Jax State Week: EMU Aims to Bounce Back
Jax State Week: EMU Aims to Bounce Back
EMU hosts Jacksonville State for its first home game of the 2024 season.
If Eastern Michigan wanted a chance to show how much it can improve from 2023 to 2024, we’ve come to the point in the early schedule to truly show its growth. The Jacksonville State road game last year which finished with a 21-0 score for the Gamecocks was inarguably the worst performance of EMU’s season.
This week, it’s a chance to show how far EMU’s come since then.
It’s also a chance to show how far EMU (1-1 overall) has come since last week when it failed to score touchdowns despite taking two trips inside the Washington red zone. Sure, things looked okay against UMass, but 28 points against the Minutemen isn’t the long awaited rise in productivity the green and white had been waiting to see, but that was taken as a sign of more to come.
“We created opportunities and just didn't capitalize,” Creighton said during Monday’s weekly press conference. “But there's also the fact that we played really good football (the first 26 minutes of the game). But during those 26 minutes, we still didn't capitalize on on opportunities, when we turned the ball over, and then it was followed by, Washington going forward on fourth and one, deep in their own area, and getting the explosive that that ended up being, a turning point in the game. Up until that point, we're winning the football game, not only on the scoreboard, but we were beating them.”
There’s a lot of pent-up excitement coming into this weekend when EMU hosts Jackson State (0-2) for its first home game of the year. For all that’s already been said and shown through the first two weeks of the season, these Eagles haven’t had the chance to show their full team to the home crowd.
Saturday will also be a chance for the home crowd to take in the new-looking home site, Crosby Field at Rynearson Stadium, which finally removed the track from around the updated gray turf field.
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Preparing for Jacksonville State
COMING OFF OF LAST WEEK / LAST SEASON
Coming off a long plane ride back home, there’s a lot recently that this current Eastern Michigan squad wants to rebound from. But for the players and coaches who remember first-hand how last season’s trip to JSU went, there’s a 21-0-sized taste that they want to get out of their mouths.
If anybody needs a reminder of how stagnant EMU’s offense was, there were 8 punts, 3 interceptions, 2 turnovers on downs, and, of course, no points scored. The defense allowed 295 yards on the ground, and limiting them to 21 points even though they ran the length of three football fields with the ball seemed like a small victory in itself.
This team’s offense is obviously filled with a different cast of characters at its skilled spots and with some of its linemen. Even with the shutdown defense faced at Washington, EMU’s offense is already performing more confidently than it showed last season. Not excellently (4.56 yards/play, 289.5 yards/game), but better.
EMU’s got a different-looking offense this year, but JSU has a slightly different-looking defense this year too.
RICH RODRIGUEZ + STAFF
This will be Rodriguez’s first game in Washtenaw County since November 20, 2010, when his former Michigan team lost 48-28 to #6 Wisconsin at home. After that, Michigan fell 37-7 at #8 Ohio State, then lost the Gator Bowl 52-14 to #21 Mississippi State. After three seasons and four days, Rodriguez and his crew were let go from their Ann Arbor post.
All-time, Rodriguez and Creighton are right next to each other in the all-time wins standings. Across all divisions of college football, Chris Creighton is sixth among active FBS coaches with a 192-115-0 record over 28 years, Rodriguez is seventh on the list with a 181-127-2 record in 27 years. This is Creighton’s 11th season at EMU where he has a 53-69 record, and Rodriguez is 18-8 in his two-plus seasons at Jax State.
If there’s something Rodriguez and Creighton have in common, it’s how they’ve filled their offensive coordinator chairs. They both have former quarterbacks of theirs calling plays for their team’s offenses — Rod Smith played for Rodriguez at Glenville State in the 1990’s, Mike Piatkowski played for Creighton at Drake.
This will be year #14 of Smith and Rodriguez coaching together. Smith’s first year coaching Rodriguez’s quarterbacks was in 2007 at West Virginia, helping Pat White have an unforgettable season.
Defensively, Rodriguez hired Luke Olson who spent 11 years at Tulsa that included one year as a defensive coordinator, and was last at TCU as a defensive analyst. In 2022, Tulsa was the #117 scoring defense (33.1 points per game) and #99 in total defense (414.3 yards per game).
“The defense isn't completely different, but it is.” Creighton assessed. “There are nuances, you know, that are different. We're a different offense than we were last year. And so the challenge, you know, we're not necessarily spending a lot of time on watching offensively, watching, you know, last year's film, and we're putting the plan together right now, but they're, they are a fast and physical defense. I mean, those guys trigger and, yeah, I mean, so we've got to put together a great plan.”
SOME JAX STATE PLAYERS TO WATCH
QB Tyler Huff — In as a transfer from Furman, he’s thrown 24/41 for 33 yards with 2 touchdowns and 3 interceptions.
RB Tre Stewart — In as a transfer from D2 Limestone where he had 2,994 rushing yards and 24 TD over 32 games. He was also a receiving threat: 68 catches, 633 yards, 5 TD.
S Patrick Taylor — Safety who transferred from Georgia, currently Jax State’s leading tackler at 24.
WR Michael Pettway — Pettway is Jax State’s current leading receiver with five grabs for 122 yards and a 92-yard TD made against Coastal Carolina. Pettway, from Alabaster, Ala., went to the same high school as EMU receiver J.B. Mitchell III (Thompson HS), and initially began his college career out at Washington State (2019).
Jesus Gomez, because of company
EMU’s team meeting Sunday included a replay of Jesus Gomez’s 57-yard field goal. It was the play that got EMU on the scoreboard first (3-0), and it was the play that solidified Gomez as the strongest-legged kicker in EMU history.
But the plays before the play? First-year long snapper Mitch Dietzel had a “perfect” snap, as Creighton would say by Monday. Mitch Tomasek’s hold was perfect too.
And the longest kick in school history?
“Perfecto.”
For the EMU fans who traveled all the way to Seattle for the game, that’s a kick they might never forget. For Gomez’s parents, Jesus Gomez and Yesika Juarez, it got to be a special moment that they got to share in the streets with strangers who were happy for their new friends from Puebla, Mexico.
“It was funny,” Gomez said “because they were walking by a lake and they just saw a couple of Huskies fans, kind of drunk, I would say, they [were] like, ‘Who are they cheering for?’ And they said it was me. Then they started taking pictures with them and just saying good kicks and stuff.”
Gomez added, “But for them, just having people from the opposing team just walk to them and be like, hey, like, your son is amazing, or your son has a good leg. Even, especially for my dad, because he worked so hard for me just to be here, and they make such a sacrifice just to fly to Washington and to every game they can really, it's just awesome for them to experience it.”
When Gomez was still a high schooler in Mexico at PrepaTEC Puebla, he told his father that he wanted to kick for a Mexican college team. His father told him that he’s just going to have to be the best kicker in the game then.
The elder Jesus reached out to various kickers across the country, asking if they’d be willing to help train his son. Then came the American kicking camps, which included 13 flights to America just to get noticed. Whatever it took for his son to improve and be the best kicker he could be, he was going to make it happen. If it meant that he had to take a week off of work, then that’s what he did. If it meant creating field goal posts with taped-up PVC pipes at a random, empty soccer field during the Covid pandemic, then that’s what he did. If it meant helping pay out of pocket for his son’s first year at EMU when the opportunity came, then that’s what the family did.
“And then my sister, my mom, just supporting me throughout everything good and bad,” Gomez added.
This season, Gomez is perfect through his first five field goals from 20, 31, 57, 29, and 50. If he gets to have kick #6 against Jacksonville State, Gomez said that he’s happy. But if he’s going to help out in the PAT department (2/2 this year, 70/73 career), his offense is going to have to chip in a little bit more than they did last week.
Or last year.
While having Gomez out there — from any distance — feels like a guaranteed three points for EMU, he’s just one face of a special teams unit getting things done in a lot of ways. Mitch Tomasek is the reigning two-time First Team All-MAC punter. David Carter Jr. broke through Washington’s line to block an early punt last week. Sterling Miles, back from injury this season, blocked his first PAT kick since the bowl game in 2022.
“It's awesome because the whole team knows,” Gomez says, “if you talk about Eastern Michigan, you're going to talk about special teams. So the whole team cares about special teams. We know it's one of our ways to win games. So it's awesome just to see guys go out and make plays.”
Young DBs and their early opportunities
Three defensive backs were listed as out for last week’s Washington game: Joshua Scott, Dramarian McNulty, and Bryce Llewellyn (for his second week in a row). Scott and McNulty each started in the UMass opener, but Scott was removed early in the game.
Daiquan White, who emerged as a true freshman starter last year, leads the team with 134 snaps played this season, and now it’s starting to look like it’s Jordan Toney’s turn. The 6-foot-5 first-year player out of Decatur, Ga. made his first career start at UW and is fourth on the team with 109 snaps played so far.
Jaivian Norman also got his first career start last week as a second-year player from Springfield, Ohio. Against the Huskies, Toney recorded four tackles (1 for loss) and a fumble recovery while Norman added a tackle of his own.
New faces, but none of this sounds like anything new for EMU’s secondary. Last year included the emergence of White and Bennett Walker (now at San Diego State). Quentavius Scandrett, the defense’s most-experienced EMU player with 22 starts, grew by seeing the field early on in his career. Former cornerback Kempton Shine, now at Virginia, saw the field his true freshman season in 2019.
Sure, maybe EMU would rather have guys with more experience out on the field right now than the young guys that they originally had slotted as backups, but those guys are still gaining experience on the field nonetheless.
“Coach (Munir) Prince has done a great job recruiting great people who are super talented. Most guys that come in January give themselves way more of an opportunity to be ready in the fall,” Creighton said. “Jordan Toney… he would be an example of that. Javian Norman's a year older than him, but also came early. And yeah, I mean, we're playing a lot of depth in our in our secondary right now, and those guys are young. This is incredible experience for them.”
By the numbers
2-0
Rodriguez is 2-0 all-time against EMU as a head coach. In 2009, his Michigan team beat EMU 45-17.
2-9
EMU has a 2-9 record all-time against current C-USA schools: 0-1 vs. JSU, 0-2 vs. Liberty, 1-5 vs. Louisiana Tech, and 1-1 vs. Western Kentucky.
4.08
Last year, JSU averaged 4.76 yards per carry, good for #36 in the nation. So far this season, the Gamecocks are down to a rush average of 4.08, #86 nationally.
5 birds
The Gamecocks’ first five games of the season are against bird schools: 1. Chanticleers (Coastal Carolina), 2. Cardinals (Louisville), 3. Eagles (EMU), 4. Golden Eagles (Southern Miss.), and 5. Owls (Kennesaw State).
20.5
Jax State is averaging just 20.5 points per game this season, which is still better than EMU’s 18.5 average.
39
Huff, JSU’s quarterback, had 39 total touchdowns (25 throwing, 14 rushing) over his two seasons at Furman.
