Four Downs: Another No Shot November?

Another year, another outside-looking-in moment for Eastern Michigan in the race to be one of the two teams to make the MAC championship game in December.

Now that EMU dropped its second straight loss in conference play to fall to 3-2 in the standings, it’s looking up to see a handful of MAC teams ahead with just three games left on the schedule.

Ohio remains undefeated in league play (4-0) while Toledo, Western Michigan, Buffalo, and Miami all have one loss each (3-1). EMU is still mathematically in the hunt, but it’s also hoping more than half of the teams ahead of it in the standings to embarrassingly fall off their wagons between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Divine intervention could probably help, too.

And even then, it can’t lose any of its final three games with Central Michigan (at Ford Field next week), Western Michigan (away), and Kent State (home) remaining.

As with every November, it’s highly unrealistic to think EMU has a chance of making the MAC title game.

What else is an EMU football fan supposed to feel after being housed by Toledo on homecoming, then falling to Ohio in a heartbreaker?

EMU couldn’t do anything with the football at Ohio last week until the very end of the game. Then when it did finally score its first offensive touchdown to take a late lead, a full-field kick return touchdown whipped EMU out of its dream situation and put its offense back on the field.

To the offense’s credit, it did drive back downfield with backup quarterback Brogan McCaughey leading the way, but they failed to get a go-ahead score as the game clock wound down to zero.

Another November, another final chance at playing for a bowl game. Unless anything significant changes in the standings, there’s no realistic way of seeing EMU as league contenders this year.

Unless Toledo losing to Sacramento State feels realistic to you. Unless Akron beating Ohio and/or Western Michigan feels realistic. Unless Ball State beating Buffalo and/or Ohio feels realistic. At present, it seems like EMU’s going to have to hope for almost everybody ahead of them in the standings to wind up with two or three league losses at the end of the year.

Unless anything too crazy happens, it seems like EMU’s going to have a November and December that isn’t too far off from the days that this place used to celebrate over. Winning six to seven regular-season games and seeing EMU in a bowl game was a new, welcome norm for this football team 10 years ago.

Being bowl game regulars in the late 2010s was transcendent for a team that hadn’t been to a bowl game since 1987. The next step was to win a couple more important games in the regular season for Eastern to make it to the MAC title game at the end of the year.

EMU, with 13 years under Chris Creighton’s leadership, still hasn’t reached that new height. This year’s team has suffered a bunch of injuries across the roster, but that’s no excuse. EMU lost its two most important league games of the year in back-to-back weeks.

EMU still hasn’t reached a MAC championship game since its inception in 1997 (first played in Detroit in 2004). The only other two MAC teams not to play in it are UMass and Sac State.

An updated look at today’s MAC standings:

There are only two games this weekend. Kent State goes to Sacramento State for a 10:30 p.m. (Eastern) nightcap, and WMU hosts Bowling Green Saturday at noon.

Everybody else is on a short bye week as two games will be played on Tuesday (Ohio at Akron, Buffalo at Miami) and three will be on Wednesday (Ball State at UMass, Toledo at Sac State, and EMU vs. CMU in Detroit).

Of the top five teams in the MAC standings, Toledo and Ohio have looked the strongest this year. WMU battled back and fought Toledo hard, but 24 second-half points weren’t enough to overpower Toledo’s 31 in the first half. Ohio’s record is better right now, but it has a couple of tough games to look forward to with a trip to Miami in two weeks, then a regular-season home finale vs. Toledo.

Buffalo battled WMU tough at the beginning of the month and was two yards short of beating the Broncos and being 4-0 alongside Ohio. It can help itself out next week if it can win its road contest against Miami, as it still has Ball State, CMU, then Akron as its final three games.

If the RedHawks and its MAC-expensive roster, down to its third-string quarterback (and almost had to put in QB4 last game), are going to finish the season strong and make its way back into Detroit at the end of the year, then it’s going to have to stand up to some pretty tough league opponents: Buffalo and Ohio at home, then at Kent State and WMU.

The last time I checked in with EMU’s defensive havoc rating, there was a lot to like.

Even with all of the obvious injuries that have kept EMU’s defense from playing at full strength since Barry Manning’s early season-ending injury, there’s still a lot to like about this year’s team.

EMU’s defense currently has the MAC’s third-best havoc rating at 16.4% and is the conference’s leader in defended passes (39 pass breakups, 4 interceptions).

Havoc plays, to refresh, are when the defense makes a tackle for loss, defends a pass, or forces a fumble. Last year, EMU’s defense had the worst havoc rate of the Chris Creighton era – 11.1%. Now, it’s as good as ever.

Last week at Ohio, EMU’s defense had six players record a combined six tackles for loss, two broke up one pass each, and two more players, Ronn Hardin and Bryce Eliuk, caused fumbles.

Ohio’s run defense was held to 90 yards — the fewest the Bobcats have rushed for at home since their last home loss in 2023 (50 yards vs. Miami).

I don’t have a lot of knee-jerking thoughts about the news about a 24-team playoff field coming to the sport in November. I don’t exactly know how much I already don’t — or eventually won’t — enjoy the new postseason model, and I want to try to be a little bit open-minded about these things.

Right now, I want to look at the season James Madison (7-1, 4-1 Sun Belt) is having, and be open to what that team’s possibilities might be in a 24-team playoff world.

JMU, which snuck into the playoff as a #12 seed last year (and lost 51-34 in the first round to #5 Oregon), was not perfect in 2025 (lost to Louisville) and won’t be perfect again in 2026 (lost at Appalachian State last week).

JMU, which beat Troy in the Sun Belt championship game, wasn’t even the highest-ranked Group of 6 league championship team last year. That was #11-seeded Tulane (American).

[Of course, this ignores Notre Dame from making the field, which would’ve made the playoff under this year’s rules.]

The 24-team bracket still has a safeguard to include at least one Group of 6 team (not champion), which is to say a G6 team needs to finish, roughly, in the top 24 of the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings at the end of the year.

Boise State (6-1, 3-0 Pac-12) and New Mexico (6-1, 3-0 Mountain West) both lost on the road to Power 4 opponents (Boise to Oregon, New Mexico to Oklahoma), but neither of them lost in embarrassing fashion either. JMU’s loss last week was to two-loss App State, which should realistically put JMU behind the other two in the G6 pecking order.

Hypothetically, what happens if App State goes on a run and finishes the regular season 10-2? What if Boise wins its league, but Oregon struggles the rest of the way? (Same question goes to New Mexico). Would the CFP ever come to terms with, or admit that JMU’s overtime road loss to a two-loss Sun Belt school is a better quality loss than a loss to a disappointing Big Ten or SEC school?

If JMU, Boise State, and New Mexico all finish regular seasons with 11 wins or better, I’ll be fascinated to see how or why the CFP committee would try to keep them out of their rankings at the end of the year.

I don’t completely love the expanded playoff field. I already texted some people saying that this sport will die a little bit the day 7-5 Georgia is the #23 seed over an 11-1 Group of 6 team at #24, but I’m not ready to say that next year’s playoff format is going to be an immediate bust, either.