Central Michigan visits Notre Dame as a big underdog

Week 1 is the perfect time for a Group of Five school to sneak up on an in-state Power Five opponent and hit them with a wakeup call from the very start of a season. Look what Texas State did in beating Baylor 42-31 in Waco. Wow.

Central Michigan didn’t get the memo.

The Chippewas had a chance to do something special Sept. 1 against a Michigan State team whose trajectory is as confusing as quantum physics is to a liberal arts major. The Spartans gave head coach Mel Tucker a $95 million contract after an 11-2 season in 2021. He took the money and went 5-7 in 2022.

Tucker’s seat is as hot as ever just a year and a half after the handsomest of paydays, especially after sexual assault allegations against him in recent days. A loss to an inferior foe within Michigan state lines would have signaled a turbulent, likely catastrophic finish to the 2023 campaign.

Instead, the Spartans can breathe a sigh of relief. For now. Central Michigan provided him with a temporary cure-all.

Sparty easily handled the Chips 31-7 despite Central Michigan holding a second quarter lead and only trailing 10-7 at halftime. Michigan State scored 21 unanswered points in the second half to handily cover a 14-point spread.

The Spartans outgained the Chippewas 406 to 219 in total yards. The Chips could only muster 96 yards through the air on 25 attempts, and they went 3 of 16 on third-down conversion attempts. They had the ball for 34:26 of game time and only scored one time.

Yikes. Not a great return to East Lansing for Central Michigan head coach Jim McElwain, Michigan State’s associate head coach, wide receivers coach and special teams coordinator from 2003-05. It still wasn’t enough for McElwain to say it was a foreboding evening for his team’s 2023 season, though.

“I told this football team in the locker room I’ve got a lot of trust in them,” McElwain said in his postgame press conference. “They’re a group that cares. They’re a group that came out and fought hard against some really big guys. I think we will take some things, and it will be good to learn from.”

Internal focus

Notre Dame has some big guys, too. Central Michigan will be overmatched in that department. The only thing that can keep the Chippewas close to the Fighting Irish on Saturday is if they play with heart bigger than the recruiting service scores next to their names. Some of the Chips’ players might not have even had those.

Redshirt freshmen quarterback Bert Emanuel Jr. was a three-star prospect out of high school. He was the No. 83 quarterback and No. 1,352 overall player in the country in the class of 2022 according to the On3 Industry Ranking, which gave him a recruiting score of 83.30.

Emanuel’s top target in the Michigan State game, tight end Mitchel Collier, was also a three-star recruit. He was the No. 133 tight end and No. 2,816 overall player coming out of high school in 2020 according to the On3 Industry Ranking. Those rankings were good for a recruiting score of 77.32.

Those are numbers foreign to a program like Notre Dame.

Notre Dame signed 17 players in the class of 2023 that had recruiting scores of 90 or better. Several of them are already making an impact in the first month of their true freshman season; running back Jeremiyah Love, cornerback Christian Gray, and wide receivers Jaden Greathouse and Rico Flores Jr. come to mind. It was an impressive haul for the Irish.

None of those Notre Dame players are starters, though. Reading between the lines, that means Notre Dame’s backups are better, on paper, than Central Michigan’s starters. And it isn’t particularly close. A Notre Dame loss in this game would be the equivalent of Marshall shocking the Irish in their 2022 home opener.

That game kept Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman up at night throughout the offseason. He doesn’t want to have a repeat situation in the Irish’s first game against a Marshall-like opponent this fall. No, Tennessee State was not Marshall-like. FCS teams are always a notch or two or three below that.

For Notre Dame, Saturday will be about Notre Dame. Sounds redundant, yes, but all it means is if the Fighting Irish play their game and play up to their potential and not down to the ability of the opponent, they’ll be fine. That’s what they did against Navy and Tennessee State, and they outscored those teams by a combined total of 98-6.

“We just have to continue to focus on improvement,” Freeman said. “I don’t want to say that the wins over Navy and Tennessee State don’t matter. They do. But more than the wins, it’s looking internally and saying, ‘OK, did we execute on this assignment? Why or why not?’”

Don’t look ahead

Texas State showed what can happen in season openers in a way Central Michigan could not. But now Central Michigan has a different opportunity to do some sneaking up on Notre Dame; the Irish host the vaunted Ohio State Buckeyes Sept. 23, making this the ultimate “trap game” by definition.

If there is anything that could take Notre Dame’s mind off the task at hand and put the Irish at risk of stooping to Central Michigan’s level, it’s thinking too soon about Ryan Day, Kyle McCord, Marvin Harrison Jr., Miyan Williams and the rest of the Bucks donning scarlet and silver who came into the 2023 season as a popular pick to make it back to the College Football Playoff for the sixth time in program history and the fourth time in the last five seasons.

South Bend is going to be a madhouse next weekend. Ohio State has not played in the House That Rockne Built since 1996. It will be just the third time it’s ever happened, with the other being in 1936. That was only five years removed from Knute Rockne’s tragic death.

There is so much to think about for Notre Dame tied to that game. The Irish simply cannot afford to start thinking about it until sometime Saturday night when they’ve already taken care of Central Michigan.

Upset specials haven’t exactly been CMU’s thing since McElwain took the job in 2019. He has an overall record of 25‑22, and last year’s 4-8 record included wins over Bucknell, Akron, Northern Illinois and Buffalo. There is not exactly a Notre Dame equivalent in that quartet.

Central Michigan has played two teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 at the time of the matchup during McElwain’s tenure. The Chippewas lost 61-0 to No. 17 Wisconsin in 2019 and 33-14 to No. 14 Penn State last year.

Michigan State, as spelled out before, is not on par with where Wisconsin was four years ago and where Penn State was last year. But it is a Power Five program in what is probably the second-best conference in the country. So, when McElwain was asked about how playing the Spartans prepares his squad for future tough tests, there was only going to be one team he’d mention.

A much tougher test indeed.

“Well, we get to go to Notre Dame. So, that will be fun,” he said somewhat sarcastically.

Fun for the Fighting Irish, most likely. 

Facts & Figures: Central Michigan at Notre Dame

Date: Sept. 16, 2023

Site: Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend

Kickoff: 2:30 p.m. ET

Television: Streaming exclusively on Peacock

Radio: This game can be heard on Notre Dame IMG affiliates.

Series facts: This is the first ever meeting between Notre Dame and Central Michigan.

Head coaches: Central Michigan — Jim McElwain (25-22, fifth season); Notre Dame — Marcus Freeman (12-5, 2nd season)

Noting Central Michigan: The Chippewas’ offense put up 219 total yards in Week 1, which placed them No. 124 out of 133 FBS teams in total yards per game through Week 0 and Week 1 … The passing offense was the biggest letdown for the Chips; they only threw for 96 yards, which ranked 128th nationally through Week 1 in passing yards per game … CMU head coach Jim McElwain is one of the most experienced head coaches on the Notre Dame schedule; he made his college coaching debut as a graduate assistant at Eastern Washington in 1985 … McElwain’s other stops include Montana State (1995-99), Louisville (2000-02), Michigan State (2003-05), the Oakland Raiders (2006), Fresno State (2007), Alabama (2008-11), Colorado State (2012-14), Florida (2015-17) and Michigan (2018) … McElwain won two national championships as the offensive coordinator at Alabama; his only two head coaching stops before CMU were Colorado State and Florida … CMU has won the West Division in the Mid-American Conference twice (2019 and 2021) under McElwain.