MAC Football Spoonwatch 2025: Week 2 Edition

A changing of the guard in the first week!

Week 1 was not, on the whole, a great week for the MAC. The conference went 4-9, with three of those four wins coming against FCS opponents. However, this must be seen in context. Given the massive amounts of roster turnover the conference experiences seemingly weekly at this point, there were standout performances last week that absolutely deserve a lot of credit, and I’ll definitely cover them here. As I said last week, this is not a roast.

There were also

absolute ker-plunks of performances last week, and the worst of these is going to be our new favorites for the wooden spoon.

Again, keeping it to the bottom half of the power rankings until we reach the conference slate.

Favorites for the Wooden Spoon

Massachusetts Minutemen

The only way someone was going to supersede Kent State for this position was if one of the other programs in the bottom quarter of the table put up enough of a stinker to outweigh however the Flashes did against Merrimack. Only three teams really came close to that last week, and one stood out from the rest in my estimation.

Temple is not a good team, even by non-Autonomous standards. The Owls have not finished with a record other than 3-9 in the 2020s excepting the Weird Year (and even then, they went 1-6). Evan Simon did anything and everything he wanted against the Massachusetts defense, throwing for the quarter-century mark in yards and 6 touchdowns on only 19 completions; his Minuteman counterpart, Brandon Rose, could only muster 193 yards and and interception on four more completions. A 42-10 thrashing is not how this season was supposed to start for Massachusetts, and raises significant concerns about their season going forward, especially as they play Bryant of the FCS, who went 2-10 last year. This is an absolute must-win for the Minutemen, on par with Kent State playing St. Francis last year. Kent State dropped that game, and proceeded to lose every game after; will Massachusetts suffer a similar fate? We’ll have to wait and see.

Contenders for the Wooden Spoon

Kent State Golden Flashes

I think for Flashes fans, they’re just happy to be here right now.

Was it a pretty win? No. Was it a statistically impressive win? Also no. Was it a win? Definitely, yes. The goose egg is gone from Kent State’s win column in the first game of a full season for the first time in over a decade, and that deserves commendation. The roster looked very, very new, but they did what they could not do last year: beat an FCS team.

Dru DeShields and CJ Montes combined for 12 completions on 19 attempts, 209 yards, and two touchdowns. Cade Wolford introduced himself to KSU fans with a century day, catching two passes for 109 yards, with both going for touchdowns. The third touchdown of the day for the Flashes had newcomer Da’Realyst Clark returning a kick 100 yards, exactly the kind of mood-booster an exceedingly young team needs at a point like this.

The defense needs some work, particularly in the running facet, but that was expected coming in to this season and this week is something to build off of. Unfortunately it probably won’t happen this weekend, as Kent State goes up against Texas Tech and their billionaire booster who smashed records with NIL fund money this offseason. KSU could cause trouble this year in the conference slate, even if the record doesn’t show it.

Ball State Cardinals

The MAC’s second-worst team in 2024 played the Big Ten’s wooden spoon winners from last year, and it wasn’t close. Even worse, there wasn’t much Ball State could point to as a sign of being competitive. Keeping Ball State from being higher than this is the fact that at the end of the day, Purdue is a Big Ten program with Big Ten money; even if they did win the conference’s spoon in 2024, they can afford to bounce back in ways that Ball State, who lost pretty much everyone in the offseason, just cannot.

Kiael Kelly was completely smothered by the Boilermakers, posting sub-100 yard days both passing and rushing. Only two Cardinals caught more than one pass all day. The offense was the most overhauled unit for Ball State coming in to this season, and facing… let’s call them al dente competition. They were just out of sorts completely. Purdue logged four sacks, and seven tackles-for-loss. The defense did show some life despite giving up 31 points, with a sack, five TFLs, and three passes defended. That’s 2 more defended passes than Purdue had!

Kelly also avoided throwing an interception, which is very good to see for someone who hasn’t started at quarterback in a Hawai’i minute.

The Cardinals play Auburn this weekend, which is not going to be graded that hard against them given that the Tigers looks surprisingly improved.

On the Bubble

Eastern Michigan Eagles

You have to go up several spots in the standings before we come to a MAC team that scored more points than Eastern did last week. But you can’t get fiftyburgered by a Sun Belt team and not get placed pretty low on the list at the start. Granted, it wasn’t just any Sun Belt team, and there’s more of a chance that Texas State is very very good this year more than Eastern being a bottomfeeder, but this was still a concerning performance. Definitely not something you want to see repeated.

That being said, the Eagles did score 27 points. This wasn’t a complete disaster like the games above. Noah Kim had a fine day and so did the running game. As could probably be surmised by the 52 points Eastern allowed, the defense has some screws that need tightening and some joints that could be re-welded. I’m putting them in the bubble category with the full expectation that they probably won’t drop into outright contending for the spoon this year.

Akron Zips

Why hello, Akron!

Yes, I know Wyoming won three games last year. Yes, I know Akron was one of three MAC teams to not score a point last week. But here’s the flip side of that coin: no other team in the conference, top to bottom, allowed as few points as the Zips did and still lost.

Ben Finley did struggle quite a bit, with six more incompletions than completions, and the run game totaled for less than 100 yards even when you cancel out losses. When you look at the box score, it doesn’t seem like the defense did all that well, either. Kaden Anderson still threw for 260 yards, Sam Scott ran for 132, and Chris Durr Jr. had 190 yards receiving. By all means, this has the appearance of a game that should’ve ended by five scores. But at nearly every moment they needed to, Akron’s defense locked in and made the stop. That is how you hold 426 yards of total offense to only 10 points.

Akron’s defensive box stats aren’t that terrible, either. They didn’t register a sack, but had more total and solo tackles, twice as many tackles for a loss, and more defended passes than Wyoming’s defense had. They just need to work on yard control, and they could be a force to contend with this year. Up next is Big Ten also-ran Nebraska, who are very much hoping to shed that label once and for all this year.

Western Michigan Broncos

Gonna keep it brief with Western: please, figure this offense out, and fast, or you will end up higher than a bubble team before you know it.

The defense actually did quite fine against similarly al dente competition in Michigan State. The Broncos outclassed the Spartans in every major defensive statistic. The offense, however, was a complete disaster. Brady Jones and Broc Lowry split time, and both struggled horribly, combining to go 16 for 33, 188 yards, and an interception. The rushing game basically did not exist, totaling 29 yards.

Their next opponent, North Texas, is fresh off killing Lamar in their season opener 51-0. If the offensive woes continue, combined with their defense looking shockingly on point considering how many new players are on it, this could be an ugly, ugly game.