​WEST LONG BRANCH — Monmouth football is coming home. It’s been a long stretch for the Hawks on the road in 2026, but they’ve navigated that challenge adeptly as they are two-thirds of the way through the regular season. Now ranked 17th in the FCS, Monmouth has recovered from a 1-2 start to win five straight games. The 6-2 record is even more impressive considering only two of those contests were at home. That hard work has given the Hawks a runway to potentially take flight into the playoffs. With three straight home games, they could essentially clinch a playoff spot by taking care of business at Kessler Stadium over the next three weeks. But as last year’s finish showed Monmouth, there are no guarantees in college football. And there is no room to look back with so much to look forward to.”If you start looking back, looking too far ahead, you lose focus on what’s directly in front of you,” Monmouth head coach Jeff Gallo said. “We’ve worked hard and improved, and that’s what I look back at. Have we gotten better from the first week until now? And we have. Now, we have to continue that track to get to where we want go to become the team we want to be.”With one misstep, two months of hard work can be undermined. As the Hawks near the summit of their goals, the journey only becomes more precarious. And this week, there’s no room to look in any other direction than straight ahead. Monmouth hosts 5-3 Bryant on Saturday in what was always expected to be one of the biggest games of the year. How to watch Bryant at Monmouth footballWhen: Saturday 1 p.m. ETWhere: Kessler Stadium at Monmouth UniversityTV/streaming: FloFootballMonmouth holds the series edge over BryantEarly on in the 2026 campaign, it became clear that two late-season contests would loom large in terms of postseason implications. Bryant and Campbell were two of the matchups that stood out as those teams had early success and were among the CAA teams unbeaten in conference play at the midway points. That changed last week when Bryant lost 27-17 to Stony Brook. Despite that setback, the Bulldogs are unquestionably a team and program on the rise. “They’ve come into the CAA on a similar kind of track to us. When you come to the CAA, you start to build your team up to this level. And I think this is their third year in the league now, and they’ve gotten better every year,” Gallo said. The Hawks are 8-1 all-time against Bryant and have outscored the Bulldogs 80-24 in two wins over their first two years in the CAA. But all that history serves as motivation for a more capable group this time around as Monmouth needs to be at their best to get a win at a major inflection point in the season. Key to that will be Monmouth’s defense, which has been trending in the right direction since the bye week. The Hawks are coming off statistically they’re best defensive performance of the season against last-place Hampton, allowing a season low 13 points in the resounding win. “Attention to detail and tackling