Breakout Year, 2.0: It’s All About Health for the LIU Sharks

NEC football previews almost uniformly note that Long Island has been an upper crust team in the NEC year after year without a clear breakthrough season or a league title.

The question, as always: is this the year?

When you look at 2025, though, you get the sense that the first year of a multi-year run should have already happened. The biggest opponent for the Sharks in 2025 was the injury bug.

After defeating an FBS team (2nd such win for the NEC in 2 years) in Eastern Michigan, the Sharks began what looked like a spiral with 4 consecutive losses, including league games to Stonehill and Mercyhurst. Did the Sharks use up all of their emotion on Eastern Michigan? Did they start overlooking opponents?

Well, hardly. When you look at some of the stats, the answer looks much more obvious. It wasn’t a tale of inconsistency.

Chris Howell became the leading passer for the game against Mercyhurst, and the vaunted 2 QB system of Luca Stanzani and Ethan Greenwood, at times, included neither signal caller. Greenwood, the all-NEC preseason QB for the second year in a row, only played in 7 games last season. Stanani fared a little better, participating in 10.

But when yyou system is so devastating because of both quarterbacks, having just one is a recipe for, well, a season that could have been so much more. 2025 was the second year in a row where you could look at the LIU talent and feel that this could have been a team that went to the FCS playoffs, if only a few things had gone differently.

But it’s not inconsistency, it was injury luck.

And in 2026, this might just be the second year of what could be an LIU dynasty.