![]() So it checks out that they land precisely in the middle after a bad loss to the Central Michigan Chippewas. Northern Illinois is our most unpredictable and volatile team so far in 2023, taking both major leaps and major dips. Northern Illinois Huskies (LW: 4, down 2) There’s reason to be optimistic about head coach Lance Taylor and what he’s building in Kalamazoo.Ħ. Relative to their expectations this year, the Broncos have outperformed the expectation of “struggling to get out of the 10’s”, and have shown a lot of character despite a tough conference schedule to start the league year. They’ve taken Toledo, Miami and Ohio to the wire, hung around with an SEC team in Mississippi State, and now they’ve completely walloped rival Eastern Michigan to assure a new winner for the Michigan MAC Trophy. Speaking of WMU, they’ve strung together some great results lately, even if the record doesn’t necessarily reflect that fact. One-hundred twenty-three tackles! WMU did come into the game with some momentum over their last few contests, but they were still a 2-6 football team EMU should have been able to compete with.ħ. The offense couldn’t generate yards and the defense could not get off the field no matter what they did this is perhaps exemplified best by Joe Sparacio and Chase Kline combining for 43 of EMU’s 123 tackles. You generally don’t want to say a team has quit on the season when they’re almost certainly still in postseason contention, but the EMU team which took the field last week looked about as close to quitting as it gets in a lackluster effort against Western Michigan. It was much too bad because they actually won the turnover battle with three fumble recoveries and an interception.Ĩ. UB played off-schedule (Cole Snyder was 14-of-41 passing) and turned the ball over on downs five times trying to mount a comeback. The Bulls were simply out-gunned this week by a verifiably good Toledo squad, and sometimes there just isn’t very much you can do against that- especially if you’re not absolutely perfect.īuffalo played one of their sloppiest games of the season at the wrong time, giving up a game-opening kick return score and a 71-yard rushing score to go down 14-0 early, then gave up two interceptions and had a missed field goal to further exasperate their issues. They’re eliminated from the postseason and only hold two wins at this point. They did make a game of it late, but couldn’t seal the deal with an inexperienced Kiael Kelly in at quarterback. Two early (and preventable) turnovers buried Ball State early and they are not built for comebacks as currently constructed. Unluckily for the Cardinals, they went from one of the worst defenses in the country in Central Michigan to one of the best in Bowling Green and paid for it dearly. They’re playing for pride at this point, but it’s good for them to finally get a massive gorilla off their back in terms of performances in one-score contests.īall State fell right back down this week after showing some moxie in a win last week. The Zips posted an epic 21-0 comeback in the fourth quarter to take home the Wagon Wheel, with Jeff Undercuffler (23-of-39 for 298 yards, two TDs) and Lorenzo Lingard (106 rush yards, TD 49 receiving yards) guiding the way on offense, while the defense forced three punts and a turnover-on-downs on the last four KSU drives of the game. ![]() Meanwhile for Akron, they put on what may just be one of the best midweek #MACtion performances of the season. You do have to wonder how much of that has to do with losing several of their key contributors on offense and defense due to injury, including the electric receiver Crishon McCray, but the results are the results, and KSU has only won once- against FCS competition. The game broadcast showed head coach Kenni Burns staring at the field in shock post-game, processing what had just happened, and that feels like the defining image of the season for Kent State. The Golden Flashes get the dubious distinction of being the lone team at the bottom this week after giving up a 17-point lead late in the fourth quarter to the Akron Zips, losing the Wagon Wheel Rivalry for the first time in five years. All 12 teams were represented, which gives us a nice little look into the tempo and timbre of the weeknight slate. We actually had two weeks in one week this go-around, with two Saturday games making up the “Week 9” action and the Tuesday/Wednesday games creating our “Week 10” slate. ![]() Hello all and welcome back to the MAC Football Power Rankings!
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