Hoping for better non-conference results this year after a pretty pathetic showing in 2022 ... minus 2 surprising P5 wins (EMU over Arizona State, Miami over Northwestern)


MAC 2022 Non-Conference

FCS: 10-2 (Buffalo lost to Holy Cross, BG lost to Eastern Kentucky)
Group of 5: 6-9 (Unfortunately 3 of those wins were against UMass...)
Power 5: 2-19 (Some really bad losses, average loss was about 30 points)

It would be nice to see a better overall record against Group of 5 teams, especially against Sun Belt / Mountain West teams.


MAC 2023 Non-Conference

Group of 5 Games: 15
Power 5 Games: 21

Toledo vs Illinois in Week 1 should be interesting, and NIU vs Boston College. Not a ton of winnable P5 games this year just looking at the schedule but who knows.

It is kind of hard to believe that two teams managed to get bowl eligible after losing to FCS teams. Eastern Kentucky was a good FCS team and Holy Cross was a very good one and both of those games had crazy endings. You have to give BG some credit for beating Marshall in a trap game but they also got beat down several times and then won numerous really close games where the opponent was down their best player even if they didn't come close to beating Ohio without Rourke. That team was just nowhere near as good as its record indicated.

But to be perfectly honest, we almost lost to Fordham last year because of our swiss cheese defense lol. Thankfully the rest of the season turned out the way it did but damn. I still can't believe we gave up 503 passing yards and 320 yards to an FCS receiver. Absolutely insane.

This is true and a good point. That was another very good FCS team and another crazy game. Our offense was playing great. All other things equal we came reasonably close to winning 9 games with a loss to an FCS team. Albin got an extension but if we had lost that game all other things might not have turned out to be equal. He was already on a hot seat at the time. We are lucky that we didn't. I think the defense had not figured out the whole 4-2-5 thing yet. Something clicked against WMU. It is fun to think that if it is healthy that the offense should be better than it was through most of last year before Rourke went down. There is almost no way that our defense can be as bad as it was through the first six games last year.

"It would be nice to see a better overall record against Group of 5 teams, especially against Sun Belt / Mountain West teams."

The MAC had a solid record of 4 and 2 in bowl games last season.