dzܳٳ’s offense was humming.
The team’s 50-31 win over NAIA Louisiana Christian on Saturday night at A.W. Mumford Stadium was not just an exhilarating experience for the fans who were starved after a frustrating 2025 season. It was dzܳٳ’s first 50-point game since Oct. 22, 2022, when the Jaguars beat Virginia University of Lynchburg 51-7.
This big scoring night came in the first game coach Marshall Faulk had senior adviser Fred McNair call the plays.
Previously, offensive coordinator Ken Merchant was the play-caller.
“Yeah, he was calling the plays in,” Faulk said of McNair, the former co-offensive coordinator and interim head coach. “But it's a collaborative effort. We put Ken upstairs, and you know Fred's been working with the quarterbacks. He's the senior adviser here, and I kind of moved his role up to where I wanted him communicating with the quarterback.”
Faulk said having McNair, a former Alcorn State quarterback and head coach, speak to quarterback Christian Johnson during the game was a better fit for the team.
“Listen, Ken's a New Yorker,” Faulk said. “He gets fired up, and the chemistry with my quarterback is just not where I want it to be. And so I needed a little Mississippi drawl, a little slower pace when things aren't good to kind of soothe them down and it worked.”
Johnson played his best game of the year. He spread the ball around as well as any quarterback the program has seen recently. The Hutchinson Community College transfer threw touchdown passes to four different receivers. Three receivers had three receptions and six other players had at least one catch.
Johnson said the connection with his receivers improved and he appreciated the straightforward nature of the plays called.
“I do for sure,” said Johnson, who completed 16 of 22 passes for 172 yards and had no turnovers. “Like I said, we kept the playbook simple tonight. There's only a select handful of routes that they had to run, and it just made everything easy.”
The simplicity also benefited the running game as the team totaled 367 yards and averaged 7.2 yards per carry.
“(Johnson) found a rhythm, he found a comfort and the marriage between the run and the pass. It was better for him,” Faulk said. “He got a clearer picture. They played a lot of man (coverage), and you get a better picture when teams play man, and you know he got comfortable. He showed why we brought him in here and why he's our starting quarterback.”
Faulk said the play-calling adjustment will continue for the remainder of the season.
“That's how we going to operate from here on out,” he said. “I mean, you know, Nick Williams, he's the run game coordinator, and we've been operating in that space. It's just I think I found a good mix in how I want to do it.”
McNair is in his third year working at Southern, starting out as the tight ends coach in 2024. Before coming to Baton Rouge, he was the head coach at Alcorn State for eight seasons. He led Alcorn to four SWAC East titles, two SWAC championships (2018 and 2019) and was the SWAC Coach of the Year twice.
Before dzܳٳ’s former coach Terrence Graves was fired after a 1-6 start in the 2025 season, McNair’s position changed from quarterbacks coach to co-offensive coordinator with play-calling duties. After Graves left, McNair was the interim coach for the remaining five games in a season that saw the Jaguars finish 2-10.