|
| DePauw athletics photo by Jared Gardner |
By Greg Thomas
D3football.com
It’s has been a historic season in Greencastle, Indiana. The DePauw Tigers have won 11 games and are preparing to play in the third round of the NCAA Division III playoffs. Both are firsts for the program.
The newfound success is not an accident. DePauw’s ceiling-raising 2024 campaign has been the product of years of growth, some recent playoff adversity, and some savvy scheduling decisions.
For coach Brett Dietz and his team, including senior quarterback Nathan McCahill, this season represents the realization of goals that may have seemed far off just a few years ago.
DePauw’s journey to the round of 16 has seemed like a breeze this fall, but getting to this level of success has been a journey. The Tigers are making their fourth consecutive playoff appearance, but the previous three playoff trips came with mixed results. The Tigers have posted a 1-3 record in the last three championship tournaments, including first-round exits to Carnegie Mellon in 2022 and Alma in 2023. That past is something this year’s Tigers want to rewrite.
“This year these seniors have really kind of just said, ‘Hey, winning the conference is not going to be it for us,’” Dietz explained. “In order for us to accomplish our goals, we have to go much deeper than that. We go as the seniors go.”
McCahill echoed his coach's sentiment, reflecting on how their mindset has evolved. “In the past, it just felt like it was really just a privilege to be able to play in the playoffs,” he said. “But really last year after the Alma game and seeing Alma go beat Mount Union, that put into perspective for us that we really weren't that far off from everyone else. We thought that we had kind of shortened that talent gap.”
That realization hypercharged DePauw’s ambition this season. “The goals really were set a lot higher than where they were in the past,” Dietz said. “It’s one thing to think you can beat somebody, it’s another thing to know you can beat somebody. And I think that’s the mindset we’re in now.”
Although DePauw has dominated opponents in 2024, winning by nearly 40 points per game on average, their recent history is full of close contests that have laid the framework for larger success. In 2023, the Tigers won overtime thrillers against Wittenberg and Wabash. The year before, they battled to one-score victories over Ohio Wesleyan, Rose-Hulman, and Denison.
Dietz believes those experiences provide a foundation for confidence. “We’ve been really good in one-score football games over these seniors’ past four years,” he said. “Every week we prepare like it’s going to be a four-quarter football game, it’s going to come down to the final possession, and that’s the mindset we always have.”
While the Tigers obviously prefer to keep games out of reach, Dietz doesn’t question his team’s ability to perform when playoff games inevitably get close as DePauw goes into later and later rounds.. “I think we’re a better team now,” he said. “We’re just beating teams by a wider margin. But I’m not going to question this team if the game gets close.”
Dietz has also been strategic in preparing his team for the postseason. Recognizing the challenges of past playoff road trips where their seasons ended—long trips from Greencastle to Carnegie Mellon, Alma, and UW-Whitewater—the Tigers scheduled a Week 2 road game against eventual SAA champion and 2024 playoff qualifier Berry.
“We had to go into enemy territory,” Dietz said. “Let’s go to Georgia in September and play in the heat down there against a really good Berry team. Our kids were really, really excited for that. And we treated that like a playoff game.”
The result was a resounding statement victory. A 33-0 dismantling of a top 25-ranked Viking team in challenging conditions and 500 miles away from home. That performance solidified DePauw as a team capable of making a deep playoff run and gave the Tigers a taste of the challenges they might face in the playoffs.
This year’s Tigers are not just winning games, they’re dominating on both sides of the ball. DePauw leads Division III in total defense and ranks second in rush defense and seventh in first downs allowed. Offensively, they’re equally impressive, ranking third in scoring, sixth in passing, and seventh in total yardage.
Dietz attributes this balance to the leadership of offensive coordinator Mason Espinosa and the standout play of McCahill, who ranks fifth nationally in passing yards per game and was named the North Coast Athletic Conference’s Offensive Player of the Year this week.
“Mason’s doing a good job of being a little creative with play calling but also not getting too crazy,” Dietz said. “We figured out early that we can be a little bit of everything. We can run the ball when we need to, we can throw it when we need to.”
In their playing days, both Dietz and Espinosa were both standout quarterbacks at Hanover and Ohio Wesleyan, respectively, and they have been a tremendous resource for McCahill. “Being able to really have two quarterbacks that I can go to and kind of pick their brain because they have so much QB knowledge and football knowledge — it’s really an advantage to have a coaching staff like we have,” he said.
Even though they prepared to play on the road, DePauw’s dominance this season has been rewarded with two games on campus at Blackstock Stadium. With the elimination of Hardin-Simmons last weekend, the Tigers would host again in the quarterfinals if they are able to advance past Johns Hopkins on Saturday.
“Every team loves to play at home,” McCahill said. “We feel like it’s really hard for opposing teams to come in and try and win. We know how the weather’s gonna be: We practice in it all week, and we kind of get used to it. Coming to play in our backyard is definitely not going to make it easier for them.”
This DePauw team is built a little differently than their previous iterations. There’s an undeniable air of confidence with this team. They’re not satisfied with simply being in the playoffs — they believe they belong among the nation’s best. Their growth from winning close games, the lessons learned in previous playoffs, and now a season full of unrelentingly overwhelming their opponents has DePauw making program history every week they are able to keep playing.
As Dietz put it, “This team’s confidence has been different, and the team’s mission has been different. We’re not done yet.”