Johnson C. Smith has turned painful losses into defining breakthroughs throughout the Brick x Brick era. Its season-opening loss to Benedict presents a new challenge: learning how to carry the weight of a championship.
There are wins that validate a program. There are losses that reveal one. Inside the Johnson C. Smith (JCSU) football postgame locker room Saturday night, there was no attempt to soften what had happened. The Golden Bulls had opened their season with a 32-10 loss to Benedict College.
They had been outplayed by a team that looked hungry for exactly the opportunity JCSU presented.
Head coach Maurice Flowers told his players that watching the film would make them even angrier.
They would see missed assignments. Breakdowns in communication. Moments when one unit played like a championship team, followed by moments that looked nothing like the program they had built.
“We took turns,” Flowers said. “From the first quarter to the fourth quarter, we took turns.”
Then he delivered the line that has become one of the central ideas of the Brick x Brick era.
“We don’t lose. We learn.”
For JCSU football, that cannot become an empty phrase attached to an ugly night. Losses have helped shape nearly every major step in the program’s climb.
The question now is what the Golden Bulls learn from the first loss of their championship era.
JCSU learns what it means to be the hunted
The scene surrounding the game told part of the story.
This was JCSU’s season opener, but it was Benedict’s home opener. The Tigers had an opportunity to begin their season by knocking off the defending CIAA champion and the No. 1 team in the Division II Black College Football Poll.
JCSU also entered the season ranked No. 23 nationally. It marked the first time in school history that the Golden Bulls began a season inside the national Top 25.
Those rankings represented another milestone in the program’s transformation. They also placed a target on JCSU before it played a snap.
“There are still some things that we have not done together as a program,” Flowers told his team. “What we have not done together as a program is be the favorite whenever we walk out on the field.”
Benedict played like the team was still chasing something.
The Tigers were coming off a 10-win season in which all three of their losses came against Albany State. Benedict lost to the Golden Rams in the SIAC Championship Game, earned the first NCAA playoff victory in program history with a dramatic 25-24 comeback at Wingate, and then lost 14-12 in an Albany State rematch.
That ending left Benedict with something to prove. JCSU arrived carrying something it had never carried before.
A championship.
The Tigers attacked the opportunity with urgency. The Golden Bulls looked like a talented team still learning how to function under a new kind of pressure.
“Now you know that you’re going to get everybody’s best shot,” Flowers said. “Now you know what it feels like.”
The Golden Bulls hurt themselves
Flowers has consistently built his program around a simple expectation: JCSU does not beat itself.
That discipline was missing too often Saturday.
The Golden Bulls committed 11 penalties for 93 yards. That exceeded their 2025 averages of 7.7 penalties and 68.4 penalty yards per game. The 11 flags also matched their highest penalty total from any game last season.
The timing made several of them even more damaging.
JCSU football began its first offensive possession with a false start. An offside penalty later turned a fourth-and-five into a Benedict first down, allowing the Tigers to extend a possession that ended with a field goal.
A block-in-the-back penalty on a kickoff return pushed another JCSU possession back to its own eight-yard line. The Golden Bulls later committed a delay-of-game penalty before punting from deep in their territory.
Those mistakes collided with a night of difficult field position.
Four JCSU possessions began inside its own 10-yard line. The Golden Bulls started drives at their own seven, eight, one, and four.
That is a demanding environment for any offense. It becomes even harder for a team breaking in a new quarterback and new personnel, with several players still learning how to operate together.
Flowers had spoken before the opener about the number of new faces joining the program. Against Benedict, the difference between assembling talent and becoming a connected team was visible.
Communication problems surfaced. Special teams exchanges looked uncertain. Players appeared unsure about responsibilities that usually look automatic in a Flowers-coached program.
“It ain’t going to be about them,” Flowers told the team. “They just got the best of us. You’re going to say, ‘He didn’t do his job. He didn’t do his job. We didn’t communicate.’”
The mistakes did not all belong to a single position or unit.
They took turns.
JCSU’s running backs provide an answer
The most encouraging part of the night came from the backfield.
Fabian Duncan stepped off the team bus looking locked in for his JCSU debut. That focus carried onto the field.
The former SIAC Offensive Player of the Year rushed for 148 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries. He averaged 6.7 yards per attempt and added 43 receiving yards, giving him 191 yards from scrimmage.
His 36-yard touchdown run in the second quarter gave JCSU life after Benedict built a 16-0 lead. Duncan also produced runs of 34 and 19 yards while showing the explosiveness that made him one of the biggest additions to the Golden Bulls’ roster.
Kamarro Edmonds provided another encouraging development.
Edmonds missed much of last season with an injury after entering the year as a significant part of JCSU’s offensive plans. In Columbia, he looked like himself again.
He rushed for 99 yards on 16 attempts, averaging 6.2 yards per carry. His 32-yard run helped move JCSU into Benedict territory during a second-quarter possession.
Together, Duncan and Edmonds produced 247 rushing yards on 38 attempts. Their success helped JCSU finish with 243 net rushing yards despite the final score.
The backfield looked ready to carry a major role in the offense. The challenge will be building a more complete attack around it.
A difficult first start for Parker McQuarrie
Parker McQuarrie waited years for his first true opportunity to lead a college offense.
His first start did not unfold as he had envisioned.
McQuarrie completed nine of 18 passes for 94 yards with one interception. He was also sacked twice during JCSU’s final possession.
The Golden Bulls moved the ball at times, but the passing game never developed a consistent rhythm. JCSU football finished with only six passing first downs and did not score through the air.
McQuarrie’s interception came after the Golden Bulls drove from their own eight to the Benedict 25-yard line. Caleb Riggs intercepted the pass near the goal line, ending one of JCSU’s most promising possessions.
That mistake will sit prominently on the film. So will the late sacks and missed opportunities to connect downfield.
But the difficult debut cannot be separated from everything happening around him.
McQuarrie was making his first collegiate start behind an offense incorporating new pieces. He repeatedly operated from poor field position and often faced obvious passing situations after penalties or negative plays.
Flowers did not frame the loss as a talent problem.
“You’re big, you’re strong, you’re fast,” he told the team. “It’s not about talent.”
The lesson for McQuarrie will be the same one facing the entire program. Talent may give JCSU championship potential, but it cannot replace execution, communication, or experience as a team.
Losses have fueled the Brick x Brick story
Brick x Brick has never simply been a story about winning.
Its deeper undercurrent has been how JCSU responds when the building process becomes painful.
The first season ended with a 23-10 loss to Fort Valley State in the inaugural Florida Beach Bowl. That disappointment became part of the foundation for an 8-0 start the following year.
Season Two ended with consecutive losses after JCSU had climbed into unfamiliar territory. Flowers later described the discomfort of going from 8-0 to losing at home against Fayetteville State before falling 15-10 at Salisbury and missing the CIAA championship game and NCAA DII Playoffs.
The Golden Bulls did not point fingers. They treated the collapse as part of the process.
JCSU opened the following season with another hot start and earned a defining road victory over perennial Division II power Valdosta State.
Then came Virginia Union.
The Panthers defeated JCSU 28-10 in September. Flowers did not hide from what happened. He said Virginia Union was the better and hungrier team that day.
JCSU went back to work.
Less than two months later, the Golden Bulls met Virginia Union again and won 45-21 to capture their first CIAA football championship since 1969.
That is why the final episode of Season Three was titled “Lessons Learned.”
JCSU had been in painful situations before. It had lost the games that eventually taught it how to win them.
The Golden Bulls are now beginning another cycle.
This time, the lesson is not how to become a contender. It is how to live as a champion.
The next test is waiting in Canton
JCSU football does not have much time to process the loss.
The Golden Bulls will face Albany State next in the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic in Canton, Ohio.
The connection is impossible to ignore.
Benedict spent last season chasing Albany State. The Golden Rams handed the Tigers all three of their losses, including defeats in the SIAC Championship Game and the second round of the NCAA playoffs.
Benedict carried the hunger created by those losses into its opener against JCSU.
Now the Golden Bulls must take their own lesson into a game against the team that shaped Benedict’s entire offseason.
Flowers ended his postgame message by reminding his players that the pain was supposed to hurt. The film would expose mistakes. The rankings would not protect them. The championship would only make opponents hungrier.
But he also reminded them that the program had plenty of fight remaining.
“This is a great lesson to learn,” Flowers said.
Every previous chapter of Brick x Brick has shown what JCSU football can build from a loss.
The next chapter begins with what follows this one.
The first three seasons of Brick x Brick with JCSU Football are available now on Prime Video. The two-part championship event, Not Done Yet, is scheduled to arrive on streaming platforms in early fall.