Contending for MAC in Year 1, Matt Drinkall’s Central Michigan exceeded expectations

Central Michigan can make the MAC title game, however unlikely that may be at this point. 

And if you shared that fact with Chippewa faithful when head coach Matt Drinkall got hired in December of 2024, it would’ve been hard to surmise that this season would be anything other than a success. And whether or not Central Michigan does get a berth in Detroit on Dec. 6, it’s safe to say that Drinkall and Co. have managed a one-year turnaround that is, in fact, an unqualified success. 

“So I'm not totally shocked but at the same time, I wish I had a cooler answer where it's like, 'Yeah, this was our plan from the beginning,'” Drinkall said this week. “But at the same time, we thought we could be competitive instantly. We thought that. And to what level, I don't know. Each game we thought we could be competitive.”

Central Michigan (7-4, 5-2 MAC) hosts Toledo (7-4, 5-2) on Saturday at noon in Kelly/Shorts Stadium for a game that could potentially send the Chippewas to the conference title game in Year 1 under a new coaching regime. But for that to happen, Central Michigan also needs Buffalo to beat Ohio and Ball State to beat Miami (OH). 

It’s a slim set of circumstances, but not an improbable one. And it would be fitting in some senses for the Chippewas to beat the odds and make it to Detroit, since that’s what happened this year. 

“It's like, we win nine games, we're awesome and eight games we're losers? Or six games we're awesome and five games we're losers? I don't know about that,” Drinkall said. “So for us to just go out and play our best every week and see how it goes, I guess, that was a driving factor.” 

And it’s worth remembering just how heavily this team was counted out. 

When Drinkall got hired after Jim McElwain’s retirement, a bulk of the roster was in the portal or eying an exit. Instead of mass exodus, Drinkall and his young coaching staff retained the players who became key to this Central Michigan team: Quarterback Joe Labas, linebackers Dakota Cochran and Jordan Kwiatkowski, defensive lineman Michael Heldman, wideouts Langton Lewis, Tyson Davis and Tommy McIntosh and running back Nahree Biggins, among others. 

But even a seasoned, retained roster in Mt. Pleasant didn’t inspire much confidence, as the Chippewas were picked in the preseason MAC coaches poll to finish in the bottom half of the league. 

It wasn’t maybe an unfair expectation for a first-time FBS head coach and a staff that Drinkall has said repeatedly is green and required players to trust that they could install and execute their plan. In short, there was a lot of proving to do for the coaching staff with a roster that they thought they could succeed with. 

“I guess I never really thought about it. To me, the thing was really like, in all seriousness, we liked the roster a ton. The roster was part the appeal of the job, you know what I mean? You just know at this level and this time of college football, however good somebody was the year before doesn't really mean anything?

Well that plan has been executed, if not to perfection then something with a passing grade, surely. It started with the players buying in and committing to the cultural shift in the offseason, and kicked into overdrive when they started to see it pan out on the field. 

The Chippewas knew they had a shot to be competitive and good after a win over San Jose State in the opener. 

“Honestly, it probably clicked in Week 1,” senior cornerback Brandon Deasfernandes said. “Because we surprised a lot of ourselves right then and there. Like, even though it wasn't conference play then, we knew the levels we could get to and the confidence interval or ratio in our team and our skillset and our talent and our hard work and our communication, all of those tied together, just gave us more confidence.”

Losses to Pitt and Michigan might’ve obscured the possibilities momentarily, but then the Chippewas reeled off a 5-2 record in conference play leading into this weekend. 

In one of the losses, at Western Michigan, the Chippewas didn’t leave much on the field or feel like they played in a way that couldn’t have won the game. They led by two scores in the second half, and Western Michigan just gritted its teeth and won in a way that showed why the Broncos have locked up a bid to Ford Field already. 

The other, a loss at Akron, is the only time Drinkall felt this team really didn’t play well since conference play began. 

“And we just really wanted to play high-quality football and never beat yourself,” Drinkall said. “And if you can do that, you've got a good shot to do that. So that's where one of our losses, we were really frustrated with just because we weren't the best version of ourselves. The rest of them, we played Western and lost at the end, led the whole game. Shit, like, tip your hat. They did a great job. We played our butts off, kids did a great job, staff did a great job, just came up one play short.”

And while Central Michigan has played an ostensibly soft MAC schedule so far, avoiding all the top teams and getting a visit from winless UMass, it now stares down a Toledo team that’s also competing for a bid in the MAC title game. And the Rockets have been the class of the MAC for much of head coach Jason Candle’s tenure. 

The Rockets produce NFL talent with regularity and have made it a habit of contending for league titles. This Toledo team might not be an offensive juggernaut, but the defense is as good as they come in the MAC. 

So if Buffalo wins and Ball State upsets Miami (OH), Central Michigan will still have an uphill climb to get a Senior Day win that could be monumental for the program. 

But this season presented a steep challenge for the Chippewas, one they’ve met at every turn.