Chattanooga Mocs 2026 Season Preview

Wright Faces a Flat Season

Rusty Wright's 2025 landed right at .500 in league play but the overall ledger slipped to 5-7, and a power rating of 84th nationally says this was not a fluke bad bounce, it was a middling roster performing like one. Chattanooga was not blown out of the league, going 4-4 in conference, but the non-conference results dragged the whole season under water. Getting back over .500 in 2026 means fixing whatever went sideways outside league play, not just holding steady inside it.

Wright's Margins Were Misleading

Rusty Wright's 5-7 mark hid a team that was quietly sound, an explosive run game (184 yards per game, 22nd nationally) and an offense that finished drives efficiently at 13.3 yards per point undercut by a minus-4 turnover margin that should not repeat. The bigger issue for 2026 sits on defense, where opponents scored cheaply at 12.2 yards per point and the unit gave up 6.31 yards per play, 105th nationally. If the giveaways trend back to normal and that defense tightens up its per-play cost, the record catches up to how competitive this team already was in conference play.

Battle Alberson heads into fall as the man to beat after throwing for 630 yards with 5 touchdowns against 3 interceptions last season, but Rusty Wright is not handing him the job outright. Hunter Campbell, Matthew Clemmer and Luke Schomburg are all in the mix, and New Mexico State transfer Parker Awad adds another arm to the competition. The bigger question is what Chattanooga asks of whoever wins the reps, since this offense leaned on a run game that hit 184 yards per game (22nd nationally) while its passing attack ranked just 83rd, and Alberson's ledger is the only quarterbacking resume in the building.

Journey Wyche's 333 yards and 4 scores make him the clear holdover piece in a backfield that produced 184 rushing yards per game, 22nd nationally, but the two backs who actually paced that attack, Ryan Ingram (578 yards, 8 TD) and Justus Durant (678 yards, 4 TD), are both gone. Solomon Locke's 136 yards give Rusty Wright a second experienced body, while Malachi Jeffries and TJ Worthy carry no game statistics yet, so the carries Ingram and Durant leave behind have to be earned rather than assumed. Chattanooga's ground game was the offense's real strength last year, and whether Wyche can scale into a lead-back workload will decide if that 22nd-ranked rushing attack holds up in 2026.

Josh Williams is the one proven target back, coming off 44 catches for 585 yards and 4 touchdowns, and Chattanooga's passing offense still ranked just 83rd nationally with him doing that work. Gone are Jamarii Robinson (18 catches, 278 yards, 4 TD) and A.J. Little (27 catches, 345 yards, 1 TD), which pushes Taylor Crumedy, a bit-part contributor with 2 catches for 40 yards last year, toward a bigger role alongside unproven names like Erik Bussmann, Brohns Donaldson, Jaden George and Hudson Gray. Central Oklahoma transfer Ashton Schumann arrives with no prior stats to lean on, so Rusty Wright's offense, which already leaned on the ground game at 184 rushing yards per game, will likely keep asking Williams to carry the passing attack while the rest of the room proves itself.

John McIntyre is the clear focal point at tight end, coming off 11 catches for 96 yards and a touchdown, with Landon Strickland adding a complementary 6 catches and 69 yards. Chattanooga's passing game ranked just 83rd in yards per game in 2025, so the touchdown production the departed Nathaniel Eberly-Rodriguez took with him has to come from somewhere, and TJ Briggs, Daniel Green and Hunter Teal give Rusty Wright bodies without a proven track record yet. With the run game humming at 184 yards per game (22nd nationally), the tight ends matter more as blockers and safety valves than as the engine of an offense that already moves the ball efficiently at 5.76 yards per play.

Chattanooga's ground game hummed at 184 yards per game, 22nd nationally, but the group that paved it is almost entirely rebuilt on paper, with five departures including Will Buchanan, Therion Cannon, Ryan Merklinger and both B.J. and Tyrell Ragland off the two-deep. Rusty Wright brought in Arkansas State transfer Royce Baucom to plug the interior, betting that a lower-rated but battle-tested piece can stabilize a line that still has to answer for 83rd-ranked passing production and a 38.7% third-down rate. If the rushing efficiency carries over with new faces up front, the explosiveness that ranked 16th nationally in successful plays gives this offense a real ceiling in Southern play.

A defense that gave up 6.31 yards per play, 105th nationally, is losing all three of its departing ends, including Noah Livingston, without a single returning name to point to as the anchor up front. Rusty Wright brings in Dacian Davis, a high school signee out of Monroe Area, to start restocking the edge, but a true freshman project is not built to erase a rush defense that already ranked 70th in yards allowed on the ground. Expect the run-stopping numbers to hold roughly steady while the pass rush takes time to reform around whoever emerges from an experienced front seven.

Rusty Wright's defense allowed 6.31 yards per play a year ago, a number that lands at 105th nationally and explains why 33.0 points a game got out the door so easily. The linebacker room loses Amanuel Dickson and Jonathan Hunter-Horton, but the bigger issue on tape was structural: opponents stayed on schedule on 42.6 percent of snaps, and a defense that gave up 166 rushing yards per game needs its second level to close that gap before it worries about the back end. Chattanooga's 2026 answer at linebacker will have to come from an experienced group already in the building, since no fresh arrival at the position is on record yet.

Kam Baah-Slay's 9 tackles were the high mark for any Chattanooga defensive back last season, and that modest number tells the real story of a secondary that allowed 237 passing yards per game (85th) and 6.31 yards per play (105th). Baah-Slay returns alongside Jaden Nelson, Taylor Smallwood and D.J. Adams, none of whom topped three tackles, plus Ahmad Bridges and Martez Cooksey Jr., who carry no prior production on file. Rusty Wright's group brings back its low-usage pieces largely intact while losing Kaelin Drakeford's 5 tackles and Jeremiah Batiste's lone TFL, which means 2026 hinges less on replacing lost stars than on Baah-Slay and Nelson actually becoming difference-makers in coverage.

Heath Jehu remains one of the steadier legs in the Southern, having boomed 54 punts at a 43.6-yard clip a year ago, and that stability buys Chattanooga time while it sorts out placekicker. Jude Kelley's departure leaves a real void, since he connected on 6 of 7 field goals with a 59-point season, and Gray Kelley, who made just 0 of 1 attempts for 4 points in a limited look, is the incumbent tasked with replacing that production. Both long snappers, Brody Gann and J.J. Heath, return, giving Rusty Wright at least one settled piece up front as the kicking operation gets rebuilt around Kelley.

Battle Alberson

Battle Alberson threw for 630 yards with 5 touchdowns against 3 interceptions in his first extended look, and Chattanooga is betting its offense on that pick rate trending the other way rather than turning to New Mexico State transfer Parker Awad, who arrives without a pass attempt on his ledger. Alberson already has Josh Williams (44 catches, 585 yards) and Journey Wyche (333 rushing yards) around him, so the ceiling is there if he tightens up the turnovers that plagued last year's 5-7 finish.

Road Money Pit

Chattanooga's number tells two different stories depending on the ZIP code. At home, Rusty Wright's team covered 60% of the time and went 2-1 as a favorite, the profile of a team that knows how to close out games it should win. On the road that flips entirely, an 0-5 mark as an underdog and a 14% cover rate away from home, and against ranked opponents bettors got burned three times without a single cover. Until this team proves it can travel, the smart money treats every road line as a trap.