EMU Needs to Avoid Loss to UMass
EMU Needs to Avoid Loss to UMass
After a disappointing home loss to Buffalo, Eastern Michigan looks to get right against the Don Brown-led UMass Minutemen.
Week 5 Football Preview: Eastern Michigan vs. UMass
Saturday, Oct. 1 (2 p.m., ESPN+)
Eastern Michigan is 2-2. There might’ve been a time when a 2-2 record, including a historic one at Arizona State, would be a great feeling up to this point.
Well, does it?
With the increased demands of what it takes to survive and thrive in Division 1 football, Eastern finds itself in the same fight for survival a lot of bottom-level mid-majors face these days. Lowly mid-majors like, conveniently enough, UMass.
EMU absolutely needs the historic wins, but more importantly the program needs to just avoid disappointing losses like it had last week vs. Buffalo. That game was just Buffalo’s first win of the year, but it was Maurice Linguist’s fifth win of his young career (5-11) and his first over a MAC West school.
Nothing fancy, just a good old-fashioned 50-31 beatdown on the road for the Bulls, who ignored their 0-3 record and completely forgot that they ever lost to an FCS school.
As the team prepares for UMass, EMU, mentally can’t “let Buffalo beat us twice,” as head coach Chris Creighton said in the team’s weekly press conference Monday.
“We didn't overlook Buffalo. They played harder, and coached harder and did a better job on gameday than we did.”
So, what was it then? What went wrong?
Creighton had no issue with the team’s preparation and focus throughout the week. Where he took ownership of was getting his team ready for the sleepy nooner after three evening to late-night kickoffs, especially on back-to-back country-wide flights.
“I didn't start doing that until Friday with the noon kicks, and I think that's something we could've done differently or better,” Creighton said. “Our preparation, how we handled practice, how we handled staying in Phoenix and spending the night. (At) our Friday evening team meeting there was a lot of juice, but the fact of the matter is I got beat.”
Injuries piling up
Every team has injuries, but boy does this team have injuries to be concerned for.
S Blake Bogan: Severely injured vs. Buffalo.
OL Jake Donnellon: Out for the year.
WR Dylan Drummond: Doubtul for UMass.
DE: Carter Evans: Injured vs. Buffalo, upper-body.
DE Mikey Haney: Out for the year.
DT Alex Merrit: Out for the year.
QB Taylor Powell: We’ll wait and see if he’s ready for UMass.
While having injuries certainly isn’t unique to Eastern, it’s still a huge challenge that the team will have to play through.
At quarterback, Austin Smith has played into essentially two whole games: most of Week 3 and all last week. So far, Smith is 16/27 on his throws (59.3%) for 250 yards (9.3 Y/A) with two touchdown lobs and one interception on the books that I personally won’t count against him. Of course, Smith’s mark is made with his legs: 21 rush attempts so far for 133 yards (6.3 avg.) and 1 touchdown scored.
Along the defensive line, things were already tough with Mikey Haney’s season-ending injury suffered in the spring, and now things are getting a little bit tougher to deal handle. DT Jordan Crawford’s durability has always been an issue, and he’s still the only defensive lineman with a sack this season.
This team has felt good about some of its newer and younger players like DT Peyton Price, DT Dexter Manior, DT Melvin Swindle II, and DT Adrian Gonzalez, but now’s the time for them to make some plays that this defense is desperately missing.
“It's very physical inside, very physical. We've got to try to keep people healthy to be able to last throughout the season,” Creighton said. “When you lose someone for the season like an Alex Merritt, it's a big deal.”
Then, of course, there’s Blake Bogan. Bogan came into the year with the most experience with EMU’s 4-2-5 defense, and came out during the Buffalo game. Bogan missed on an open-field tackle against Buffalo, and went down hard with a non-contact injury.
Said Creighton: “He's doing well because he knows who he is and he's got a really deep faith. He knows he's going to be okay, but he's significantly injured.”
Defense: The pressure is on to put on some pressure
EMU’s defense is off to a very dismal start to the season. In a year where the defense was expected to make a huge step forward, it’s been anything but.
Let’s chew on some stats. The Eagles are 111th nationally with 6.30 yards surrendered per play, 106th against the run with 4.69 rush yards allowed, and 121st in points per game given up: 38.5.
EMU’s last in the country with 9 total tackles for loss with just 2 sacks: tied for second-to-last with Arizona State And Ball State, while Air Force has just one sack. Offenses convert their third-down conversions 51.92% of the time (27/52) against EMU’s defense, the 123rd-worst rate in the country. On fourth downs, EMU is tied for 124th-worst at 83.3% (5/6)
Not including drives that resulted in kneel-downs, EMU’s defense has played in 42 series this season, and has been scored on 25 times: 20 touchdowns and 5 field goals.
Aside from a game-opening interception against Eastern Kentucky, EMU’s defense has caused two fumbles (vs. EKU, at Arizona State).
Addressing the team’s turnover concerns (-6 on the season’s margin), Creighton said, “We're not getting the pressure on the quarterback that we need to get. I think it starts with that. When you start disrupting the quarterback by making him move his feet, by making him throw errant balls you get tipped passes, you get overthrows. We just haven't had the pressure on the quarterback that we need to have… it's not like we're dropping interceptions or the ball's on the ground and we're not getting to it or anything like that. The awareness I know is there, we just haven't created the opportunities and I do think it starts with pressure on the quarterback.”
Last 3 vs. UMass
2014: UMass 36, EMU 14 (away)
2015: UMass 28, EMU 17 (home)
2021: EMU 42, UMass 28 (away)
EMU and UMass hadn’t broken the seal playing one another until UMass’ cameo appearance in the Mid-American Conference.
In 2014, Creighton’s first season as Eastern’s coach, EMU had just beaten Buffalo for its second game of the year, then went to UMass and lost pretty badly. UMass had 562 yards of offense, EMU had 280. The year after, EMU kept things more competitive but still ended up losing the, at the time, battle of two 1-win teams.
UMass has since left the MAC and still plays at the FBS level independently. EMU traveled to UMass for the first time since the split last season, and had minimal issues to distance itself from the bottom of the FBS.
On the Minutemen
Head coach: Don Brown, first season back at UMass (1-3)
Week 1: Tulane 42, UMass 10 (at Tulane)
Week 2: Toledo 55, UMass 10 (at Toledo)
Week 3: UMass 20, Stony Brook 3 (at UMass)
Week 4: Temple 28, UMass 0 (at Temple)
This will be Creighton’s fourth game against UMass, and only his first time preparing to face off against Don Brown.
Brown gained a lot of popularity, especially in Washtenaw County, when he was Michigan’s defensive coordinator, and he’s since taken his incredibly-respected defensive mind to UMass, his second-time there. Brown was the UMass defensive coordinator from 1998-1999, left to be a head coach at Northeastern (his first D-1 head coaching job), came back to be the head coach for UMass from 2004-2008 and led the Minutemen to great heights.
UMass, which was still in the FCS ranks, went 43-19 under Brown’s leadership with two Atlantic 10 championships. In 2006 Brown led UMass to the FCS National Championship game (lost 28-17 to Appalachian State), and made it to the quarterfinal round in 2007.
In 2009, Brown finally made the leap up to the FBS level as defensive coordinator for Maryland (2009-2010), with additional stops at UConn (2011-2012), Boston College (2013-2013), Michigan (2016-2020), and Arizona (2021).
While this is Brown’s second time as UMass’ head football coach, it’s his first time coaching an FBS-level program.
Said Creighton on Brown’s defense, “I haven't studied it before, this is my first time through but he is super creative out of the box. He has multiple personnel groups that he uses, to some degree, despite of what the offense's personnel groups are. He has multiple personnel groups involving a lot of different people, and then he does a multitude of things out of those personnel groups… There are a ton of different looks to prepare for. Some of those guys are involved in multiple personnel groups, some of them are really personnel group-specific. They're getting really good at doing just several things out of that personnel group, so when that number's called, that's what they're going to be doing. And you just don't see that very much. Very aggressive, very aggressive, and I think creative.”
#4 George Johnson III: 9 rec., 78 yards
#5 QB Gino Campiotti: 24/49 passing (49%), 165 yards (3.3 Y/A), 1 TD, 4 INT; 54 rush att., 242 rush yards (4.5 avg.) 1 TD
#7 RB Ellis Merriweather: 56 rush att., 219 yards (3.9 avg.)
#18 WR Cameron Sullivan-Brown: 10 rec., 109 yards, 1 TD
#24 RB Tim Baldwin Jr.: 33 rush att., 165 yards (5.0 avg.)
UMass, right now, doesn’t have its offense playing up to the level it’d probably like to with the new coaching staff. The official offensive coordinator for UMass is Steve Casula, who’s called plays before but never at the FBS level before this. He was a former GA at Western Michigan and made OC stops at Davenport and Ferris State before he met Brown at Michigan when Casula was hired as an offensive analyst. UMass associate head coach and offensive line coach, Alex Miller, was the team’s interim head coach last year during the coaching change.
#0 DL Marcus Cushnie: 10 tackles (6 solo, 3 TFL, 1 sack), 2 QB hurries
#1 DL Marcus Bradley: 8 tackles (5 solo, 1.5 sacks), 1 pass breakup, 1 QB hurry
#7 DB Jordan Mahoney: 13 tackles (11 solo), 2 interceptions, 3 pass breakups, 2 forced fumbles
#12 DB Josh Wallace: 19 tackles (13 solo), 1 INT, 4 PBU
#49 LB Jalen Mackie: 27 tackles (14 solo, 4 TFL, 0.5 sack)
While defense is going to be the point of emphasis for this team with Brown as the head coach, things aren’t going great for UMass on this side of the ball so far.
UMass’ defense is:
91st nationally at 5.75 yards per play allowed,
100th at 32.0 points per game allowed,
tied for 116th in total tackles for loss (15),
tied for 115th in sacks (4),
but has 7 takeaways to match its 7 turnovers on offense, so the team’s dead-even on the turnover margin.
While UMass isn’t in a great spot right now, EMU’s shown that it’s capable of losing to teams that it shouldn’t. If EMU doesn’t play a complete game, then there’s a good chance that key moments can slip away from it, and it doesn’t matter if they happen to a team EMU should certainly beat at home.
Week 5 MACtion Schedule & Picks Against the Spread
Again, I didn’t start the year making weekly picks against the spread for the remaining MAC games until two weeks ago, so you can go ahead and mentally tack on 17 or 18, maybe 20 more wins to my actual record. Still, the past few weeks have been pretty tough. Last week I broke even with a 5-5 record, and I even hinted at Miami over Northwestern outright being the money pick.
My record ATS: 9-12
Last week’s wins (5): Mississippi State -29 vs. BGSU, Fordham +17.5 at Ohio, Akron +24.5 at Liberty, Georgia Southern -9.5 vs. Ball State, and Miami +6.5 at Northwestern.
Last week’s losses (5): Not worth reading, IMO.
I’ve never claimed to be an expert at this, and we’ll see how this goes throughout the year. It doesn’t matter, I’ll never say that my picks are advice for you, but if you would’ve put your money on the games I got right and none of the games I got wrong, then maybe you could say this is helpful advice.
Whatever. Let’s ignore the records and go undefeated today.
Saturday, Oct. 1
Northern Illinois at Ball State (2 p.m., ESPN+)
ATS pick: Ball State +4. Northern absolutely should win this one, but I’m pretty impressed to see Ball State getting better on the whole, even if its record doesn’t completely show it. Conventional wisdom would tell me to pick Northern on the road here, but I get the feeling conventional wisdom could get tossed out the window here.
Central Michigan at Toledo (3:30 p.m., NFL Network)
ATS pick: CMU +7. Central has some things to figure out, and I think it will. A loss for Toledo at home here would have to be the last straw for Jason Candle, right?
Bowling Green at Akron (3:30 p.m., ESPN+)
ATS pick: BGSU -5.5. Akron didn’t score a touchdown (in FBS play) until late last week at Liberty. I want to believe in Akron, but results won’t happen just yet.
Miami OH at Buffalo (3:30 p.m., ESPN+)
ATS pick: Buffalo -1. I think Buffalo’s recipe to success on offense will be a parlay of its power run game and Cole Snyder’s ability to throw on the run, ideally out of the play action. Even though it ended in a win, Miami’s performance at Northwestern didn’t exactly leave me feeling inspired.
Ohio at Kent State (3:30 p.m., ESPN+)
ATS pick: Kent State -7.5. This is a tough bet to make. The last three meetings between the two schools have been decided by one possession and Ohio won two of those. Last year, Kent State snapped a 6-game winning streak by the Bobcats in this series, and gets the home field advantage on Saturday. I think Kent State might be able to steal a possession or two if Ohio keeps the ball in the air on offense.
New Hampshire at Western Michigan (6 p.m., ESPN3)
ATS pick: UNH +15. Without knowing single thing about New Hampshire, I make this pick knowing this: Western’s offense is incredibly rough right now.
