COMPLETE LIST OF ALL-NEC HONOREES

FINAL NEC STATISTICS

Somerset, NJ – Wagner College senior linebacker Julian Stanford (Bloomfield, CT/ Bloomfield) was named to the Northeast Conference (NEC) First Team as the league office announced its two 25-member All-NEC Teams as well as postseason award winners on Thanksgiving Eve.

The athletic 6-2, 225-pound Stanford had a major impact throughout the season for the Seahawks who closed the 2011 campaign with three straight wins in posting a 4-7 record and a 4-4 NEC mark which tied the Seahawks with Monmouth for fourth place in the final league standings. A Second-Team All-NEC choice last season and a 2011 Preseason All-NEC selection, Stanford was someone all opposing offenses had to account for and game plan against. His season was marked by a bountiful number of memorable and game-altering plays.

Stanford made his final appearance for the Green & White a memorable one last Saturday as he produced a pair of game-changing plays in helping lead Wagner to an exciting 44-29 win at Monmouth in the season finales for both teams. Not only was Stanford wreaking his usual havoc on the edge from his outside linebacker position, but he came up huge on special teams as well, producing a pivotal blocked punt that resulted in a second-quarter touchdown. 

With the game tied at 14-14 and Monmouth punting from its own 37-yard line, Stanford broke through and stuffed the kick.  Fellow senior Jeremiah Brown (Brooklyn, NY/ grand Street Campus) eventually scooped up the ball at the Hawks' 22-yard line and the strong safety took it in for the go-ahead score with 6:46 left before halftime. Thanks to this momentum-changing play, he was named the NEC Special Teams Player of the Week. In the fourth quarter, Stanford returned an interception, his third of the season, 37 yards for a fourth-quarter score in the win. For Stanford it was his second “pick-six” of the season.

When Wagner posted a come-from-behind 27-21 Senior Day victory over Sacred Heart on Nov. 5, it was Stanford who was in the middle of the action,  returning  an early fourth quarter pass 36 yards for a touchdown which jump-started the Seahawks who went on to outscore the Pioneers 20-0 in the final period.

On September 24 at Bryant, Stanford recorded four tackles, all of them behind the line of scrimmage, which translated into minus 24 yards of loss. The highlight of his afternoon was a crunching blindside, fumble-causing sack of Bulldogs' quarterback Mike Croce.

A week earlier, in a Sept. 17 matchup at home vs. Central Connecticut St., Stanford made a number of big plays, none bigger than a late second quarter interception. With Wagner trailing 14-0 and in desperate need of a spark, the Seahawks got one when Stanford made an athletic, acrobatic, one-handed interception and returned it 12 yards to give Wagner excellent field position at its own 49-yard line. Stanford totaled seven tackles on the afternoon, including an eight-yard sack and the one interception.

Statistically for the season, Stanford finished seventh in the NEC in tackles for loss with 11.5 (minus 57 yards) and his five sacks (minus 32 yards) placed him ninth in the conference. Despite facing a steady diet of double-teams, Stanford was fifth on the team in tackles with 53, had five pass breakups, one forced fumble, one blocked kick and had 85 returns yards on his three interceptions, two of which went for touchdowns.
 
As for the NEC's individual postseason awards, Albany head coach Bob Ford, owner of 255 career wins,  won the NEC Coach of the Year award for the fourth time since the Great Danes became a league member in 1999. Danes' redshirt freshman linebacker Kyle Jordan became the second player in program history to earn the NEC Defensive Rookie of the Year honor.

Junior safety Serge Kona was a catalyst for Duquesne's most-successful season as an NEC member and earned the conference's Defensive Player of the Year award. Walter Payton Award candidate Jordan Brown of Bryant ran his way to the NEC Offensive Player of the Year award. The leading rusher in all of Division I FCS carried the Bulldogs to their single-season program record for NEC wins (five).

Monmouth redshirt freshman wide receiver Neal Sterlin , a Jerry Rice Award hopeful, copped NEC Offensive Rookie of the Year honors while also securing a spot on the All-NEC Second Team, the lone rookie to achieve that feat this season.