Introducing the latest must-have diagnostic tool for all Huskie Football fans, the Playing Time Probability Chart.  It breaks down the 2010 Huskie roster according to position and likelihood of seeing meaningful playing time, i.e. getting substantial reps when a game is still in question.  Garbage time does not count.  Some notes about the chart:

• The categories "Starter" and "Likely Meaningful Snaps" are interchangeable in some cases.  Those two columns list the guys we know will play a lot.
• The "Possible" and "Doubtful" columns are self-explanatory.  "Possibles" need to work their way into the mix in fall camp if they expect to play this year.
• I have Antoine Kirkland listed at WR in addition to RB because he worked in the slot some during the spring game.  I have DeMarcus Grady listed at WR in addition to QB because I wish it so.
• No offensive linemen are listed in the "Likely" column because unlike other positions the o-line starters usually play the vast majority of the time.  
• I have Chandler Harnish and Casey Weston listed as the top two QB's, to be determined which plays more.  If Weston can play and Harnish stays healthy I doubt Grady plays much QB this year.
• Ricky Crider and Jasmin Hopkins are in the "Possible" column because I'm not sure four guys will see meaningful carries this year.  One of those two likely will, not sure which yet. 
• Most true freshmen are listed as "Doubtful".  I listed CJ Compher as "Possible" because Kill said he plays H-back and we don't have any of those guys on the roster.  Alan Smith was playing FB in the spring game.  I'm guessing walkon Ricky Connors plays fullback because of his size but he could end up at linebacker or somewhere else.
• Most linebackers are listed in the "Possible" column because once you get past the first four guys (five including Pat Schiller who's coming back from injury) we don't know how they stack up.  That will be determined in fall camp.  Schiller is listed as "Possible" due to his injury.
• Safety Mike Sobol is listed as "Possible" due to his injury.
• I have Mathew Sims listed as the starting kicker because of comments we've heard from the coaches and because the other guys looked really underwhelming when practicing kickoffs before the spring game.

Playing Time Probability Chart

National Signing Day for college football recruits always generates a discussion of the accuracy and value of recruit ratings by the various recruiting websites.  It seems like there's a self fulfilling element involved, where recruits to the high profile teams like Notre Dame and Michigan will always get high ratings because hey, they're getting recruited by Notre Dame and Michigan.  The opposite is also true, where recruits to the non-BCS conferences are rated low.  Most comic is when ratings change as a recruit moves up to a BCS team or down to a non-BCS team. 

For some perspective I thought it would be fun to see how the members of the 2009 All-MAC first team were rated when they came out of high school.  Here are the results in an excel file: 2009 All MAC First Team

Click through to see the entire embedded chart

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Despite its disappointing outcome the Ohio-NIU game was certainly exciting to watch.  It's too bad it wasn't televised because it showed how entertaining MAC football can be.  That was two good teams going at it for 60 minutes.  Congratulations to the Bobcats on their well-deserved victory.

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NIU's loss to Toledo really threw the MAC bowl picture into disarray.  Here's what we know so far:

• The MAC is assured of three bowls this year.  More than three have come available in recent years and that may happen this year as well but only three are assured.
• Barring an epic collapse CMU will be the MAC West champ and go to a bowl.
• The MAC East champ will go to a bowl.
• The following teams will be home for the holidays: Akron (1-5), Miami (0-7), EMU (0-6), Ball State (0-6).

Now for some best-guess prognostication of how the rest of the MAC will shake out:

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It's easy to be a frontrunner, as NIU's football team can attest, yuk yuk.  Seriously though, while us fair weather fans are ready to take a step back after Saturday's disappointing loss at Toledo the coaches have to dig in even harder.  I would say times like this are when they really earn their money: when the players are down, when the fans are heaping abuse their way, when the recruits may be wavering.

The coaches need to repair their teams' psyche, fix what's broken schematically and get ready for another road game five days from now.  The best analogy I can use is professional golf.  A pro golfer can be grinding away in a major tournament and miss a make-able putt which results in a costly bogey of the hole.  Since he will be teeing off on the next hole within the next two minutes or so he needs to get beyond the disappointment immediately and turn his mind toward executing his next shot or his entire tournament will be in jeopardy.  I'm always amazed at how those guys are able to do that. 

I expect the Miami game to be a difficult challenge because of lingering dissappointment from the Toledo game, because Miami has been improving and desperately wants to win a game, because the MAC is so unpredictable in general, and because the Huskies have been so erratic this season.  This Huskie team is the office pool's worst nightmare: you never know which version will show up. 

All I know is the coaches need to get it done this week.  If not they'll really find out how much fun it is to coach at the FBS level.  The rewards are greater but so is the scrutiny.       

It's official, we're mediocre. 

I had allowed myself to believe the Idaho game was an aberration.  They were coming off a big win at Purdue, they were tired, they'd read their press clippings a bit too much, etc, etc.  But they learned their lesson, and look how they came back at Western Michigan!

Nope.  Their performance at Toledo, coming off a bye week, was by far their worst of the season, even worse than Idaho.  At least Idaho is a good team.  Give Toledo credit, they made plays when they had to, but they are mediocre at best.  Giving up 30+ points a game, starting a true freshman QB and so on. They are bad and we managed to lose to them yet again.

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Just a quick note here.

The Huskies have played 6 games this season and been completely unprepared to play two of them. 

Not good.

The Huskies are almost halfway through their season on this bye week.  To be more precise they're let's see, 5 out of 12, carry the 2, uh yeah, about halfway through the season.  So this is as good a time as any to assign some grades to the players and coaches. Before we get to it I need to say a few words about the great Bob Chmiel who provides color commentary for many Huskie games on Comcast.

What are the words I need to say?  Pad Under Pad!  Bob just loves to shout that phrase.  He gets more excited and louder as he says it, sometimes repeating it as "Pad Under Pad!!  PAD UNDER PAD!!!"  I think his head might explode one of these times.  It would make for a great drinking game for the students, to do a shot every time Bob Chmiel yells "Pad Under Pad!!"  I don't know if they could make it to halftime. 

Speaking of sports cliches here's another great one: "He runs behind his pads!!".  Don't you always do that anyway, sort of like, I don't know, running behind your nutsack?  "Watch how he runs behind his nutsack here!!"  Does it really take special talent to do that?  

I'm just teasing Mr. Chmiel.  I know he loves the Huskies and I appreciate his enthusiasm.  Now on to the grades.

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Two quick notes on the game notes for this weekend's game with Western Michigan:

1. Phil Brown appears on the two-deep at middle linebacker.  I hope he gets in the game since we need better production from the MIKE position.
 
2. Not that it matters all that much but the Game Participation chart from the Idaho game is all messed up.

[Note by Mike Breese, 09/29/09 7:10 PM CDT ] Yeah, they have like nobody participating in the Idaho game.  The person keeping track of this must have been distracted by the cheerleaders/lady ref the whole game.

As poorly as the Huskies tackled last Saturday, and it was poor, the game came down to three key plays.  If any one of them went the Huskies' way they had a good chance to pull out the win.  That's how crazy these games are.  The plays?

• The interference call on David Bryant that nullified Tracy Wilson's interception in the end zone.  That was a bad call.  Bryant barely touched the guy and he certainly didn't impede him in any way.  Idaho subsequently scored a touchdown on that possession.
• The third down pass completion on Idaho's final possession of the first half.  You'll recall the Huskies pinned them deep on the kickoff and used timeouts to stop the clock as we had them at third and long.  Their QB made an absolutely perfect throw up the left sideline for a completion to the 6'6" receiver to keep the drive alive.  Idaho went on to score a TD during that possession on the long screen pass up the right sideline.
• The third down pass completion on Idaho's final possession of the game.  This was the diving catch by the 6'6" guy (him again!).  An incompletion there and the Huskies get the ball back around midfield with time to tie or win in regulation.  I thought we had them at that point. 
  

Hopefully our boys learn from this one that you can't cut it that close and hope to win.  I like our chances this weekend if they bring the kind of passion they showed at Purdue.   

I watched the Idaho game again and since we've dumped all over everyone for two days now let me give out some kudos to a few guys who played well.

• Landon Cox made that awesome run after catch in the first half and caught at TD pass in the second half.
• Willie Clark had a tough run after catch on the first possession and wrestled the ball away for a TD late in the half on a real nice play.  He also drew pass interference the one and only time in the game they threw downfield.
• Chad Spann ran very hard as usual on very limited touches.  
• Darnell Bolding applied good pressure on several occasions.  I would like to see more of him as a situational speed rusher.
• Tommy Davis and Ricky Crider did a great job in the return game.  It will be fun to watch those guys this season. 
  
• Chandler Harnish did well for the most part.  He was lucky the guy was out of bounds on the near interception but otherwise took good care of the ball and ran well.
• Speaking of near interceptions, the pass interference call on David Bryant that nullified Tracy Wilson's pick was terrible.  I thought so when I saw it in real time and even more so now.  
• Josh Wilber did better in the punt game this week. 

Congratulations to the Idaho Vandals on their great win over our Huskies this weekend.  Rarely has a score been more misleading as the Vandals' domination was thorough.  Much like last year's Central Michigan game the Huskies hung around and somehow, incredibly made it close.  They even had a chance to win at the end but a great throw and catch by the Vandals put it away.  

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 The list of players who will not or may not participate in the Idaho game is long:

• OT Kevin Skatrud - Out for the season
• NT Mike Krause - Out for the season
• DL Kyle Jenkins - Out for the season
  
• DE Mike Kritikos - Just resumed practicing after suffering a serious leg injury in the spring, still unknown if and when he can play.
• TE Jason Schepler - Out indefinitely with dislocated elbow
• LB/KR John Tranchitella - Out with a knee injury, hopes to return for Western Michigan
• OG Joe Pawlak - Questionable for the Idaho game (ankle)
  
• DE Jake Coffman - Doubtful for the Idaho game (unkown)
  

That's quite a list, and good players all, including several starters.  If you told me before the season that we would be facing this I would say we're in dire straits but this Huskie team has had enough young players step up they should be able to weather this while performing at a high level.  They are especially fortunate that freshmen Brian Lawson, Sean Progar and Alan Baxter along with sophomores Ron Newcomb and Adam Coleman have stepped up on the defensive line or they would be in real bad shape there. 

Still, here's hoping some of the injured guys get back soon and we don't suffer any more major losses.

Here's where a few more players recruited by the Huskies ended up.  See Part 1 here. 

WR Terrance Gourdine ended up at Eastern Michigan, a nice get for them.  At one point he was headed to West Virginia.

DB Javarious Riley went to Eastern Kentucky, an FCS program in the same league as Eastern Illinois.

LB Devin King went to Central Missouri, a good DII program.  Their quarterback Eric Czerniewski,  who was on the Huskies' radar a few years back, has had a heck of a career down there.  

I still haven't found Fritz Rock.  I assume he's playing JC somewhere.  Anyone?

Now that we're three games into the new season let's take a quick look at the MAC football coaching hotseat.

We'll know more once conference play starts but a few trends are already clear.  All the coaches in the MAC West are in good shape with the possible exception of Stan Parrish at Ball State.  He gets a pass this year due to the tremendous loss of talent from last year's squad but this season has gone poorly so far and if he gets off to a bad start next year he could be in trouble.

In the MAC East I would say Kent State's Doug Martin and Akron's J.D. Brookhart, both in their sixth season at their respective schools, have to be feeling some heat.  Neither has been able to field a consistent winner and the natives are getting restless, particularly on the Akron message board.  There's still lots of time for these guys to turn it around this season but Kent State is dealing with the unfortunate loss of Eugene Jarvis and currently starting a freshman at quarterback while Akron has suspended their senior quarterback indefinitely.  We'll check back in later this season to see how it's gone.

This is a much abbreviated version of the draft my wife just accidentally deleted after I worked on it for about 45 minutes.  Don't ask. 

A nice win for our boys down in West Lafayette, and boy was that a long time coming, our first win over a BCS team since 2003!

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It was a beautiful fall evening on Saturday at Huskie Stadium as our Huskies took on the Leathernecks of Western Illinois University.  Major kudos to Jeff Compher and his staff for continuously tweaking the gameday experience to achieve its current state, which is terrific in my opinion.  I actually got goosebumps when the Huskies made their entrance to the field right before gametime.  The whole evening’s production had to be impressive to any recruits who were in the house.    

Everyone knows of our sorry history against FCS (1AA) competition in general and WIU in particular but there was no repeat of the 2007 SIU debacle on this night. 

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I finally made it out to a practice today (Wednesday) and here are a few of my observations.

• The first team offense and defense took a lot of reps so it looks like they're getting ready to play now and working the backups less. 
• The first team offense included the usual suspects on o-line with Trevor Olson, Jason Onyebuagu, Eddie Adamski and Joe Pawlak left to right.  Panan Tense worked almost exclusively with the first team so it's hard to believe he won't be the starter at right tackle. 
• Landon Cox, Willie Clark and Marcus Lewis were the first team wideouts.  Nathan Palmer was going full speed in pads with the second team, which was great to see.  He looks like he'll be ready for Wisconsin. 

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I like to double back and see where some of the guys who were unclaimed on signing day ended up.  Here's a partial list, I'll have more later.  Some of these guys were on NIU's radar, others are just local guys of interest.  

QB Matt Rossi, Palatine - Augustana

QB Josh Hasenberg, Bartlett - Colgate

LB Ethan Armstrong, Ottawa (NIU Offer) - Wisconsin walkon

DE Joe Forgy, Ellsworth, Iowa CC (NIU Offer) - Iowa walkon

RB Bobby Pettis, Argo - Missouri U of Science and Technology

RB Jacob Arnold, Plainfield (Dominique Ware's teammate) - Grand Rapids CC

RB Dominique Bell, Morgan Park - Joliet JC

RB Scottie Williams, Downers Grove South - Elmhurst College  (More on him later)

RB Tyler Hudetz, Joliet Catholic - North Central College

RB Mike Gyetvay, Fremd - Augustana

QB Jordan Roberts, Aurora Christian - Wheaton College

QB Victor Scott, Morgan Park - Gave up the gridiron for basketball.

I still haven't found where a bunch of guys on NIU's radar ended up, including Javarious Riley, Fritz Rock, Devin King, Terrance Gourdine and Deante Triplett.  Please fill me in if you know anything.  Some of these guys were probably non-qualifiers. 

Scottie Williams to Elmhurst College?  What a great get for them!  I saw him play and he is terrific.  Really fast, give him a seam and he takes it to the house.  I was hoping he would come to NIU as I think he's clearly good enough to succeed in the MAC.  He should have a field day at the D-III level, much like Oak Park's Levell Coppage did at Whitewater last year as a true freshman.  Elmhurst should be fun to watch.  Their coach, Western Michigan hall-of-famer Tim Lester, is considered an offensive guru and getting a great player like Scottie Williams should certainly help his cause.  I predict Lester is the next head coach at WMU when Cubit retires.  He used to be on the staff there and now he's earning his head coaching chops at the DIII level.  A smart career path, the same one PJ Fleck should follow.  One more note on Elmhurst.  Lester is certainly making his mark in his second year at the helm as he brought in an eye-popping 65 new players this year.    That has to be a record at any level.  Among the casualties: former Huskie Shaun Ratay, who played some TE last year, and Kevin Sabock's older brother Dan. 

One more interesting note apropos of nothing.  Former Iowa QB Jake Christensen has ended up at Eastern Illinois where somehow he was granted eligibility even though he had already redshirted one year and played three more.

As the 2009 Huskie lineup continues to take shape during fall camp it occurred to me that a large number of former walkons could see moderate to substantial playing time this fall.  Check it out:

Offense

• Willie Clark, Sophomore WR - Played in all 13 games as a redshirt freshman last year including a start in the Independence Bowl.  Won the Jawan Jackson award, which honors the walk-on who has the greatest impact on the team.  One of the top 3 projected WRs this upcoming season.
  
• Jason Schepler, Sophomore TE - Played in 11 games last year as a true freshman at backup TE and Special Teams.  Projected starter for the upcoming season, beating out incumbent Reed Cunningham.
  
• Chad Spann, Junior RB - Played in all 13 games last year and started in the Independence Bowl.  Second leading returner at running back with 429 yds and 8 TDs LY.
  
• Joe Pawlak, Sophomore OL - Played in 11 games last season.  Projected starter at RG for this upcoming season if Skatrud is unable to play.
  
• Connor Flahive, Junior FB - Played in 11 games last season, including a start in the Independence Bowl.  Filled in nicely when starter Kyle Skarb went down with an injury late in the season.
• Mike Salerno, Senior K - Arguably the best kicker in the MAC.  On the preseason Lou Groza Award Watchlist.

Defense

• Sean Progar, RS Freshman DE - Redshirted and named defensive work team player of the year.  Continually talked up as someone to receive significant playing time this year on the DL.
  
• Mike Kritikos, Senior DE - Played in all 13 games last year.  Out right now with a leg injury suffered in the Spring, but could make an impact if he is able to make it back on the field.
• Victor Jacques, RS Freshman MLB - Redshirted as a fullback last year, but moved to linebacker in the Spring.  As impressive as anybody on camp and looks to split a lot of time backing up Pat Schiller.
• Rashaan Melvin, RS Freshman CB - Redshirted last year.  Could see playing time at 3rd or 4th DB.
  
• Garrett Barnas, Junior SS - Originally committed to Syracuse until they pulled his offer.  The JC transfer was All-Everything at Harper College and looks to make an immediate impact in the secondary.

Eleven guys, that might be a record.  There's some tremendous talent in that group as some of those guys have all-MAC potential.  I guess it proves that recruiting never stops, scouting and evaluation are critical, and the players you pick up as walkons are as important as the scholarship guys. 

The NIU Huskie offense, which was truly prolific earlier in this decade, has fallen on hard times of late.  The last two seasons have been painful to watch from an offensive standpoint.  Actually the 2007 season was painful to watch period, but hopefully a season like that won't come around again any time soon.

What was the cause of the offensive decline in recent years?  Defensive trends? Improvement of the MAC?  Bad luck?  Those may have had something to do with it but the main culprit is recruiting, the dreaded R-word that has such a huge bearing on success at the D-1 level.  Specifically, recruiting of the skill positions (Quarterback, Running Back, Wide Receiver) where the Huskies came up short far too often in recent years.  An examination of recent Huskie recruiting classes demonstrates the lack of success in recruiting effective skill position players.  You need to add effective players every year in order to sustain success and the Huskie coaching staff was unable to do so. 

Here's the offensive production year by year with major contributors in parentheses:

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I recently had a brief conversation with NIU Associate Vice President and Director of Athletics Jeff Compher and here are a few of his comments.  I don't think I'm talking out of school with any of this, just interesting comments.

I asked him about the rumors flying around the blogosphere awhile back about the MAC as a whole or individual MAC schools dropping down to FCS level for football and he said that's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.  He was emphatic in his response and the question actually seemed to offend him a bit.  I thought it was stupid too but I had to ask.  Don't shoot the messenger!

He said NIU's goal is to be the first MAC BCS buster and everyone is on the same page in its pursuit.  Sounds good to me, and Ball State showed us last year that it's not as farfetched as you may think.  I would have loved to see them run the table last year just to make the case but at least they were in the conversation.

Like me he believes the Huskie football program is on the verge of great things and he had an interesting comment about the current team.  He said some teams play hard because they fear for their playing time or the coaches kick their butts and some are on a mission because they believe in their coach.  He said this Huskie team is in the latter category in that they absolutely love Jerry Kill.  That's great to hear because if you can get a team to drink the kool-aid there is no limit to what they can achieve. And look what Coach Kill did at SIU, taking a team that was nearly dropped by the university to the heights of the FCS level in spite of terrible facilities.  Not something just any coach can pull off.

There's still a little money owed on the Yordon Center so break out the checkbooks fans, let's get that taken care of so we can move on to the next thing.  The next football facility priorities are the press box and the indoor practice facility, no surprise on either front.  They have not yet determined how big the indoor practice facility will be.  It depends on how many other sports they decide to accommodate with it.  It will connect to the north side of the Yordon Center if its final design fits in that space.  The pace of the future facilities plan depends on increasing the size of the season ticket base, makes sense.

Yes, the title of this article is taken from the 1979 song of the same name by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.  It popped into my head as I considered an article about good things going on with the Huskie football program, of which there are many.  Hopefully you can get the song out of your head.  Here is my list in no particular order:

• The new turf at Huskie Stadium looks awesome.  And the Yordon Center is still one of the finest football facilities in the country.
  
• Head football coach Jerry Kill is still a dashing, handsome man.
• So are offensive and defensive coordinators Matt Limegrover and Tracy Claeys.  OK that's just piling on. 
  
• We have a BCS school (Kansas) coming to Huskie Stadium for the first time since 2003 with hopefully more to follow.
• The 2009 Huskies are projected by most prognosticators to have a winning record and contend for a bowl.  You can argue the Huskies have a chance to win any given game this year and that's all you can ask for.
• The large majority of 2009 Huskie contributors will be back in 2010, which is shaping up to be a banner year in Huskie football.
  
• The Huskies are into their second year with the current coaching staff and should be much more comfortable with the offense than they were heading into last year.  There was no coaching turnover in the offseason.
  
• Our quarterback Chandler Harnish is an emerging star who should show great improvement in 2009 based on his starting experience last year.
• Offensive linemen Eddie Adamski and Jason Onyebuagu are being touted for all- MAC status and left tackle Trevor Olson is an emerging star.  Hopefully the offensive line as a whole can get back to the status it enjoyed earlier in this decade as the best in the MAC.
• Kicker Mike Salerno is money.  And he can make sure his brother does his homework. 
• The defense led by NFL-prospect safety David Bryant should be stout again as so many players saw playing time with last year's terrific defensive unit.  No truth to the rumor that Bryant will play every position on the field this year although he probably could if he wanted to. 
• The schedule worked out pretty well this year considering the realities of an ESPN world.  The home opener is a night game which always makes for a great atmosphere.  Fireworks anyone?
• Speaking of ESPN, most 2009 Huskie games will be televised, which would have been a ridiculous prospect just a few short years ago. 
• The Huskies have cracked the Rivals 5.5 rating barrier with several 2009 and 2010 recruits and are in the running for several of the top players in Illinois.
• The Huskie Marching Band rocks!
• I almost forgot the best one of all: fall camp starts in less than two weeks.  Go Huskies!!

Congratulations to Jeff Compher on signing the one for one that will bring Kansas to Huskie Stadium in 2012.  Terrific job and much appreciated.  Check below to see my ideas for other BCS opponents to visit DeKalb...

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As we inch closer to the start of the '09 football season (the Wisconsin game is 59 days away as of this writing!) and the new recruits are on campus working out prior to fall camp, let's take a look at who among them might see the field this fall.

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University of Nevada Athletics Director Cary Groth, who formerly held the same position at NIU, has been able to schedule home football games against UCLA and Arizona !!

That's quite an accomplishment considering their stadium seats 29,993 , only slightly more than Huskie Stadium.  

This should give us hope that NIU can do something similar.  The word out  there is that NIU AD Jeff Compher is actively working to bring some BCS teams into Huskie Stadium and that would be most welcome.

Now that CFN/Scout has come out with their 2009 preview on the Huskies (CFN/Scout Preview) let's see how I did on my predictions of their two-deep (Predictions). 

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College Football News (www.cfn.scout.com) is currently rolling out their previews of each FBS team and their previews include an overview, offensive analysis, defensive analysis and a depth chart.  Since the Machine did not publish a spring two-deep it will be interesting to see what CFN comes up with.  Here's my best guess.  The starters have been identified to a large degree based on spring practice but the backups?  Who knows.  This will obviously change when the true freshmen arrive at fall camp so this only includes current players.

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Here are a few quick observations from yesterday's Spring Game.  I first want to note that I stopped at the softball field and watched an inning of the Huskies' game against Eastern Michigan.  I had never done that before and I found the field to be real nice and a great place to watch a game.  I highly recommend it to everyone in the future.   The Huskies were wearing all-black uniforms (black shirt, black pants, black socks) and they looked great.  Maybe the football team could do an all-black alternate uni sometime.  If they looked as good as the softball team it would be awesome.  If you ever watch softball on TV, like the NCAA championship, you'll notice some of the ladies tend to be, you know, gigantic.  I mean yoooge.  There was no one on either team yesterday wholooked remotely like that.  All the ladies looked fit and athletic so kudos to both teams for their fitness. 

The Spring Game itself was mostly remarkable for the number of first /second stringers who barely played or played not at all.  Here's a list off the top of my head:

• RB Chad Spann
• RB Justin Anderson
• FB Kyle Skarb
• TE Reed Cunningham
• WR Willie Clark
• DE Jake Coffman
• DE Mike Kritikos
• DE Brandon Bice (played one series)
• LB Pat Schiller (played one series)
• LB Cory Hanson
• S Mike Sobol
• S Jody VanLaanen

The first team offense was as follows:

• WR Landon Cox
• WR Nate Palmer
• WR Marcus Lewis
• TE Sorry, I don't remember.  Schepler, Beckner and Marks played quite a bit.
• LT Trevor Olson
• LG Jason Onyebuagu
• C Eddie Adamski
• RG Panan Tense
• RT Kevin Skatrud
• QB Chandler Harnish
• RB Meco Brown

The first team defense was:

• LE Brandon Bice
• DT Mike Krause
• NT DJ Pirkle
• RE Sean Progar-Jackson
• OLB John Tranchitella
• MLB Pat Schiller (followed by Victor Jacques)
• OLB Alex Kube
• CB Patrick George
• SS Tracy Wilson
• FS David Bryant
• CB Kiaree Daniels

The personnel of the offensive units stayed pretty consistent as they rotated through while the defense changed it up quite a bit.  A few comments:

• DeMarcus Grady seems to be solidly entrenched in the #2 QB spot. He threw some nice balls although he still has that kind of a windup to his throwing motion.  As long as it works.  He looked terrific running the ball as always.   
• Meco Brown looked pretty good, as everyone has noted.  The Machine seems to be leaning toward Meco as his #1 for the fall but we'll see when Chad Spann jumps back into the competition.
• As I noted in my practice report from a few weeks back, it was hard to evaluate the QBs, WRs and defensive backs because most of the throws were short dump-offs.  They're completing most of those and I sure hope so. 
• They ran quite a bit of no-huddle, which was great to see.  I'll have more on that in another column. 
• It was hard to evaluate the defense with so many backups in there in various combinations.  It will be great if they can get Mike Kritikos back for the season because he's a veteran, established speed rusher and they need one.  Some of the younger guys like Sean Progar-Jackson and Darnell Bolding have potential but I'll take experience any day.   Victor Jacques impressed as he flew around out there at middle linebacker.  He's going to be a real good one in the middle.   

First a quick note about blogging.  I saw the movie "State of Play" this weekend and the mainstream press character played by Russell Crowe makes great fun of bloggers as amateurs and lightweights.  It's a very good movie and you can certainly understand the sentiment from highly skilled, poorly paid (in general) professionals who are watching their industry implode as bloggers come out of the woodwork.  Imagine something similar happening in your line of work: I don't think you would appreciate it either. 

With that in mind I want to say for the record that I in no way consider myself a journalist, not even close.  I would never make that claim.   I'm a (dork) fan who likes Huskie sports, especially football, and enjoys sharing his uneducated opinions as a diversion from everyday life.  Hopefully the euphemistic banner atop my columns makes that clear.  I also want to reiterate how much I appreciate the great job the real press, i.e. the Chronicle and John Sahly, is doing in covering the Huskies.  To the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate: rock on, and may your newsprint long stain my fingers!   Now if you'll excuse me I have to go Twitter what I just had for dinner.....  

On to the topic at hand.  I always get a kick out of watching the comings and goings of college quarterbacks, probably because they come and go so much, certainly more than any other position.  I suppose it's the nature of the beast.  In order to play quarterback you need a keen sense of leadership, a burning need to be the leader, and it's tough to lead from the bench.  You can imagine the "this does not compute" messages rattling around their brains when they're stuck on the sideline, hence the desire to move on to better opportunities.  Plus they've got their family, friends and former teammates saying "Dude, how come you're not starting?".  That has to be  hard to take when you've always been the star.   

At NIU we've had several quarterbacks come and go in the recent past including Billy Lowe, former walkon Sean Ratay and Zach Ullrich to name but a few.  There have been several quarterback moves around the midwest recently, some you may have heard of, and I thought I would share what I've  heard.  Some of them are mildly connected to NIU and the MAC, others not.  Each one is a drama in its own right as these guys seek their destiny behind center.   

First let's cover the QBs I mentioned above since I brought them up.

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