Kennesaw State Owls 2026 Season Preview

Regression Watch

Jerry Mack's second year follows a 19-15 win over Jacksonville State in the Conference USA title game, but the underlying numbers say sell high on this program. Kennesaw State went 5-1 in one-score games and posted a yardage margin against league opponents that badly lagged its actual win rate in those contests, the exact kind of gap that tends to snap back rather than repeat. The one component pointing the other way is turnover margin, a modest -3 over 14 games that the model reads as understating this team, but with just 25% of production back and a No. 106 power rating, Mack's follow-up season looks tougher than the 10-4 mark suggests.

Collins Inherits a Loaded Chassis

The scary part for Conference USA is that Kennesaw State's 10-4 run happened despite finishing 126th in points per scoring opportunity, so all the explosive-play juice (22nd nationally) never fully cashed in. That inefficiency now becomes Rickie Collins' problem to fix after arriving from Syracuse, and his 10 interceptions last season are the exact red-zone stalling issue this offense needs him to erase rather than repeat. Pair him with a defense that racked up 90 tackles for loss (13th) and 31 sacks, and the formula is simple: if Collins turns explosive plays into touchdowns instead of field goals, this program stops leaving wins on the table.

Amari Odom's 2,594 yards and 19 touchdowns walk out the door, and Kennesaw State replaces that production with a transfer who threw more picks than scores last season. Rickie Collins, the four-star arrival from Syracuse, takes the first-team reps as the front-runner, but his 1,042 yards, 6 touchdowns and 10 interceptions at Syracuse mean this is an open camp battle rather than a formality, with Landon Varnes and Skyler Williams both unproven and waiting for a crack at it. The Owls' offense already leaned on explosive plays rather than efficiency, so whoever wins the job inherits a group that needs to convert more scoring chances into points, not just flip the field.

Every rushing yard of consequence from 2025 walked out the door with Coleman Bennett, Alexander Diggs and Chase Belcher, and none of the returning backs (Jonathan Mathis, Devin Ingram, Joshua Troupe, Boogie Woods III) has a real carry on file. Latrelle Murrell arrives from West Georgia off an 894-yard, 3-touchdown season to simply become the lead back, with Celley Davis and Triston Morgan filling in behind him. Kennesaw State's ground game was never the problem last year, ranking 66th in rushing yards per game, but the explosive passing attack (22nd in explosiveness) will only stay dangerous if Murrell can hold defenses honest.

Kennesaw State's leading returning receiver caught nine passes a year ago, which tells the real story here: Gabriel Benyard (60-949-9) and Christian Moss (44-682-2) are both gone, and this room is almost entirely rebuilt through the portal. Brayden Munroe (46-696-3 at Northern Colorado), Devaughn Slaughter (55-551-3 at Tennessee State) and Zion Booker (46-418-2 at Tulsa) all arrive with real production and figure to take over as Jerry Mack's top targets immediately. With Javon Rogers the lone returnee who caught more than five passes, this offense's passing identity in 2026 belongs almost entirely to the new arrivals.

Gerard Bullock Jr. is the only tight end on this roster with a catch to his name, and after Rowan Darnell, Semaj Parker and Isaiah Williams all cleared out, Kennesaw State is leaning on him plus a trio of unproven bodies in Jamari Harrold, Reed Jesiolowski and Darren Pinkard. Cass product Chase Tatum arrives as a three-star addition but has zero college production, so this group's ceiling in 2026 still runs through how much bigger a role Bullock's 23 catches turn into behind an offense that already ranked 126th in points per scoring opportunity. A run-first attack (160 yards per game on the ground) does not need heavy passing volume from this spot, but red-zone finishing was the issue last year, and Bullock is the one proven weapon who can fix it.

Jerry Mack's front allowed 27 sacks and posted a 41.3% success rate last season, and the group that produced that line is mostly scattered now, with 10 linemen gone against 8 returning. The rebuild leans on senior holdovers Havik Pettigrew and JaDarious Lee up front, while the incoming class stacks three portal interior linemen, Luke Duska, Precious Ekeh and Mateo Guevara, alongside high school signee Daniel Cepicky at tackle. With that much turnover and no clear returning starters to point to, 2026 is about whether that new mix can cut into the sack total and finally push points per scoring opportunity, 126th nationally, off the floor.

Elijah Hill's 9 sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss walk out the door, and Kennesaw State did not go find a headline replacement so much as reload with volume, adding five DL/EDGE arrivals led by Buffalo transfer Devin Morgan, who brings 3.5 sacks and 5.5 TFL of proven production. Marcus Patterson (6 TFL) and Jaiden Grimes return as the interior anchors, but the run defense that already ranked 115th in rushing yards allowed per game cannot afford to get lighter up front while four unproven high schoolers learn on the job. The 90 tackles for loss the group produced a year ago made this defense dangerous even when the run fit broke down, and Morgan projects as the closest thing to Hill's replacement, not a finished product.

Baron Hopson's 139 tackles and 10 TFL return as the centerpiece of a group that produced plenty of splash plays a year ago, but the 185 yards allowed on the ground exposed a run defense that couldn't match that disruption with consistency. Tywon Christopher and Donovan Westmoreland come back to fill out the front, while Josh Anglin arrives from Tulsa with 38 tackles already on his resume and Jecari Bryson joins from Gardner-Webb, giving Jerry Mack outside depth that Garland Benyard's departure left thin. The pieces are still built to hunt tackles for loss, but shoring up the point of attack against the run is what separates a repeat conference run from a step back.

Kennesaw State loses five of its top tacklers in the secondary, including JeRico Washington Jr. (43 tackles), Isaac Paul (57 tackles) and Five Hamilton (38 tackles), and answers with a five-man transfer haul led by Cam Miller from Memphis, who brings 43 tackles and 2 TFL of his own. Kody Jones (29 tackles, 2 sacks, 6.5 TFL) is the lone proven piece back on the roster, so Miller and fellow arrivals Perry Fisher and Luke Evans have to replace lost production immediately rather than develop into it. That turnover matters given a unit that already ranked 99th in yards allowed per game and 115th against the run, even while racking up 90 tackles for loss nationally 13th; the new pieces need to tackle in space better than the group they replaced.

Daniel Kinney comes back after going 7 of 8 on field goals with a 50-yard long, giving Kennesaw State the one settled piece of a special teams unit that otherwise turns over almost entirely. Joshua Huiet's 64 punts at a 40.8-yard clip walk out the door, and Arizona State transfer Matt McKenzie steps in to replace him despite a smaller sample of 12 punts at 35.8 yards, a dip worth watching in field-position battles. Long snapper Ben Blanton returns, but Marshall transfer Brock Walters arrived to push him, and with Britton Williams gone too, Kinney is the lone proven leg carrying real weight into 2026.

Collins Inherits a Rebuilt Room

Kennesaw State won 10 games and ran the Conference USA table at 7-1 with Amari Odom's 2,594 yards and 19 touchdowns steering the offense, and none of that comes back. Jerry Mack instead handed the keys to Syracuse transfer Rickie Collins, whose 1,042 yards carried a rough 6-to-10 touchdown-to-interception split last season, and surrounded him with an almost entirely new skill corps in Latrelle Murrell, Brayden Munroe, Devaughn Slaughter and Zion Booker. With Gabriel Benyard's 949 yards and Coleman Bennett's 764 rushing yards also gone, the 2026 offense is a bet that Collins cleans up his turnovers behind a cast that has never played a snap together in Kennesaw's system.

Rickie Collins Under Center

Kennesaw State won 10 games and a Conference USA title with Amari Odom throwing 19 touchdowns against just 8 picks, and now hands the offense to Syracuse transfer Rickie Collins, whose 10 interceptions on 1042 yards last season are a real red flag against that standard. Collins gets a physical downhill complement in West Georgia transfer Latrelle Murrell, but a defense anchored by Baron Hopson's 139 tackles can only cover for so many turnovers before the ceiling drops from conference contender to bubble team.

Due for a Correction

Jerry Mack's second season arrives with the market still chasing last year's cover machine, but the underlying numbers say sell. Kennesaw State went 5-1 in one-score games and covered 75% of the time in conference play while actually winning at a far higher clip in league games than its yardage margin against those same opponents supports, the exact kind of gap that snaps back. The lone soft spot working the other way is a turnover margin of -3 that undersold this group, so a modest turnover bounce is the one thing propping up the outlook while the close-game luck and the league-yardage overachievement both point toward a step back from 10-4.