Image via Eastern Michigan Athletics
Roster, Depth Chart
Bold = listed starter(s)
Italics = Incoming player.
Listed on preseason depth chart:
#1 Noah Kim — Returning starter. Former Michigan State and Coastal Carolina transfer. Last year: 61.44% passing (247/402), 2,817 yards (7.0 Y/A), 18 TD, 11 INT; 209 net rush yards, 79 rush att. (2.6 avg.), 6 rush TD.
#12 Jace Stuckey — Third-year signee.
Also on roster:
#10 Brogan McCaugey (Yale) — First-year transfer. Last year: DNP. 2024: 2 games, 1 start, 60.4% passing (32/53), 390 yards (7.4 Y/A), 2 TD, 0 INT; 26 rush yards, 7 att., 1 rush TD.
#13 Nick Kinsey — Incoming freshman.
#17 Bryce Button — Second-year signee.
Returning starter, a rarity since Roback years
For the first time since the Brogan Roback days, Eastern Michigan’s offense will feature a familiar face behind center in back-to-back seasons. Since 2017, it’s largely been a revolving door of new quarterbacks with varying levels of success.
Tyler Wiegers, a graduate transfer from Iowa, got EMU to a 7-win season in 2018. His backup, Mike Glass III, joined from junior college, started in that year’s Camellia Bowl, then led the 2019 unit to the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.
In the Covid-reduced 2020 season, Preston Hutchinson, who signed with EMU out of high school, led the team to a 2-4 record. In 2021, Ben Bryant transferred to EMU from Cincinnati to start over Hutchinson and got the team back into a bowl game with another 7-win season. Both Hutchinson (UT Chattanooga) and Bryant (back to Cincinnati) transferred out after the season as graduate transfer Taylor Powell joined from Missouri. EMU had its best season in school history in 2022 with a 9-4 record and its first bowl victory in 35 years.
Austin Smith, EMU’s next quarterback to start after joining as a prep signee, did not keep up the pace in 2023. The team still reached a bowl game, but Smith hit the transfer portal ahead of it (to Austin Peay).
In 2024, Cole Snyder joined the team as a graduate transfer from Buffalo. Of course, the team still missed its footing and missed out on going to a bowl game with a 5-7 record.
Then last year, Noah Kim, from Coastal Carolina, ended the year as the conference’s top passer, but poor run defense limited this team’s potential with a 4-8 finish. The 2025 season looked like it was going to be Kim’s lone year with the team, but EMU argued to the NCAA that Kim should still have one more year of eligibility to play, and so he received its permission to play in 2026.
After QB1
Kim returns to a familiar offense with an All-MAC receiver (Nick Devereaux) and tight end (Joshua Long) also back to try and turn things around in 2026. For EMU, even with the question marks up-front at offensive line, there’s plenty of reason to feel optimistic about this side of the ball as long as Kim plays well and manages the offense to his capabilities.
But what happens in the event he suffers an injury?
Football’s a tough sport, after all.
Are the guys behind him ready?
Jace Stuckey, a third-year signee from Indiana, enters camp as the immediate backup to Kim. Not listed on the preseason two-deep but behind Stuckey right now include Bryce Button, a second-year signee out of high school, Nick Kinsey, a first-year high school signee, and Yale transfer Brogan McCaughey, who had one start with his old team in 2024.
Kim’s the only player on the roster to see the field in 2025. McCaughey played the first two games for Yale to begin the 2024 season, but that’s it. With no real in-game track record to speak of, the backups on this team are going to be incentivized to keep battling for the QB2 role on this team.
The spring game isn’t a great crystal ball, but it’s still worth calling back to here. If the scrimmage showed anything, it’s that McCaughey can play right away with this offense (similar stat line to Kim that day), and Stuckey’s day just wasn’t as busy as theirs.
If, in case of emergency, the new Yale transfer has what it takes to produce right away in a backup capacity for EMU, that’d certainly be accepted and welcomed, but maybe not without also having to concede in another area. While getting experienced transfer quarterbacks has been helpful over the years, this program doesn’t usually find its answers by developing guys out of the high school ranks.
Maybe Stuckey, if needed, can break that trend, but it also might be another year before his number gets called upon anyway. He’d be facing more pressure right now to be ready for Week 0 vs. Sacramento State if Kim didn’t have his eligibility extended. However, that’s not the reality of Stuckey’s actual situation as a third-year player.
Barring injuries and whether the listed backup likes it or not, Stuckey doesn’t have to be the guy quite yet. When the time does come, though, for EMU to call on its backup quarterback, will Stuckey be the type of quarterback he was hoping to become?
