Four Downs: Better Beginnings

Note: I suppose since we’re midway through Eastern Michigan’s football season, restarting this series late is better than never. Four Downs is a football-y column of sorts that’s supposed to be pretty straightforward for you. Four downs, four football topics — both locally and at-large. Sometimes I’ll share thoughts on something I’ve been marinating. Sometimes it’s a bunch of notes. It’s all football though.

Something I’ve been lightly tracking this year is Eastern Michigan’s opening drives on both sides of the ball.

The season-opening drives on both sides of the ball for EMU against Sacramento State really captured my interest because, well, both teams failed to get out of bed on time. There were eight combined punts in the first 12 minutes of the ball game, which was gross and only half-entertaining.

Whatever you thought of the competition it saw at the beginning of the year, EMU’s defense still looked legit.

The defensive unit wiped the Hornet offense off the field in three plays and has continued to be a tone-setting force throughout the season, even against two Big Ten opponents.

Michigan State lost four yards on its opening drive of the game, and Wisconsin threw itself off the field with a turnover on downs the first time it touched the ball against EMU. The offenses of Lindenwood and UMass, much like Sac State and San José State (and MSU), punted to end their first offensive drives.

EMU’s defense on game-opening drives

EMU’s offense was slow-moving out of the tunnel in the first three games it played, but the fourth, fifth, and sixth games have had much more ideal starts.

EMU punted to end its opening drives in the first three games, but has established long, scoring drives against Wisconsin, Lindenwood, and UMass, and has improved its yards per play average by nearly five whole yards!

EMU’s offense on game-opening drives

Against UMass, two offensive scores were called back for holding penalties. The first was a 56-yard monster run by Braydon Bennett. The next was a 20-yard run by Amareon Blue. Two plays later, EMU scored on a 27-yard toss to Kozy Isaac, who narrowly stayed in bounds and avoided a third flag.

Game-opening drives are great, but there’s more football to be played.

First-half plays are more scripted, and coaches have the chance to react and counter each other out with their play-calling in the final 30 minutes of the games.

The numbers for EMU’s offense to begin its third quarters read a little confusingly. On the whole, things haven’t been very clean, but there’s been enough body of work to think that there can be better moments ahead.

Against San José, Blue had a 50-yard touchdown run to cap EMU’s opening drive of that game’s second half. At MSU, Harold Mack fumbled the ball away after he was hit by two defenders and was subsequently knocked out of the game. The Wisconsin game turned into a fiasco when Noah Kim was strip-sacked on third down, and the fumbled ball was returned for a Badger touchdown. Against Lindenwood, EMU settled for a 48-yard field goal that was missed (doink’d left).

But what has EMU done for you lately? At UMass, EMU strung together its best second-half opening drive of the season: 10 plays, 75 yards, and Kim to tight end Joshua Long for a 2-yard score.

EMU’s offense on second-half opening drives

EMU has made improvements on the defense’s second-half starts, too.

It got Sac State to punt after the halftime break of that game, but allowed 75-yard scoring drives in back-to-back weeks against the Spartans of San José and Michigan State. But Wisconsin and Lindenwood were both limited to field goals on their first drives of the second halves, and, yesterday, EMU’s Caleb Dobbs intercepted his second pass of the season on UMass’ first play of the third quarter.

EMU’s defense on second-half opening drives

This sport has a lot of different types of players. Lots of different-looking players with various skill sets can be equally dangerous in different ways from the same position.

Who are your favorite players in the game? Those answers usually find themselves out after you figure out what your preferred type of play is. From there, you ought to be able to look around and see what kind of guys fit the style of ball you like watching most.

I think Toledo has one of my preferred kinds of guys at running back.

Hello there, Mr. C.J. Miller.

Listed at 5’11, 230 lbs., Miller looks like a unique blend of the old and new schools. His shirt sleeves are loose, he doesn’t wear gloves, and his hands and wrists are taped. He’s got that vicious, thick-guy jump cut that he can break out behind his offensive line, then he can hit the burst with both of his arms heavily pumping as he breaks off for explosive runs.

And he does all of the stuff I love to see from the valueless, do-nothing stance popularized by Ashton Jeanty.

Miller followed his head coach from Mercer, and he’s done well for himself (54 carries, 351 yards, 4 TD) as he’s shared carries with Connor Walendzak (57 carries, 345 yards, 6 TD).

While I don’t want to spend too much time on the discourse over the past few weeks, I think “being ranked,” in a matter of speaking, should really mean something in this sport. The AP Top 25 poll receives a lot of crap, and sometimes it’s really deserved. Sometimes I think people should chill out with voters, even if I don’t agree with a lot of their logic.

But on the whole, why are we always voting for 25 teams? There aren’t 25 good teams before the season, and I’m never fully convinced that there are 25 good teams remaining at the end of the season either.

I know the answer why the AP Top 25 rigmarole continues is because it makes the game more popular, and TV ratings benefit when it can say there’s a ranked team or two on the broadcast. I get it.

I just don’t like it.

Is Texas Tech any good? Well it’s got a #11 ranking next to its name, so it must be!

Is Missouri actually any good? Well, it beat the doors off a top-10 team in Florida! That’s proof right there!

USC played flag football last week, but it must be a good football team because it’s still ranked at #19!

#25 Pitt is a Power 4 team with a 5-0 record, and it barely snuck into the Top 25 poll today after it beat Virginia Tech, which also had a 4-0 record going into the weekend. But Oklahoma State, which lost to Tulsa and beat #ranked Oregon, pulls in at #18.

NEW RULE, FOR WHEN I BECOME THE NEW BOSS OF THE AP TOP 25 POLL: No more voting for 25 teams unless there are 25 teams worth ranking. Instead, I’ll make the voters vote for teams that are actually good, and we’ll see how much of a consensus everybody comes to.

That’s right. I want voters to only have six names on their ballots each week. Sometimes they’ll expand things to 14 teams. Some voters might think only three teams are worth the praise.

The Top 25 poll has, sadly, been grossly manipulated through Big Ten and SEC expansions. As a punishment, fewer of those teams deserve to appear in these weekly polls.

MY SECOND RULE FOR THE NEW VOTING PROCESS: Voters still point out who they think the #1 team in the nation is, and everything after that is just a list in alphabetical order. I don’t care who you think is #2 or #17. If you’re not the #1 team in the nation, then you’re just ranked.

TOP TEAMS ONLY POLL (an example)