In order to become bowl eligible for the third time in the last four seasons, Eastern Michigan must win at minimum two of their last three games. The Eagles will play two "MACtion" games on Tuesday nights, both on the road. The first is a road trip on Tuesday, Nov. 12 as the Eagles travel to Infocision Stadium to play the 0-9 Akron Zips and first year head coach Tom Arth.
Akron hasn't scored a touchdown since Sept. 28.
"That should be impossible but until you get into the mind of every guy, that you have to absolutely make sure of, that we have absolutely no right to think that we're better than anybody. But if our guys do think that, that we're just going to walk in there and win, we'll lose the game," head coach Chris Creighton said regarding a "trap game" versus Akron. "I stand by what I've said all along, I think its true really for the past three and a half years and its definitely true this year. We can compete with anybody on our schedule when we are really playing hard and playing well."
Creighton continued: "We won't win if we aren't in that frame of mind and aren't able to execute and whatnot. So, I really don't feel that that is going to be an issue, our deal is really internal right now. Really just changing myself, our staff, the team, how are we going to finish? Not even necessarily just win/loss, but are we going to play our best football."
Eastern Michigan has set precedent for finishing the season strong during Creighton's tenure as the head man, going 8-2 in the month of November over the last 10 games. "We want to get to 9-2. We still have a chance to have a good November, one game at a time," Creighton said.
Creighton spoke on the progression that his program has made during his time: "We have not been contending for championships but September pretenders become October contenders and November is when champions are made. That has been a good process for us. There is a lot of football left."
With the MACtion portion of the season commencing, Eastern Michigan will have a built in 10 days off between their game against Buffalo to Akron, another seven days off before Northern Illinois and then another 10 days off before they return home to square off with Kent State.
With this extra time between games, Creighton spoke on his plan for practice schedules: "We're always going to prepare. This time of year, you're going to cut down on the number of minutes that you're having in your practices. We're going to get some natural rest and time off."
Eastern Michigan started off the 2019 season with a record of 3-1 heading into conference play but is just 1-4 against MAC opponents since. The Eagles have a chance to get to 7-5 on the season and 4-4 within the conference if they win all of their remaining games.
