Morgan State and Florida A&M have taken different paths to Saturday's game at Hughes Stadium in Baltimore.
The Bears have dropped their first five games of the season and are 0-1 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference after Saturday's 27-21 loss to Norfolk State.
The Rattlers (1-3) have yet to play a league contest and have lost their past three. But they are coming off a bye week.
So does the bye week give Florida A&M an advantage? Morgan State coach Donald Hill-Eley thinks so.
"This game is all about preparation," he said Tuesday. "So any time you've got a bye, you've got extra days to get well. I'm quite sure they're going to have a healthy team coming in. And they're going to be able to have more time to prepare. They have had time to prepare and to get more attention and things of that nature. So sometimes that does work to an advantage. It all depends on how the coach sets up their bye week to get the information."
Not surprisingly, Rattlers coach Earl Holmes took an opposing view.
"I don't necessarily think it's an advantage," he said Tuesday. "It gives you time to look at the things you're doing well and to continue to work on those things. But at the same time, you want to get on a roll and you want to get on a streak. So it's always good to play on Saturdays.
"But you've got to look at your situation, and our situation was we came off a [76-0] defeat to Ohio State [on Sept. 21], and we're getting ready to come into conference play. There's a lot of parity in this conference. Morgan is 0-1 in the conference, but at the same time, they fought a hard fight. So they're a good football team, and we've got to understand that, and we've got to match their intensity on Saturday and each and every Saturday from this point. So we're going to take it one game at a time, and like I said, they're a good football team. They made some mistakes here and there, but if you take away their mistakes, you're talking about a different outcome in their games."
The Bears should brace themselves for a motivated Florida A&M team that is still sore about the lashing it took from the Buckeyes. Holmes said his players have been eager to return to the field.
"You look back at it and you evaluate what's going on," he said. "The only way to get this bad taste out of our mouths is to come back and have a strong performance this weekend."