James Madison’s season ended under the Oregon lights, but Bob Chesney spoke afterward like a man still carrying the full weight of the journey.
This was Chesney’s final game leading the James Madison Dukes, and the emotion in his voice reflected more than a loss.
“We needed to play elite football,” Chesney said. “We needed to play our best football of the entire year. The complementary football we’ve been playing all year just didn’t show up.”
There were flashes on every side of the ball, but never the cohesion required to survive that stage. Chesney refused to let that reality overshadow the year.
“It had to be elite to hang with this team,” he said. “And it just wasn’t.”
Against Oregon, moments appeared. Productive drives. Defensive plays. Special teams contributions. But the alignment never fully arrived, and against an opponent like that, gaps get punished. Chesney didn’t dodge that truth, but he also didn’t allow it to consume the night.
Instead of heading straight to the locker room, Chesney stayed on the field. He stood at the edge of the end zone and hugged every player as they walked off.
“I told them to take those pads off slowly,” he said. “For some of them, it’ll be the last time they’re taking those pads off.”
That image lingered heavier than any statistic.
Down big at halftime, James Madison didn’t fold. The Dukes kept competing. They kept throwing. They kept fighting. Chesney pointed to belief and leadership as the constant that never cracked.
“I thought our guys just never stopped believing,” he said. “They felt like they wanted to go out, and if they were going to go out, they wanted to go out with a fight, and I think that’s something we can all be really proud of.”
When asked about broader criticism surrounding non-power programs reaching this stage, Chesney narrowed the focus. The conversation, he said, was never about proving a point. It was about preparation, belief, and opportunity.
“We came here to accomplish a task,” he said. “It doesn’t take away from what we did during the course of the year.”
What mattered most to Chesney was the state of the program he was leaving behind.
“This is a program steeped in tradition,” he said. “It believes in itself. It has a community that supports it, and that support is only getting stronger.”
As Chesney prepares to move on to UCLA, his final message in purple wasn’t about leaving. It was about what remains.
“The sky’s the limit for this program,” he said.
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