By Roscoe Nance


No, North Carolina A&T State doesn’t actually build a trip to Atlanta and the Celebration Bowl into its schedule every year. It just seems that way.
 
The Aggies will make their fourth appearance in the bowl game’s five-year history when they take on SWAC champion Alcorn State on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (12 p.m. on ABC) in a rematch of the 2018 contest.
 
The Aggies have faced the Braves in three of the game’s five years.
 
Second-year Aggies coach Sam Washington says, however, that his team’s frequent trips to the Atlanta gives it an advantage.
 
“We’re trying not to let that have any bearing on what we do, how we do things,” Washington said. “We pretty much started over. It’s another year, another ballgame to win.”
 
With Florida A&M being ineligible for the MEAC title and postseason play in 2019, the Aggies earned the 2019 Celebration Bowl berth on the strength of a head-to-head tiebreaker after sharing the conference championship with South Carolina State (the Aggies defeated the Bulldogs 22-20 on Nov. 2).
 
Washington says one of the biggest challenges for the Aggies has been the amount of time between games for them. Unlike the SWAC, the MEAC doesn’t play a conference championship game, which means the Aggies last played on Nov. 23 (a 54-0 drubbing of rival North Carolina Central). On the other, Alcorn State defeated Southern in SWAC title game on Dec. 7.
 
“The big challenge was having all that time off and the first two weeks not knowing who our opponent would be,” Washington said. “That was the toughest part of it. What we did is we went back to our fundamental practice. We just worked on those small things, hips, hands and eyes, that first step and tackling -- just fundamental stuff. When we realized who we were going to play, we got into more detailed stuff, film watching and schematics.”
 
Saturday’s game will be the third time Washington has faced Alcorn State in the Celebration Bowl; he was defensive coordinator when the Aggies defeated the Braves in the inaugural contest in 2015 and was head coach last season when the Aggies won 24-22. So he is quite familiar with what Alcorn coach Fred McNair wants to do. Still, he came away impressed with what he saw of the Braves on film. But he says knowing the Braves and dealing with them are two different things.
 
“It makes it a little easier to prepare,” Washington said. “You have an idea of what they like to do, what they’re trying to do and what they’ve done in the past. They had some success running the ball last year. I would think they feel pretty confident they can run the ball. But the quarterback (Felix Harper) is very accurate. I’m really impressed with his feet. He knows how to maneuver and buy that extra time. That could be a challenge for us.”
 
Harper, a junior who became the starter in the Braves’ third game after Noah Johnson was injured, threw for 30 touchdowns with just eight interceptions and 2,316 yards. He was named SWAC Offensive Player of the Year and is one of four finalists for the Black College Football Hall of Fame Player of the Year Award, which will be announced on Feb 22.
 
“He has been in the program,’” Washington said. “He’s not new to anything. It’s all recall to him. He had the opportunity to watch and learn. You can see it in his play. They do a good job. They have been in the Celebration Bowl three out of five years. They are doing some things right.”
 
As lethal as Harper has been, Alcorn’s running game also concerns Washington, with the one-two punch of running backs Niko Duffey and De’Shawn Waller. Duffey rushed for 790 yards and averaged 5.2 yards a carry. Waller gained 458 yards and averaged 4.0 yards.
 
It was Johnson whose running hurt the Aggies last year, when he ran for 127 yards and two touchdowns. Harper isn’t in his class running with the ball, but he is elusive enough to keep the defense honest.
 
The ground game could well be where North Carolina A&T State has its biggest advantage, though. Junior running back Jah-Maine Martin led the MEAC with 1,336 yards (No. 6 in the FCS) and 21 touchdowns (No. 4 in the nation) this season.
 
Martin averaged 7.8 yards a carry, tops in the country, and his 121.5 yards a game were No. 4.
 
“Jah-Maine is special,” Washington said. “I love his approach to the game and practice. He’s a coach’s dream. He brings so much positive energy to practice and the game. That makes it easier to want to block for him.
 
“Not only is he fast, he’s powerful. If he sees he can’t get around you, he’ll run right at you. He’ll run over you. He’ll bite down on his mouthpiece and give you all he has. That kind of stuff is contagious. When your teammates see you getting after it like that, it makes them want to play that much harder.”
 
Martin, at 5-foot-10, 214 pounds, has drawn comparisons to Tarik Cohen, the three-time MEAC Offensive Player of the Year who lit up the inaugural Celebration Bowl and now plays for the Chicago Bears. Martin is bigger and runs with more power than Cohen, who at 5-foot-6 and 181 pounds is more elusive and more of a slashing runner.
 
“They are similar but not the same,” Washington said. “You couldn’t get a shot on Tarik and you don’t want to get a shot on Jah-Maine.”
 
The Aggies also have dangerous passing game, averaging 193 yards a game through the air, but Washington acknowledges that the ground is his preference.
 
“That’s definitely something we would like to be able to do, run the ball,” he said. “We can control the game a little easier. When you can run the ball, you can control the clock. You want to keep the clock running as much as possible and keep their offense off the field and maintain moving the chains.”
 
The Celebration Bowl has a history of being low-scoring and close, other than North A&T’s 41-34 victory in the inaugural game. The widest margin of victory ha been seven points in each of the previous four contests, with one game being decided by a point and last year’s contest being decided by two points.
 
North Carolina A&T State is No. 14 in the FCS in scoring at 35.7 points a game and Alcorn State is No. 26 at 32.8. But Washington bristles at the idea of this year’s game evolving into a shootout.
 
“I’m a defensive man,” he said. “I don’t want that. I can’t even fathom that.”