New Hampshire Football Report

Santos back where it began


By Allen Lessels


Blue Hen fans packed Delaware Stadium — ready to roar and then roar some more — that first Thursday night in September back in 2004.

The fans were there to celebrate the school’s first NCAA Division championship and their Blue Hens were kicking off a new season ranked as the No. 1 team in the land. Then Rick Santos and the University of New Hampshire football team came along and wrecked the party.

Santos had worked his way up to the backup quarterback slot behind talented senior Mike Granieri and figured he would get in a season of learning the ropes as a redshirt freshman behind the veteran.

“I did not anticipate playing,” Santos said Wednesday during UNH’s weekly media conference. “I thought I would sit and learn.”

His stay on sidelines lasted a little more than a quarter. Granieri went down with a knee injury in the second period.

Santos entered the game to an inauspicious start.

“I think we had to call a timeout before the first play,” Santos said. “I kind of blacked out and forgot the play.”

He recovered nicely.

The Wildcats held onto the 7-3 lead they had when Granieri went down and regrouped at halftime. R.J. Harvey added another touchdown run to the one he had in the first half and Santos connected with David Ball for a 44-yard scoring pass in the fourth quarter to seal a 24-21 UNH win.

UNH’s rise to the upper tier of FCS programs had begun. Santos led the Wildcats to the playoffs that year and for three more years as their standout quarterback and Coach Sean McDonnell and Co. ran that streak to 14 years total through 2017.

Saturday, Santos and the Wildcats return to the scene of the start of the climb.

UNH and Delaware will square off at 6 p.m. and once again, fans will pack “The Tub.”

It will be important to get off to a good start and ideally take the crowd out of the game a bit, Santos said.

CAA rivals UNH and Delaware each bring 2-1 records into the game, each are ranked (UNH at No. 11 and Delaware at No. 19) and each looks to qualify for the playoffs, as they did last year under first-year head coaches.

Those coaches – Santos for UNH and Ryan Carty for Delaware – go back a long way and speak highly of each other.

Carty played quarterback at Delaware and was a backup in the championship season and in the 2004 opener against UNH.

He came to UNH as a young assistant to coach tight ends in 2007 and spent 11 years in Durham, the last six in charge of a high-powered offense as offensive coordinator.

Santos was entering his senior season as quarterback as Carty arrived and had just won the Walter Payton Award as the best offensive player in the country.

“Man, was he fun to watch,” Carty said on the CAA media call this week. “I got a chance to realize how competitive he was, how talented he was and how good of a person he was.”

In 2013, UNH hired Santos as a receivers coach and he worked under Carty.

“I have the utmost respect for Ryan,” Santos said. “I learned a tremendous amount of football from him in the three years we had together. Great leader, great motivator. He was a huge part of our success in all the time I was here.”

Carty left UNH to become the offensive coordinator at Sam Houston State under his college coach, K.C. Keeler, and they won the FCS championship in 2020.

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