NORFOLK – Fordham is a Jesuit Catholic university in the Bronx known for its sterling academics but not generally for its football prowess.
So, it was a bit surprising last season when the Patriot League school made national headlines for its explosive offense. It seems the Rams adopted a high scoring, spread attack that coach Josh Heupel installed at Central Florida and then carried with him with much success to Tennessee.
Kevin Decker, Fordham's youthful offensive coordinator and former star quarterback at New Hampshire, was tipped off to the up-tempo offense by volunteer coach David Weeks, who had previously worked at UCF.
"One day I walked in and said, 'Weeks, you were at UCF. They were scoring a million points. What were you guys doing?'
"Well, he got on the whiteboard and started drawing it up and I realized this kid knows what he's talking about."
Decker was quickly sold and installed the offense at Fordham in just 10 fall practices during the Covid shortened 2020-21 season.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Last season the Rams finished 9-3 and led the Football Championship Subdivision with an average of 608.9 yards per game. Fordham led all of Division I in offensive yardage and became just the second FCS school to average more than 600 yards per game.
The Rams were first in passing with 413.8 yards and second in scoring at a scorching 49.5 points per game.
And the offense helped players rack up huge numbers.
Quarterback Tim DeMorat led the nation with 4,891 passing yards and was a finalist for the Walter Payton Award. The Rams had three receivers finish among the nation's top nine and a running back finish 23rd nationally in FCS.
Not only was their offense high scoring, it was unpredictable and fun to watch.
Decker has brought that offense with him to Old Dominion, where he was hired as offensive coordinator four months ago, and where he plans to revive an offense that struggled in 2022.
He and ODU's other coaches have been installing the new offense at ODU in spring practice, which culminates with the annual spring game on Saturday, April 15, at 2 p.m. at S.B. Ballard Stadium.
ODU defensive coordinator Blake Seiler, who was the defensive coordinator at Kansas State when the Big 12 had a ton of up-tempo attacks, said he's impressed with what Decker has done in a short time.
"It's been awesome," he said of Decker's offense. "It feels like I'm in the old Big 12 with Dana Holgersen and Lincoln Riley.
"It's a spread. It's high octane. It's fast tempo and it makes you work on defense. I feel really good about what I've seen of our offense."
Asked if the Monarchs will score a lot of points this fall, Decker said: "Yes we will."
ODU Thurmond Family Head Coach Ricky Rahne said the offense might not look much different to the average football fan than it did last season, but should be far more productive than 2022, when ODU's offense was last in the Sun Belt in just about every category.
Quarterbacks will still operate in the shotgun and the Monarchs plan to use as much of the field as possible to leverage yardage as Rahne did at Penn State when he was offensive coordinator there.
The offense doesn't have a name, given that only a handful of schools employ it, but Decker said it's akin to the old veer offense that was popular decades ago.
"We want to use tempo as a weapon, but that doesn't mean we're going to go super fast all the time," Rahne said. "But it does mean we're going to have the ability to do that.
"We're going to empower the quarterback to make really good decisions, get the ball to his playmakers. So, I think in that regard, it will be similar.
"Coach Deck has a different vision on how to get there. I'm pretty excited in his confidence in his ability to put people in the right places. His confidence is contagious."
Center Xavier Black said his offensive teammates are excited, too.
"There's been so much buzz around the new offense," Black said. "We're all excited. We're picking the offense up pretty quickly."
After last year's record-breaking season at Fordham, it comes as no surprise that Decker was in demand. Three FBS schools asked him to become their offensive coordinator and one FCS school offered him a head coaching job.
And more offers were likely to roll in.
But Rahne was the first to call and kept calling right after the regular-season ended. The more they talked, the more Decker liked Rahne.
Offensive line coach Alex Huettel followed Kevin Decker to ODU from Fordham.
Decker had always thought well of ODU, even though he'd never been to Norfolk. He saw video of ODU when he was the quarterback at New Hampshire his senior year in 2011.
"I saw their fans, the support they have, and their stadium, and I knew this was a program that was going to go places," he said.
"The more coach Rahne and I talked, the more conviction I had that this was the place for me. He's such an easy guy to talk to. I think we had talked five or six times and after the last call, it still wasn't a done deal.
"I kept thinking to myself, 'Why the hell haven't you committed?'"
Rahne had an ace in the hole who convinced Decker to commit. He asked Brown coach Phil Estes, who unsuccessfully recruited Rahne out of high school and for whom Decker worked for at Brown, to give Decker a call.
"He told me, 'I don't know what you're waiting for. This guy, he's an amazing man. You're a lot alike and coach Rahne made it very clear to me he wants you,' "Decker said.
Decker then called Rahne and accepted – without visiting Norfolk.
"I knew enough about the area to know it has great football talent and that it's a great place to live," he said. "And I knew the facilities from my time at New Hampshire."
He was pleasantly surprised to learn he actually didn't know that much about ODU's facilities. When he arrived, he learned that Foreman Field, the ancient stadium where ODU played its first 10 football seasons, the one he saw filled with fans on video when he was a quarterback, had largely been demolished and replaced with a new, $76 million, 21,194-seat S.B. Ballard Stadium.
"The stadium is beautiful," he said. "The locker room facilities here are top notch. When I came here, I thought this was a place where we can win.
"We have so much to offer recruits. Offensive players like the ball in their hands. And we're going to get the ball into their hands."
Decker had what he calls an idyllic childhood in Armonk, New York, a small town about 90 minutes north of New York City, where he was a basketball star in the community leagues and also a pretty good baseball and football player.
His parents, Bill and Charlene Decker, were absolutely dedicated to their three children. Bill was a house painter and Charlene a school teacher.
"They worked their butts off," Kevin Decker said.
Bill Decker was one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family and the five boys and two girls were athletes. Kevin said when he visited his grandparents, "I don't know how many trophies there were on the walls but I'm talking more than 100."
Decker's father coached him throughout his time in youth sports "and to his credit, he was very hard on me and my teammates when we were young."
"But when I got to high school, he backed off," Decker added. "He never got involved in trying to coach me or talk about the coach. Even if he disagreed with something, he always thought, 'Don't be that guy.'
"I was very, very happy with having him as a coach growing up. We did everything together.
"He taught me how to shoot, to throw a football and basketball. I owe so much to him and to my mother, who was also a tremendous athlete, a softball player."
When he entered the ninth grade he transferred from public school to Brunswick School, a Catholic school, in nearby Greenwich, Connecticut, to play basketball, which he thought would be his ticket to a college scholarship.
His high school football coach thought differently and began sending videos out to nearby colleges, which expressed a ton of interest. By his junior year, Decker knew football was his ticket to college.
In his last three seasons, Brunswick was 34-1 and won three Class C New England titles. He was the three-time Boston Globe New England Class C Player of the Year who passed for 75 touchdowns and 5,763 yards.
He signed with New Hampshire, where he was ballyhooed as a future star, but learned to bide his time.
When he was a freshman, New Hampshire's starter went down with an injury and coach Sean McDonnell had a choice between Decker, who was redshirting, or R.J. Toman, who redshirted a year earlier.
Predictably, he went with Toman, who clung to the starting job before graduating as New Hampshire's No. 2 career passer. Decker didn't become the starter until he was a senior.
Decker made the most of his one season, completing 262 passes for 3,272 yards and 22 touchdowns. He was the CAA Offensive Player of the Year, a Payton Award finalist and an honorable mention All-American whose career ended with a heartbreaking, 26-25, loss to No. 7 Montana State in the FCS playoffs.
Decker said some advised him to transfer in order to get playing time, but he said he never considered it.
"My response to that was that some people never get the chance to play," he said. "I got to play one season. We went to the playoffs and lost in devastating fashion. But I got to play a full year with my guys."
Decker, now 34, quickly moved up the coaching ladder.
He worked two years at Brunswick, as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, before joining former New Hampshire offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey at Montana State.
Brown hired him away after one season and he was named offensive coordinator in 2018. Fordham's Joe Conlin then hired him in 2019.
Because of the pandemic, Fordham, like most FCS schools, practiced in the fall of 2020 and then played in the spring of 2021 and again in the fall of 2022.
Fordham didn't fully adopt Decker's new offense until several games into the 2021 season and finished 12th in offensive yards.
Then in 2022, the Rams scored 259 points in their first five games, including a 59-52 loss at FBS Ohio. That quick start attracted tons of attention to Decker, and eventually led him to ODU.
Decker said he and his girlfriend, Brittany Holbrook, have been blown away by the reception they have received from Monarch Nation.
"I accepted the job on a Friday," Decker said. "By Saturday, Brittany had flowers on our doorstep from coach Rahne, which I thought was unbelievable."
She was immediately added to the texting list of the ODU coaches' wives and girlfriends.
"We're away from home so much that the wives and girlfriends, they play a huge role in supporting each other. And the support here is amazing. That's a very tight group."
Rahne also hired Fordham offensive line coach Alex Huettel, whose knowledge of the new offense has been a huge plus. Then, Fordham's backup quarterback, Grant Wilson, a 6-foot-1 junior from Arlington, Virginia who also knows the offense well, transferred to ODU.
Wilson is competing with Hayden Wolff, the returning starter, and Jack Shields, also a returnee, for the starting position. Decker said the competition has been fierce yet friendly.
"They're a close group," he said. "They're all trying to help each other get better.
"My job is to get all three of them to a point where they're prepared to play and execute and play well. I'm excited about our quarterback room."
Decker is trying to revamp an offense that struggled to score last season, especially after the top two offensive weapons, tight end Zack Kuntz and wide receiver Ali Jennings III, went down with injuries.
ODU lost its last six games, and scored a total of just three points during a two-game stretch.
But when he watched video of the regular-season finale, a 27-20 loss at South Alabama, Decker said he was encouraged. He noted that a late, game-tying ODU touchdown was wiped off the scoreboard because of what officials ruled to be a chop block.
"I loved what I saw on the sidelines," he said. "Everyone is juiced up and jumping around and being excited about making big plays. That was really encouraging to me.
"It means that coach Rahne's been getting through to these kids. And they're buying in. When you're 3-8, and the game doesn't mean that much, that tells me a lot about the culture of the program here. That they were still playing so hard to win that game says so much about the character of the players here."
Kevin and Brittany found a home in Norfolk's East Beach and after spending most of their lives inland, are loving life living along the Chesapeake Bay.
Kevin's parents are excited about his new position, in part because when they visit their son, they'll be on the beach and in part because they're proud of their son.
"They're really fired up about coming down to see us play," he said.
Meantime, there is plenty of work to do installing a new offense and a new mindset.
By the time the Monarchs open at Virginia Tech on Sept. 2, Decker said he wants to get his quarterbacks "to the point where they're not thinking. They're just playing extremely fast.
"I've told our receivers, if you run hard every single play, we're going to be fine. You're going to be successful. We're sort of taking the restrictor plate off them.
"It's going to be a process because it's new. But these kids, they 100 percent have the ability to explode."
And that's music to the ears of Monarch fans everywhere.
Contact Minium at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
Minium: Kevin Decker Brought the High-Octane Offense to ODU That Set Records at Fordham
