Head Coach: Matt Drinkall is entering his first season as the head coach of the Chippewas. He previously served as an assistant at Army for several years, including coaching a Joe Moore award winning Oline last year. His experience at Army will prove beneficial to this program I believe.
Program Outlook: Central Michigan is a proud program. The Chips are used to winning more often than not and we all remember the Dan LeFevour years when they were the team to beat in the conference. Outside of the LeFevour years this program has an identity rooted in strong line play, particularly the Oline where they once groomed the number 1 overall pick in the NFL draft, and they’ve had several other linemen drafted. In terms of success they have 7 MAC Championships to their name, but they haven’t won the conference since 2009 and they have dealt with some challenging seasons recently but Drinkall plans to get this program back to the top.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Central Michigan ranks 77th in the country returning 52% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. Key players starts with the QB and there’s some sorting out to do, Joe Labas is coming off a tough year but he’s the incumbent starter. The offensive line starters are far from set in stone but I have faith in this coaching staff, they know Olines very well. RB Trey Cornist comes in from Tulane with great potential, he could be a really good back for this team. The defense has its leader in LB Jordan Kwiatkowski, he’s a dawg that I think will take very well to this new staff and Dakota Cochran is a strong running mate next to him. The secondary has a great trio of safeties in Caleb Spann, Elijah Rikard and Maddix Blackwell. This defense did a great job getting after opposing QBs and a lot of the defensive from led by Edge Michael Heldman and DT Dylan Fisher return. The question marks will be how the new transfer corners implement themselves and if they can help improve that position. There’s not a whole lot of depth or experience for any of the offensive skill positions and they particularly took big hits from the portal at receiver, Tyson Davis is back but the rest of the unit needs to be sorted out.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: Central Michigan’s schedule is really tough. The most disadvantageous part is they only have 5 home games, and none of them until September 20th. The non-conference schedule will feature tough road games at San Jose State, Pitt and Michigan. Their FCS foe is once again from the Northeast, this time Wagner who went 4-8 in the NEC last year. The MAC schedule isn’t too bad, they play a lot of other rebuilding teams and their games against their fellow directional Michigan foes are always competitive. They get their toughest games against Toledo and Buffalo at home, which I the flip side to that is they get 5 home games all year and it may not be helpful to have 2 of them against possibly the 2 best in the conference. The schedule makes finding enough wins for a bowl more difficult.
Final Thoughts: Central Michigan could really end up taking a nice step forward this year and here’s why. At best their 2024 version was very untidy, haphazard mess of a team but there’s part of me that wonders if Jim McElwain completely mailed it in. Central Michigan was 2nd to last in the country with a staggering -17 turnover margin, including only 5 forced turnovers on defense all year. Discipline is something I expect to be installed right away, and that alone will help this team make up a lot of ground.
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