By many measures, the Monmouth Hawks had a season to remember in 2025. The offense put up points and yards at a truly insane clip for much of the fall. The team was in the national polls all season long
and, for the most part, they handled their business in the CAA. They strung together their first nine-win campaign since 2019 and, now in Kevin Callahan’s 33rd year as the program’s head coach, it was one of the better Hawks teams he’s coached. Callahan is one of those guys that’s seen it all by this point in his career but what happened on Sunday morning had to have left even him… and not to mention every Monmouth fan… gutted.
Despite such a successful season and a 9-3 overall record, Callahan’s team will not be playing on into the playoffs, leaving everyone that follows the FCS to wonder: what on earth happened?
The season started with a bang, as many thought it might, for the Hawks. Winners of eight of their first nine (and with that one loss being barely to FBS Charlotte), Monmouth had it at rolling in the right direction. Quarterback Derek Robertson was lighting up the scoreboard week in and week out, averaging 348.4 passing yards per contest and finding the end zone 27 times through the air through the first seven contests. It was in that seventh contest, though… a Week 8 win against Stony Brook at home… that Robertson went down with a wrist injury. Although it was to his non-throwing hand, he would be sidelined for the rest of the year.
Robertson was having a Walter Payton Award-caliber season before he went down but even without him, Monmouth hardly missed a beat. Frankie Weaver stepped in and guided the Hawks to two more wins after Robertson went down and propelled them to an 8-1 record as November arrived. When New Hampshire came to town on November 8, however, Monmouth’s fortunes turned and they stumbled in a 34-13 loss to the Wildcats; a loss that, right or wrong, ended up keeping them out of the playoffs.
UNH got in at 8-4 and it was that head-to-head win cinched it. Even though Monmouth would drub North Carolina A&T shortly after, a season finale upset loss to UAlbany on the last day of the regular season apparently made up the minds of the committee members. 9-3 overall would not be enough to get it done even with a win over Villanova in there (another team that made the postseason).
Speculation that Robertson’s injury also kept the Hawks out has been swirling as well and while, of course, there is no way to prove that that is an explicit reason why the selection committee left them out, it can’t be denied that it is certainly a major factor in the team’s second-half slide. The ultimate goal of the selection committee is to get the 24 best teams into the bracket and, without Robertson under center, apparently Monmouth was not deemed to be in that club.
What really doesn’t sit well with a lot of folks, though, is that a 7-5 North Dakota squad made the cut after losing in their season finale as well. Those Hawks will get to go to Tennessee Tech this weekend. Strength of schedule is something that was clearly valued by the committee greatly this year and UND did play four ranked opponents this season while Monmouth only played one. That, too, was certainly a factor in the decision making process.
Right now, though, there isn’t an argument that will make the Hawks or their fans feel any better about what went down here. A season that was full of so much promise is suddenly over in a very unceremonious way. It is one of the bigger postseason snubs in recent memory and while three of their CAA mates get to move on and play this weekend, Monmouth is left out in the cold.
