their lead was just five points instead of what should’ve been a seven-point lead.
Monmouth never trailed again in the game.
The Hawks pushed their lead to 19-7 with a five-play, 52-yard scoring drive that was capped off with a pretty leaping catch on a 50/50 ball in the end zone by Maxwell James for a 19-yard touchdown.
Freshman David Avit then made it a 19-14 game with a 25-yard rushing touchdown with 6:19 left in the second quarter, and that’s how the half ended.
The Wildcats received the second-half kickoff and drove to the Monmouth 29-yard line, where they had a third-and-2. Hawks defensive tackle Isaiah Rogers then recorded a five-yard tackle for a loss on third down. On fourth-and-7, Villanova lined up like they would go for it but instead initiated a quick kick that Monmouth recovered at the 15-yard line.
On first down, Robertson completed a deep pass to Gavin Nelson, who had a step on his man and hauled in Robertson’s pass at the Wildcats 26-yard line. On the next play, Rodney Nelson took a handoff off right tackle and bolted 26 yards for the score for a 26-14 lead.
Villanova then drove to the nine-yard line but was stopped on third down and settled for a field goal to cut Monmouth’s lead to 26-17, but the Hawks answered right back with a four-play, 67-yard touchdown drive. Ntoh ran it in from seven yards out for his 22nd rushing touchdown of the season and a 33-17 Monmouth advantage with 5:01 left in the third quarter. Speight set it up with a beautiful 44-yard catch and run off a Robertson shovel pass.
The Wildcats came right back with a 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to cut the Hawks lead to 33-25 on a Connor Watkins six-yard touchdown run and his two-point conversion, which made it a one-score game.
Again, the Hawks answered by going 75 yards in 10 plays. Tight end Jack Neri hauled in a 33-yard Robertson strike down to the three-yard line, and three plays later, on third-and-one, Ntoh bulled his way into the end zone for a 40-25 lead with 9:28 left in the fourth quarter. It was Ntoh’s 23rd rushing touchdown of the season, setting a new Monmouth single-season record for rushing touchdowns.
However, Villanova wasn’t through just yet. The Wildcats then drove 79 yards in 12 plays to pull within seven points. 40-33 after quarterback Connor Watkins, who tortured the Hawks all day, completed a fourth-and-12 pass to Devin Smith for a 17-yard touchdown. The two-point conversion run by Watkins made it a seven-point game with 6:03 remaining, and the rest is history.
“We knew it was going to take every second, every minute of that game playing absolutely as hard as we could to pull it out,” said Callahan. “And I can’t give our guys enough credit because that’s exactly what they did, right down to the final seconds. They didn’t let any success Villanova had get in the way; they were completely focused on what they had to do. I will say this, ‘that’s a really good football team.’ There may have been some people out there who doubted we could accomplish this, but again, to the credit of our guys, they didn’t let that bother them, never let that enter their heads, and just kept their heads down and kept grinding the entire game.”
