Five Things Learned - Army at Eastern Michigan

Eastern Michigan fell to Army by a score of 37 to 22 on a pretty rainy and dreary Saturday afternoon. Eastern Michigan falls to 4 and 5 and Army raises to 6 and 2. But what did we learn from all of this?

Kenneth Bailey

1. When Eastern Michigan gets creative on offense, good things happen.

At least one of the touchdowns was the result of someone other than Tyler Wiegers passing the ball. I like Tyler Wiegers well enough but it seems like when he plays, Eastern Michigan goes to a pretty vanilla (and predictable) offense. It seemed like after Eastern Michigan was using more of a spread, Army had a harder time covering that. I don’t understand why Eastern Michigan doesn’t use the spread more often. They got all of 34 rushing yards in the game on Saturday. It’s rare that their rushing game gets over 100 yards. I’m not saying abandon the run but they should be airing it out more often.

2. Eastern Michigan did a decent job of containing the Army rushing game.

Army was held to 289 yards on the ground. When you consider, they normally run over 300 yards per game, that’s pretty good. Eastern Michigan also got 4 tackles for loss which also pretty good considering Army is very good at pounding the ball forward.

3. Eastern Michigan has a decent punter.

Jake Julien averaged 50 yards per punt. If you can’t move the ball well but can defend well, sometimes pinning them back helps.

4. Army is pretty good

Army is on pace to go its fourth bowl game in a row. Considering the dumpster fire they’ve had for a while prior to this, that’s pretty good. I think Navy will have it’s hands full this year.

5. Eastern Michigan still needs to work on its running game.

I’m not sure exactly what they need to do but they need to do something.

Kenneth Bailey