2016 Week 1 Preview: Mississippi Valley State at Eastern Michigan

College Football is almost back and Eastern Michigan fans will get their first chance to see their Eagles on Friday night at 6:00P.M. at Rynearson Stadium.  They will be facing the Delta Devils of Mississippi State for the first time.  This will be the second meeting of Eastern Michigan against a team of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.  This first time was against Alabama State in 2011 and Eastern Michigan won that contest 14-7.  Eastern Michigan went 6 and 6 in that season, so maybe this will bode well for this season.

Kenneth Bailey

The pre-game tradition that I like

Eastern will be featuring a new quarterback with Todd Porter taking the snaps.  He comes to Ypsilanti by way of Garden City Community College where he appeared in seven games and threw for 10 touchdowns and rushed for 6 more.  Hopefully, he can be the quarterback that Eastern is looking for.  Shaq Vann returns at running back.  While he played last year, he has some big shoes to fill with the loss of Darius Jackson to the Dallas Cowboys.  Last year he rushed for 586 yards on 100 carries.  He also had 269 yards while catching the ball.  I'm hoping that he can provide a nice offensive spark.

On defense, Eastern Michigan has only one direction to go.  Hopefully there will be considerable improvement under new coach, Neal Neathery.   I'm hoping his new scheme can shore up the run defense.

Mississippi State is a historically black college from Mississippi Valley State in Leflore County near Itta Bena.  It was founded in 1950.  Jerry Rice played football there in college.  As I said above, they play in the Southwestern Athletic Conference and posted a similar record to Eastern Michigan last year.    This is Head Coach Rick Comegy's second season there.  He coached Jackson State prior to this and so far has a record of 156 and 82.  They have three decent quarterbacks and we might get a chance to see all of them play.

I honestly don't know what to expect from this game.  I'm hoping that Eastern Michigan will post a convincing win and I think Eastern Michigan needs that.  It seems like they are returning quite a bit of experience this year and that should help.  I'm not going to make predictions on the score though.