Marshall Faulk Brings the SWAC's Best Runner at FAMU — the Rattlers Have Won Six Straight in This Rivalry

Tallahassee — Rivalry math is usually simple. This one refuses to be. Florida A&M has beaten Southern six straight times, and Southern has not won this game since 2012 — but when the Jaguars walk into Bragg Memorial Stadium today (3 p.m. ET, HBCU GO), they bring the one weapon Florida A&M is worst equipped to stop: the SWAC’s leading rusher, aimed at the conference’s worst run defense.

The streak is verified from both camps. The Tallahassee Democrat records six straight Rattler wins, with Southern’s last victory coming in 2012 at the Atlanta Football Classic, 21–14 — and notes Southern has never beaten FAMU since the Rattlers joined the SWAC ahead of the 2021 season. FAMU Athletics’ official preview tells the same story, including last year’s 43–35 Rattler win in Baton Rouge. Fourteen years of drought says one thing about today. The matchup data says another.

The best runner against the worst run defense

Southern’s offense runs through Trey Holly, and it is not close. The Democrat has Holly as the SWAC’s top rusher with 829 yards — ninth in the entire FCS — and he arrives in Tallahassee hot: 35 carries for 156 yards and a touchdown at Texas Southern last week, his fourth 100-yard game in five weeks. He is doing it under a head coach who knows the position as well as anyone who has ever lived: Marshall Faulk, the Pro Football Hall of Fame running back, is in his first season leading the Jaguars. “I like Trey’s approach,” Faulk told the Democrat. “Sometimes it’s hard to take him out because he wants to be in there. He’s that guy that, as you give him more carries, the more you hit him, the more he gets going.”

Now the other half of the split. FAMU owns the SWAC’s worst run defense, allowing 224.3 rushing yards per game — last in the 12-team league, per the Democrat’s reporting and FAMU’s own preview materials. It is not an abstract weakness. Last week, Arkansas-Pine Bluff ran for 211 yards and three touchdowns against the Rattlers, the fourth straight opponent to clear 200 on the ground. Southern does not need a clever game plan today. It needs to hand the ball to No. 1 in the conference and let the math argue with the streak.

Two teams limping in, one freshman dealing

Neither sideline arrives happy. Both teams lost their homecoming games on October 24 — FAMU fell 31–28 to Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and Southern lost 24–21 at Texas Southern on a last-second 46-yard field goal. FAMU is 2–6 (1–3 SWAC) under first-year head coach Quinn Gray; Southern is 3–5 (1–3) in Faulk’s first season.

There is more fight in the home team than the record suggests. FAMU actually outgained UAPB last week, 394–351, did not turn the ball over, and pulled within 31–28 on Kieren Jackson’s 61-yard touchdown catch with 3:19 to play, per FAMU Athletics’ preview notes — a loss, but the kind that tells a locker room it is close. Southern’s three wins, meanwhile, came against Kentucky State (34–15), Louisiana Christian (50–31, the day Holly ran for 200 yards) and at Prairie View A&M (28–14). The Jaguars have beaten the teams they were supposed to beat. They have not beaten a streak.

The Rattlers’ counterpunch is their true freshman quarterback. Armond Parker threw for a career-high 319 yards and two touchdowns against UAPB, added a team-high 57 rushing yards and another score, and personally accounted for 376 of FAMU’s 394 total yards — this from a freshman who ranks fifth in the SWAC with 1,244 passing yards despite playing in just six games, per the Democrat. And FAMU does have a runner with history in this fixture: Jamal Hailey, the Rattlers’ leading rusher this season, exploded for 157 yards and three touchdowns at Southern last year.

Southern is not a one-man offense, either. Quarterback Christian Johnson has thrown for 1,059 yards and 10 touchdowns against just one interception, per HBCU data coverage of the matchup — efficient enough that FAMU cannot simply load the box and dare the Jaguars to throw. The Rattlers’ problem is arithmetic: commit to Holly and Johnson picks at a secondary; play honest and Holly gets the 35-carry afternoon Faulk gave him last week. Tickets, for anyone making the trip, were listed from $28 earlier in the week, per the Democrat.

What decides it

Strip away the pageantry and today’s game is one question: can the SWAC’s worst run defense survive four quarters of the SWAC’s best runner before Parker’s arm changes the script? The streak says FAMU owns this rivalry. The split says Southern finally owns the matchup inside it. One of those statements stops being true around 6 p.m. Eastern. Kickoff is 3 p.m. ET at Ken Riley Field at Bragg Memorial Stadium, streamed on HBCU GO with James Hadnot and Jon Kelley on the call. More HBCU and college football coverage on the Previously sports front.