Is EMU's Remaining Schedule Better or Worse Than Expected?

A Week 0 opener really does feel like it’s changed the speed of Eastern Michigan’s football schedule, hasn’t it?

It’s still September for the time being, and we’re talking about EMU reaching the halfway point of the season with its upcoming game at UMass. Five games into the year, EMU (2-3, 1-0 MAC) already has a MAC win to its name (over Sacramento State) and will get back to its conference schedule Saturday for its final seven games of the regular season.

Not only is UMass sitting pretty with an early, undefeated record next to its name, it’s winning its games comfortably. UMass should be a good football team. If not because of the success it used to have as an FCS school, but because UMass actually has money in ways most other MAC school’s don’t have. It’s paying its head coach over a million dollars a year to be there, and it has an NIL collective that’s been active with its football roster.

UMass, for all that it’s worth, should be better than its 0-12 showing last year, and it is. Finally.

Everybody around the country took notice when UMass beat Rutgers on the Thursday before Labor Day, and I’m sure everybody’s still very aware that UMass is 4-0.

But considering who it’s played, how much better is UMass really?

How much better is the rest of EMU’s schedule, for that matter?

Everybody else in the conference is only four games into their schedules, but deep enough into their seasons to get some sort of understanding of where everybody’s at. Let’s go through Eastern’s remaining seven games on the schedule and ask ourselves if we think each team is better or worse than what we expected to see from them this year.

Has UMass played the easiest schedule in America? Yes, by a lot. If we can consider Sacramento State’s roster an FCS one, then I’m saying UMass has basically played three FCS teams, and then Rutgers. Rutgers is an easy punching bag, but UMass still went out and beat them by double digits, and it’s gone out and played great in its four contests so far.

UMass might have the league’s top offensive weapon at quarterback. T.Y. Harding is also blazing fast. The defense is playing great. UMass might have a weak schedule, but it’s not winning by getting lucky.

Akron’s 1-3 start isn’t surprising, but it’s not playing in games like a team that was supposed to be on the rise. Also, I expected Reese Poffenbarger to be a reason why Akron could have a competitive year, but if he’s not eligible to play this year, then Akron’s offense is going to keep having issues moving the ball.

I’m not surprised to see Toledo playing well under Mike Jacobs. His team scored 63, 49, and 41 points in its three home wins, and only losing at Michigan State by 10 gets a nod of respectability from me. John Alan Richter has a TD-INT ratio of 12-1 right now, too.

Even though Jason Candle is long gone, I can appreciate how little change there’s been with this Toledo team. What I mean is this: Toledo’s averaging 7 penalties a game.

Ohio came into the year with a lot of inexperience on its roster, and it doesn’t help when you lose your starting quarterback two games into the season. It’s been great to see true freshman Levi Davis get some playing time for as young as he is, and it was cool to watch him be the catalyst for a 29-27 4-overtime win over Jacksonville State.

Ohio’s defense has been average so far, and it’s only had one takeaway so far. A small step up in that department could go a long way.

There is just one (1) FBS school to throw no (0) touchdown passes so far this season, and that’s Central Michigan. Sure, we all knew that passing the ball was not going to be how CMU wanted to contort itself on offense, but it’s not like CMU’s running roughshod with an overimposing ground game, either.

I never assumed that Western Michigan was on track to be a playoff team, mostly because we really needed to see what WMU would look like through its non-conference schedule. WMU suffered a non-loss at Michigan to start the year, but got spanked at home by Boise State, 32-7, last week. If WMU really was a playoff-caliber team, it probably wouldn’t have won at Rice by only seven points, either. WMU is still a crazy talented MAC team, but the defending MAC champions don’t seem so scary a month into the new season.

I knew expecting a repeat of last year’s surprise 5-7 season was a lot to ask, which is why I never completely expected it to happen, either. Dru DeShields has not looked so hot throwing the football so far this year. In fact, I’d take the true freshman at Akron, Cibastian Broughton (80% completion, 4 TD, 0 INT) over DeShields right about now.

Still, Kent State won its MAC opener over Ball State last week after it got thrown around by Ohio State the week before. It’s hard to say how good Kent State is right now with its schedule (two blowouts at Power 4 schools, win over FCS Wofford, and win over Ball State), but I think the upcoming Ohio game will have a lot of truth-telling about this year’s group.