The Gridiron Guys discuss implications of weak CMU, WMU running games
Sports Editor Taylor DesOrmeau and Staff Reporter Dominick Mastrangelo focused on Saturday’s rivalry game against Western Michigan in the weekly Central Michigan Life football podcast, Gridiron Guys.
Taylor and Dominick discussed the disappointing running games so far this season from both teams and how it will affect Saturday’s game.
Taylor: So, we’ve got a big rivalry game this weekend. We have Western coming up with a noon kick, at Western. So, Dom, what are your thoughts? You’ve gone to practice a couple times this week. What are the Chippewas saying right now?
Dominick: There’s definitely a turned up intensity level… This team played a really good game on Saturday, at least toward the second half. The defense had the best game that it’s had the whole season and it really gives CMU some momentum heading into the game against Western.
Taylor: So if you’re John Bonamego, what percentage of the time are you giving the ball to Cooper to throw, as opposed to giving it to Jahray Hayes and the other running backs?
Dominick: How close can you get to 100 percent?
Taylor: Really?
Dominick: Because, frankly, that’s CMU’s best option. Whether it be on second down, third down. The interesting thing is, they’re converting something like 40 percent of their third downs, and with a lot of attempts too, third-and-longs especially. We’ll see how it all ends up shaking out by the time the dog days of the MAC season roll around. I think it’ll be very interesting to see if CMU is able to make that MAC title run with virtually no running game.
Dominick Mastrangelo and Taylor DesOrmeau talk about the upcoming Western rivalry game and more.
Taylor: I think it’s very telling too, when you see CMU scoring right before the half or just driving. That’s because they’re running that two-minute drill, so they’re really not running the ball, they’re just having to pass. And that seems to be when they’re having the most success.
Dominick: Yeah, they do really well. And again, they have a junior quarterback who’s extremely accurate and extremely confident, plus has a lot of weapons to throw to. Tight end Ben McCord, Jesse Kroll, hey, I mean, Mark Chapman has had a pretty decent start to the year, too. CMU has the weapons on offense, Cooper can obviously get the ball to those weapons, the question is, can they balance themselves out and make it so that guys don’t always load the box?
Taylor: Yeah, no doubt. When you look at the statistical comparison between CMU and Western, it’s surprisingly close. CMU is 124th in the country in rushing offense, and there’re only about 130 teams, and 13th in the MAC with about 80 rushing yards per game. I think that was kind of expected with the loss of Rawls. When you look at Western Michigan, their rushing offense is 116th in the nation, 12th best in the MAC with 112.2 yards per carry. That’s not what we expected out of Western, is it?
Dominick: Not at all. But you have to remember who Western has played against: Ohio State, Michigan State. Yeah, they had a bad loss to Georgia Southern, but I think this team is still yet to play its best football. And if anyone remembers, it took awhile for Western to really get started last year too, but by the time they were going, they were a machine. It’ll be interesting to see. Is this the breakout game for Western? I’m sure they’re hoping it will be. This annual rivalry game against CMU also comes at an uncharacteristically early point in the year.
Taylor: Yeah, Jarvion Franklin was the MAC Rookie of the Year last year, he’s Western’s running back. He definitely hasn’t gotten off to the start that a lot of Bronco fans have expected.
Gridiron Guys is Central Michigan Life’s weekly football podcast, with conversation on the latest in CMU football, plus other games from around the MAC, the rest of the NCAA and the NFL.
It is available on SoundCloud, iTunes and cm-life.com/multimedia.
