100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters

NORFOLK, Va. — Bobby Wilder needed one word.

"Wow."

"That was incredible," the Old Dominion coach told the Daily Press. "I've never been involved in a game like that."

Nobody had. On Sept. 22, 2012, Taylor Heinicke completed 55 of 79 passes for 730 yards and five touchdowns in Old Dominion's 64-61 win over No. 18 New Hampshire at Foreman Field. He compiled 791 yards of total offense. Both were Division I records. The two teams combined for 1,549 yards, the most in FCS history, and 125 points, the most in Colonial Athletic Association history.

Heinicke was a sophomore who had started 13 college games. He was listed at 6-foot-1, 195 pounds. He was from Lawrenceville, Georgia, outside Atlanta, where he threw for 4,218 yards and 44 touchdowns as a senior at Collins Hill and carried what looked like a rebuilding team to the state AAAAA semifinals. Most colleges overlooked him.

Old Dominion did not.

Down 23

The Monarchs trailed 40-24 at halftime. New Hampshire scored on the opening drive of the second half to make it 47-24. The Wildcats' running game had found holes all afternoon — 389 yards on the ground, with runs of 61, 63 and 67 yards. Andy Vailas, making only his second college start, threw for 336 yards and five touchdowns. Nico Steriti rumbled for 201 yards and two scores on 21 carries.

"Just what I thought happened could happen," New Hampshire coach Sean McDonnell told the Daily Press. "What they do offensively, and the skill guys they have in space, make it really difficult."

Two plays turned it. Jakwail Bailey's 32-yard touchdown catch-and-run brought ODU within 47-31 in the third quarter and woke up the Monarchs' sideline. On the next UNH possession, linebacker Craig Wilkins pounced on a fumble after a bad snap at the ODU 2-yard line — a score that would have pushed the lead to 23 again.

"That might have been the play of the game," Wilder told the Daily Press, "because at that point, we weren't giving the impression that we had the ability to stop them."

Heinicke answered with a 98-yard touchdown drive. Then another. Then another. ODU scored on its final six possessions, marching 90, 98, 81, 75, 89 and 74 yards in succession. The five offensive linemen played every snap of a 106-play afternoon. The Monarchs put up 507 yards and 25 first downs in the second half.

"They were trying to make checks and we were ready to run a play," receiver Nick Mayers told the Daily Press. Mayers caught 12 passes for 271 yards and three touchdowns.

Mayers' 12-yard touchdown and two-point conversion catch cut it to 54-46. When the defense came up with a stop, Heinicke found Mayers for another touchdown and Blair Roberts for the two-point conversion to tie it at 54. The Wildcats answered to tie it at 61. Heinicke drove ODU downfield one more time, and Jarod Brown banged through a 25-yard field goal. Andre Simmons intercepted Vailas on the final possession to seal it.

"That's the Old Dominion offense," Heinicke told the Daily Press.

Sore arm? "Absolutely," he told the paper.

The kid from Lawrenceville

Heinicke was never supposed to be the guy. Thomas DeMarco, the quarterback ODU had built the program around, went down with an injury in the fifth game of the 2011 season. The true freshman replaced him, completed 8 of 11 passes for 119 yards and two touchdowns, and ODU scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to beat No. 20 Massachusetts 48-33.

DeMarco never got the job back. In his first full season as a starter, Heinicke threw for 2,385 yards and 25 touchdowns with one interception, completing 68.7 percent of his passes. ODU tied for second in the CAA in its first season in the conference and went to the FCS playoffs.

The 2012 season was the breakout. After the New Hampshire game, Heinicke kept going. He led the nation in passing yards, passing yards per game, total offense, points responsible for, touchdown passes and total touchdowns. In the loss to No. 6 Georgia Southern in the FCS playoff quarterfinals, he passed Steve McNair for the most passing yards in a single season by an FCS quarterback — 5,076. He was the first to eclipse 5,000. He set the FCS record for completions in a season with 398, breaking Brett Gordon's mark of 386, set at Villanova in 2002.

The Monarchs went 11-2. Heinicke won the Walter Payton Award — the FCS equivalent of the Heisman — the CAA Offensive Player of the Year, the Dudley Award and the FCS Player of the Year. He was a first team All-American. Five teammates joined him: punter Jonathan Plisco, defensive tackle Chris Burnette, wide receiver Nick Mayers, left tackle Jack Lowney and long snapper Rick Lovato.

"He's taken this whole thing to a new level," offensive coordinator Brian Scott told the Daily Press before Heinicke's senior season. "If anybody tells you different — if anybody on the staff says, oh yeah, we knew he was going to be a record-setting guy — they're lying. We all thought he had potential and could do some things. But we didn't think it would be like this."

What he meant to the program

Old Dominion restarted football in 2009 after a 68-year hiatus. The program had been discontinued after the 1941 season. Wilder was hired in 2007 to build it from nothing. The Monarchs went 9-2 in their inaugural season — an NCAA record for most wins by a first-year program. They joined the CAA in 2011, the same year Heinicke arrived.

By 2013, ODU was transitioning to FBS. In 2014, Heinicke's senior year and the program's first in Conference USA, the Monarchs won six games against a full FBS schedule.

For his career, Heinicke threw for 14,959 yards and 132 touchdowns and rushed for 1,320 yards and 22 more scores in 46 games at Old Dominion. He completed 69.1 percent of his passes entering his senior season.

"I have a hard time fathoming what he does on the field on a regular basis," Wilder told the Daily Press. The paper reported that William and Mary coach Jimmye Laycock questioned whether Heinicke had 360-degree vision after the Tribe's 41-31 loss to ODU in 2012. James Madison coach Mickey Matthews called him "Taylor Football."

Scott put it plainly.

"I don't think you can put a price on what he's meant to the program and to the university," Scott told the Daily Press. "I really think he's put it on a different level, where we would be. Shoot, we may not be (FBS) right now. We may still be in the CAA if he wouldn't have taken over. I don't think his story's done yet. He's got one more year to keep writing the book. But I don't think you can put a value on what he's meant to the university, putting it on the map."

Kevin Reach, Heinicke's high school coach at Collins Hill, had coached in Georgia for 25 years.

"He's one of those players who makes everybody around him better," Reach told the Daily Press. "He works so hard that other kids don't want to let him down. ... We had a bunch of 5s and 6s, and they thought they were 10s with him. He's a special one."

The next chapter

Nobody drafted Taylor Heinicke. He signed with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2015 and spent the next five years moving between rosters — the Patriots, the Texans, the Panthers, the XFL. By December 2020, he was out of professional football and back at ODU finishing his degree. Washington signed him to its practice squad.

Then the injuries hit Washington's quarterback room, and Heinicke got the call. He started 24 games over three seasons for the franchise, playing the same way he had at ODU — undersized, fearless and impossible to keep in the pocket. Washington's fanbase adopted him. He played for the Falcons in 2023 and the Chargers in 2024 — 42 regular-season games, 29 starts, 6,663 passing yards and 39 touchdowns across a decade in the NFL.

He retired in May 2026 at age 33.

"For 25 years, I had the pleasure to play this great sport of football," Heinicke wrote on social media. "It has taught me a lot, not only about myself, but about life as well. Many ups and downs throughout the years, but the ups outweigh the downs tenfold. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would've been able to live this life."

The point

The 730 yards stood as the Division I single-game passing record for two years before Washington State's Connor Halliday threw for 734 in a loss to California in 2014. It remains the FCS record. Nobody in the subdivision has come within 70 yards of it since.

But the record is not the reason Heinicke is on this list. The reason is what the record represented. A program that had been dead for 68 years hired a coach, recruited a kid nobody else wanted and built something that mattered. Heinicke did not just break records at Old Dominion. He proved the program could produce a player who belonged on a Division I stage and then an NFL field — and that the distance between a restarted program in Norfolk and the rest of college football was shorter than anyone assumed.

Twenty thousand people were at Foreman Field that afternoon. A regional television audience watched a sophomore quarterback erase a 23-point deficit with 507 yards in a single half. That was the day the country learned what Old Dominion football was.

Heinicke knew before anybody.

"I knew I could be successful, just because of the offense I was in, how quickly the program was being built, the athletes I had around me," Heinicke told the Daily Press before his senior season in 2014. "I haven't really looked back at the last three years. I think 10-15 years from now, I'll really sit down and look at it and be very proud of what I've accomplished."

It has been 14 years. The record still stands where it matters — in the subdivision where he set it, at the school he helped build.