In sports you’re taught to never dwell on things and to have a short memory. The last 365 days have been something to forget for the Eastern Michigan football team.
A small town squad with major issues, the Eagles finished 1-11 last season thanks to late game slip-ups and various health issues on both sides of the ball.
Couple that with a report the university’s faculty and students read to the Board of Regents during an April 22 presentation that called for the school to drop out of Division I football and find a different conference for its other sports, and you might have yourself a ticking time bomb.
So after the Eagles on field performance and the call to action on the team to follow, just how much distraction was there to focus on 2016 and what do you do when something like this captures the attention of the country?
“I think it was less so for the team than it was for the staff and the recruiting,” EMU coach Chris Creighton said. “I think our board of directors, I think that both presidents and of course our leader of our department Heather Lyke, did a fantastic job of telling the truth.”
“When the truth came out, it’s the best way to combat is with the truth.”
Through it all, Eastern has remained steady and focused on improvement this season to quell all of the drama seeping from the outside into the program.
“There was some frustration because you put so much into it,” Eagles coach Chris Creighton expressed. “But then you start generating your next steps pretty soon and that’s 2016. You move forward and you start getting hungry for another chance to get better.”
In a perfect world, the only way to go from a one-win season is up.
Despite the frustration that settled into the EMU locker room, Creighton’s approach was echoed by senior offensive lineman Cole Gardner.
“The team approach this year was to wash that away,” Gardner said. “We dropped everything and last year was last year and it’s a whole new season.”
They have the chance to put it all behind them tonight, as the Eagles will look to match their win total in 2015 right out the gate when they host Mississippi Valley State at The Factory in Ypsilanti.
Looking to rebound from a 1-11 campaign and earn its first bowl game berth since 1987, Eastern will look to experience and health on both sides of the ball to do so.
“It’s time to put the pieces of the puzzle there and put them together,” senior defensive lineman Pat O’Conner expressed. “We have depth at each position, that was our biggest problem last year and not having extra people in certain positions.”
The Eagles bring back 20 seniors, including seven starters on each side of the ball.
O’Conner, the 2014 MAC defensive player of the year, returns after missing 2015 with a dislocated shoulder that eventually needed surgery to repair a torn labrum, to anchor a unit that gave up almost 30 points per game and ranked last in the conference.
Creighton looks for the D-line to be a catalyst for a turn around year for the EMU, as Eastern has brought on new defensive coordinator Neal Neathery, who has implemented the 4-2-5 defense after previous touting a 3 man front, anticipating creating more turnovers with pressure this season.
He also attributes the depth and recruiting in the trenches as something to look out for as well.
“ I just think overall we’re healthy right now at the beginning of the season, and I think that we have more quality depth,” Creighton said. “To go through a 12 game, 16, 17 week season playing division one football, you can’t just be one deep or two deep. I think that we’ve got a lot more positions in better shape depth wise.”
Even with high hopes entering the year, they will face a major set back to their goals of improvement, as starting quarterback Brogan Roback has been suspended to start the year.
It hasn’t been determined on how many games Roback will miss, but he will not be available against Mississippi Valley.
Garden City (Kan.) Community College transfer Todd Porter likely will start in place of Roback. Porter is a 6-3 junior who started his career at Western Kentucky before moving to a JUCO. He passed for 1,218 yards and 10 TDs as a sophomore.
Eastern had similar goals and aspirations to start last season, as the one-win campaign now leave Creighton at a 3-21 mark in his first two years.
But even with the cards stacked and the weight of the football program in balance, he will look to use is first two seasons as a lesson learned and a barometer for progress in 2016.
“Last season was definitely frustrating for us because our entire offseason we showed a lot of promise,” Creighton said. “From there we carried a lot of momentum, so the disappointment of not getting the victories on Saturday afternoons in the fall definitely was frustrating.”
“We also know that our ’15 team was better than our ’14 team, a lot better,” he said. “And so when you look at it as a whole, there is a process and what not, we know we took steps forward. But things were exposed that we needed to get better at and so we spent the last nine months doing that and now we’re ready to roll in ’16.”
Friday night’s MVSU game marks the ninth time in the last 13 years that the Eagles have opened the season at home in Rynearson Stadium.
Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m.
