It’s totally fair to have concerns about Heatherman, he doesn’t have the track record of Dawson and he’s never done it here.
I will say this though. He’s been a DC for 4 seasons. 3 at James Madison, 1 at Minnesota.
Can you guess, in those 4 seasons, how many times his defense has allowed 30+ points?
Three times. In four seasons. Once in 2019 at JMU in overtime. Once in 2020. And once last year at Minnesota, to Iowa, they scored 31.
And those JMU teams made deep runs. He coached 38 games there, and gave up 30+ twice. Pretty impressive. I’m really curious to see what he can do here.