‘A leader and a winner’: Inside Eastern Michigan’s QB battle between Jeremiah Salem, Noah Kim

Ypsilanti — Chris Creighton is bullish on his 2025 Eastern Michigan team, with the depth and talent to make some noise in the MAC. 

But to parlay promising portents of fall camp into a winning season, the Eagles do have at least one major question to answer before facing Texas State on the road in Week 1: Who will be the starting quarterback?

The two main competitors for the role are senior Jeremiah Salem, a former walk-on who has steadily climbed in the quarterback room in four years, and Noah Kim, a transfer from Coastal Carolina who began his career at Michigan State in 2020. Both are competing for the job throughout camp. And while Creighton and Co. haven’t laid out a specific timeline or threshold for naming a starter, the head coach knows what he’s after under center.

“Always, always, always first looking for a leader and a winner,” Creighton said. “And our group of guys, there's five of 'em, they all have that. They all have leadership ability. They're different, stylistically. They're winners. That doesn't take me or anybody long to figure that out.”

If it were just down to experience and production, Kim has an edge over Salem. 

Salem is 8-for-11 for 126 yards, a touchdown and an interception in his three games of college action, all coming in 2024.

Kim, though, has played in 17 career games and completed 135-of-235 attempts, accumulating 1597 yards and 13 touchdowns to seven interceptions. Plus, Kim has starting experience under his belt. 

But the decision of who gets to start at quarterback is also up to the players, too. The quarterback that earns the trust of the rest of the team and rises to the leadership challenge of the position will get a massive leg up in being QB1. As Creighton said, he’s looking for a leader. 

“How much better have you captured the hearts and the souls of the rest of the guys?” Creighton said. 

So as much as Salem and Kim are trying to show the coaches their mettle, the camp battle is a proving ground amongst teammates, too. 

Familiarity could give Salem the early upper hand, but camp is still young and Kim has plenty of opportunity to win the building over. 

So Creighton, who holds the final decision-making power in the matter, won’t ignore the will of his team as he considers a question that will help define Eastern Michigan’s season. 

“Who the guys want is a big deal,” Creighton said.

Kim and Salem took different paths to this point where they’re competitors, but the two aren’t unfamiliar with each other. 

Salem is the son of Brad Salem, a former Michigan State assistant coach who recruited Kim to East Lansing, originally. So while Salem was still in high school, he got to throw some and be around Kim before they went on their respective journeys.

Kim’s career took him to East Lansing, where he played in nine games across the 2022 and 2023 seasons after sitting out his first two years, earning the starting job at points. He transferred to Coastal Carolina when the coaching staff turned over in East Lansing, and played in seven games in largely a backup role for the Chanticleers. He got back in the portal after the 2024 season and landed in Ypsilanti, where he’s now vying to take the starting job. 

And it meant that Kim’s biggest goal coming into his third program in three years is less about mastering scheme and terminology — he’s become well-practiced at studying playbooks, he said — but building trust and instilling belief in his new team that he can lead them where they want to go. 

“I mean, one, I just want to grow as a football player and then get to know just the rest of the team that I'm with. We've been having team meetings and just talking about each and everybody's like trials and tribulations that they've been through throughout their life and, you know, some of the highs and the lows, too. So when you get to know things like that, it makes you wanna play harder for everybody on the field. And then it just grows a relationship that's deeper than football and goes beyond football. That's something that I want to tap into as well, outside the building and off the field, just having a great relationship with my team.”

Salem moved from mid-Michigan to Tennessee when his dad took a job on the Memphis coaching staff ahead of the 2020 season. Salem transferred from Okemos High School to Houston High School in Germantown, Tennessee, before joining the Eagles program as a walk-on for the 2022 season. 

In his time in Ypsilanti, Salem has steadily risen up the depth chart and competed for the starting job in 2024, the same year he got put on scholarship, before Cole Snyder took the reins.

And during this quarterback competition, Salem is prioritizing getting the most out of each rep he takes.

“Treating every team rep that we have like a game rep,” Salem said. “Like, I might see this scenario later down the line, so what can I learn from each rep individually? And I think that's been big for me. And just trying to keep working on my accuracy, my footwork, all the small things that tie together for a bigger purpose down the line in game time.”

And whoever he ultimately settles on under center, Creighton feels confident that both Kim and Salem — and the rest of the Eagles quarterbacks — have the right make up to help them win.