Head Coach: Lance Taylor is entering his 3rd year as the head coach of the Broncos with a 10-15 record. He’s been slowly building the program, and last year represented solid improvement with a bowl appearance but they started strong and the next step will be maintaining that the entire season.
Program Outlook: Western Michigan is a program that is used to seeing success. At a minimum they typically finish with a winning record but are occasionally capable of more. This is still the most recent program in the MAC to appear in a major bowl game. In general this is a program that is near the top of the MAC in resources and with the right buttons pushed can compete for MAC championships and even a playoff birth.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Western Michigan ranks 126th in the country returning 34% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. Key players for Western Michigan unsurprisingly starts with the run game, RB Jalen Buckley was really good in 2023 but hampered by injuries in 2024 with Jaden Nixon gone, Buckley is set to take over as the star and Michigan transfer Cole Cabana will factor in as well. There’s been a lot of stud TEs in the MAC recently and Blake Bosma was not the first name on people’s minds last season but with others gone he’s set to be one of the star TEs in the conference. QB will be a battle between sophomore Broc Lowry and Juco transfer Brady Jones. The offensive line will be a mystery with how it comes together but it is loaded with larger power conference transfers so there’s great size at a minimum. Receiver is also a question mark with basically all of the top options coming from the portal. The defense will be led by a tremendous pair of safeties in Tate Hallock and Aaron Wofford. Corner Jordon Thomas from Eastern Kentucky was a good portal pickup. The linebackers will be a next man up situation but the new starters performed well when given the chance. The defensive line took some portal hits especially on the inside, they lack depth in there and it’s not clear where the pass rush will come from.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: Western Michigan gets a very challenging slate for 2025. The Broncos non-conference features an in-state opportunity against Michigan State, a tough challenge at Illinois and an interesting home opportunity against North Texas. Even the FCS opponent isn’t a guarantee because Rhode Island is a potential top 10 FCS team. The MAC schedule gives some games against rebuilding teams like UMass, Central Michigan and Ball State but it would have been nice if they didn’t miss Akron and Kent State. There’s a decent amount of winnable games though.
Final Thoughts: Normally year 3 is when you see a coaches team come together fully in their image and you can see some of that here. This team is a pretty large reset, but at its core you can see where this is Lance Taylor’s team with some really good backs and a big Oline. How this team comes together will be critical, especially because of the non-conference slate.
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