A new chapter begins at Coastal Carolina under new head coach Ryan Beard.
It’s officially game week for the new era Coastal Carolina Chanticleers football team, as they travel to take on West Virginia on Saturday, Sept. 5, at noon EST, nationally televised on TNT/HBO Max.
For Coastal, the matchup represents the beginning of a significant transition. Head coach Ryan Beard was hired after spending the 2025 season at Missouri State, where he led the Bears to a 7-6 record. Beard also brought offensive coordinator Nick Petrino and defensive coordinator L.D. Scott with him to Conway to begin his first season at the helm of the Chanticleers.
The Chanticleers enter the season looking to rebound from a 6-7 campaign in 2025, while adapting to a new coaching staff and a roster featuring 38 returners, 48 transfers, and 16 freshmen.
One of the biggest questions surrounding Coastal entering Week 1 is who will take the first snap at quarterback.
For the third consecutive season, the Chanticleers will have a new starting quarterback. The competition has featured Missouri State transfer Deuce Bailey, JUCO transfer Tre Guerra, Arkansas transfer Trever Jackson and freshmen Osiris Lopez and Luke McBride.
Bailey enters with an advantage in familiarity with Beard and Petrino’s system, after spending the 2025 season at Missouri State, where he appeared in three games, completing 23 of 47 passes for 335 yards and two touchdowns while adding 81 rush yards and another score.
Regardless of who gets the start, Saturday will be the first true test for a revamped Coastal Carolina team operating under a new staff.
While there are plenty of questions offensively, Coastal’s defense could enter Week 1 as one of its biggest strengths.
Scott takes over as defensive coordinator after working alongside Beard at Missouri State and has emphasized playing with a high level of speed and physicality while getting as many players as possible swarming to the football. Run defense was a major issue for the Chanticleers in 2025, but the defensive front has been significantly bolstered with Missouri State transfers Mitchell Toney and Ahmad Poole joining veteran Ibrahim Diawara.
The group will be tasked with setting the tone against a West Virginia offense that could lean heavily on the run game, starting with Jacksonville State transfer Cam Cook.
Cook led all of FBS in 2025 with 1,659 rushing yards, which was just 231 fewer yards than WVU gained as a team.
The senior transfer was keen on well-respected head coach Rich Rodriguez’s priority list after West Virginia struggled to establish a consistent rushing attack last season. The Mountaineers’ leading rusher finished with just 335 yards.
After spending two seasons at Oklahoma, sophomore Michael Hawkins Jr. has won the quarterback battle and will start against the Chanticleers on Saturday.
The West Virginia coaching staff believes Hawkins could play a major role in a potential turnaround for the Mountaineers, a sentiment shared by several national analysts. ESPN analyst and podcast host Josh Pate, recently went as far as to predict that Hawkins could become a 1,000-yard rusher this season.
The Mountaineers enter the matchup coming off a disappointing 4-8 season in Rodriguez’s first year back in Morgantown.
Rodriguez has been open about his expectations for 2026, saying the Mountaineers learned valuable lessons from last season and made adjustments with the players they brought in. As a result, Rodriguez believes his team is entering the season more “comfortable and athletic.”
Like Coastal, West Virginia will be breaking in plenty of new faces, making the opener a matchup between two teams still trying to discover exactly what they have.
Saturday will mark only the second meeting between the two programs.
The teams first met in 2010, when No. 25 West Virginia defeated Coastal Carolina 31-0 in Morgantown. Coastal was still an FCS program at the time.
Sixteen years later, the Chanticleers return to Morgantown looking for a much different result.
For Coastal Carolina, the bottom line for Saturday is more than simply opening the 2026 season; it is the first opportunity to see whether Beard’s vision for the program can translate from the practice field to game day against a Power Four opponent.
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