Rich Nagy has been a college football coach for 40 years and yet he said, there are always butterflies before a season opener.

Nagy, Lehigh’s new head coach, will feel them prior to the start of Saturday’s Mountain Hawks’ 3:30 p.m. opener at Holy Cross.

“Yes, I will, I’m not going to lie,” he said. “There’s going to be some nervousness, especially when you’ve got to take a look and prepare for every situation that may develop. In the past, I’ve only had to make sure the defense was well prepared but now it’s everything. So, there is nervousness, but my nervousness gets calmed every day because I watch how our guys prepare. Once we kick the ball off, I know we’re going to be fine and they know, too. But I think it’s human nature to be a little nervous.”

Nagy, of course, takes over a program that is coming off back-to-back Patriot League championships and FCS playoff berths.

Kevin Cahill resigned in February after going 23-14 over three seasons, but 21-5 in the past two years. His final game was a heartbreaking 14-7 loss to Villanova in the first round of the FCS tournament.

One of the biggest strengths of Cahill’s era was the defense and that’s where Nagy had been the defensive coordinator.

Nagy and the return of all of last year’s assistants offers continuity in the way Lehigh goes about things. From all accounts, the team didn’t miss a beat in the offseason.

“I think we’re in a great place,” Nagy said. “We had a great camp, and I was excited about the growth the guys made. We were able to stay relatively healthy, and our guys did a great job of coming together as a team. This was the hottest camp since I’ve been at Lehigh, and our guys did a great job of working through the heat.”

The most notable of the team’s returning starters is quarterback Hayden Johnson and star running back Luke Yoder who was named the Patriot League’s preseason offensive player of the year.

“When you have players like Hayden Johnson and Luke Yoder working hard every day to get better and the other players see them work so hard, it’s a positive thing.” Nagy said. “When you have them leading the way and pushing the other guys working to get better, that shows the kind of student-athletes we have here. We have kids who love hard work and guys who love the challenges both academically and athletically and guys who want to be successes in their lives.”

It is a bit unusual for Lehigh to open the season with a league game, although it happened last year when the Mountain Hawks welcomed Richmond into the Patriot League at Goodman Stadium and beat the Spiders 21-14.

Prior to last year, Lehigh hadn’t opened the season with a league contest since 2003.

“You can’t control the schedule, and every opponent is just as important,” Nagy said. “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing because our process and mindset stays the same. But we know at the end of the game there’s going to be league implications. We can’t control while the game is going on. We tend to play a lot of Ivy League schools as a league and they open so late, and with us adding schools and becoming a 10-team league, there are not a lot of choices for season openers.”

Holy Cross is looking to rebound from a 3-9 season in 2025, a mark that included a 38-3 loss to Lehigh at Goodman Stadium in November. Prior to last season, the Crusaders had won or shared the Patriot League title in six consecutive seasons. Holy Cross used three quarterbacks last season and two of them — Cal Swanson and Dominic Campanile — return.

In last year’s meeting, Lehigh put up 518 yards on offense. Chances are that things won’t go as smoothly this time, but the Mountain Hawks hope to find a way to win their 18th straight regular-season game, which would tie the third longest regular-season winning streak in school history (2011-12).

Nagy is just proud to be representing Lehigh after being so many different places, including Allegheny College where he was a head coach for three years and FBS members Old Dominion and Western Michigan.

“Lehigh is an unbelievable place, and we’re able to recruit some unbelievable student-athletes to come here,” Nagy said. “We have kids here who want to be great in what they do whether it’s on the field or off the field. They want to do well in life and when you look at our leadership, and our alums, our staff and faculty starting with our school president [Joseph Helble] and our athletic director [Jeremy Gibson], it’s just a great place to be at and be a part of.”

3 tidbits on the Mountain Hawks

1. Nagy was the team’s defensive coordinator last season when Lehigh led FCS football in rushing defense (70.1 yards per game), red zone defense and was ranked in the top-five nationally in five major defensive categories. They were second in FCS football in scoring defense, allowing just 13.9 points per game. and ranked fourth in total yards allowed (278) and team sacks per game (3.3).

2. The Lehigh roster features 23 first-year players, 16 sophomores, 34 juniors, 18 seniors and three fifth-year players. The three fifth-year guys are defensive back Nick Peltekian, linebacker Jackson Dowd and offensive lineman Aidan Palmer.

3. Lehigh has nine players from either the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference or Colonial League on their roster. That list includes Silas Day from Palisades, Parkland products Trey Tremba and Nolan Coen, Becahi grads Cayden Vassa and Sammy Ayache, Northampton’s Andrew Sharga and Colby Reph, Nazareth’s Broc Bender and Liberty’s Jake Pukszyn. Reph and Ayache will start on the offensive line for the Mountain Hawks and Sharga will start at defensive end. Bender is listed on the two-deep as a backup linebacker.

Lehigh football schedule

Saturday at Holy Cross, 3:30 pm

Sept. 5: at Georgtown, 12:30 p.m.

Sept. 12: host William & Mary, 2 p.m.

Sept. 19: host Dartmouth, 12 noon

Sept. 26: at Penn, 1 p.m.

Oct. 3: host Fordham, 12 noon

Oct. 17: at Cornell, 2 p.m.

Oct. 24: at Villanova, 3:30 p.m.

Oct. 31: host Bucknell, 12 noon

Nov. 7: host Colgate, 12 noon

Nov. 14: at Richmond, 2 p.m.

Nov. 21: at Lafayette, 12:30 p.m.