What to watch for when the NIU football team heads to Buffalo with the chance to clinch a division title

The Northern Illinois University football team can win the MAC West on Wednesday with a road win at Buffalo.

The Huskies (7-3, 5-1) bounced back from their first MAC loss with a 30-29 win against Ball State in a game that featured three lead changes in the final 2:49. Buffalo (4-6, 2-4) has lost two straight – 56-44 to Bowling Green and 45-18 to Miami.

The Bulls won last year’s meeting, 49-30, in DeKalb. They returned two fumbles for touchdowns in the win.

Scouting the Bulls

Buffalo is averaging 32.1 points a game while allowing 30.6 a game. They run for 197.5 yards a game while allowing 190.8. Through the air, they average 221.2 yards a game while their foes average 228.1.

The Bulls can make the other team’s quarterback feel very uncomfortable – five Bulls players have at least four sacks this season, while no Huskie has more than three. Daymond Williams leads the way with 5.5, James Patterson and Kyler Laing each have 4.5, and Max Michel and Taylor Riggins have four each.

“The more you sit back and drop back to pass, the more opportunity they have to get some sacks,” NIU coach Thomas Hammock said. “We have to be smart in what we ask from our quarterback. We have to be smart about what we ask of the offensive line. And we have to have balance, right? We have to stay in normal down and distance situations so they can’t pin their ears back and rush the quarterback.”

Three storylines to watch

Huskies can make ‘from worst to first’ official with a win

NIU can take the MAC West with a win and earn a trip to the league’s title game for the first time since 2018.

“It’s fun. It’s cool I guess,” wide receiver Cole Tucker said. “I’m not trying to look too far ahead. We just take it one game at a time. It’s going to be a great celebration when we win, getting a chance at a MAC championship. But we’re not looking at that right now.”

Buffalo coach Maurice Linguist, in his first year with the Bulls, said the Huskies have come a long way since their winless 2020 campaign.

“For a program to go winless, to go 0-6, to now trying to position themselves to win the west side of the conference, I think it says a lot about the players and that locker room and the job that coaching staff has done there,” Linguist said. “They have our attention. We respect their maturation over the course of the last year.”

Safety Jordan Hansen said going from last place a year ago to MAC West champs this year would be a huge accomplishment.

“I think it’s a big deal for us,” Hansen said. “Trusting everything that coaches were telling us in the offseason, buying into what they wanted us to do, you can see it’s paying off on the field this year.”

Can the Huskies force some turnovers?

It’s been more than three weeks since the Huskies forced an opponent to turn the ball over – Central Michigan fumbled in the Huskies’ 39-38 win on Oct. 23. They have not forced more than one turnover by an opponent since a 27-20 win over Eastern Michigan in the MAC opener Oct. 2.

“Obviously, we would like to get the other team to turn the ball over more,” Hammock said. “That’s something we’re going to continue to work on to try different things to make sure we can turn the ball over for our offense.”

Hammock pointed out both after last week’s win against Ball State and later in the week during the press conference that it’s not common to win the game with a minus-2 turnover differential.

Defensive tackle Jeff Griffin said it’s a focal point for the defense.

“We’re still striving to get those,” Griffin said. “We work on it at least once or twice a week in practice. It just hasn’t happened yet, but we’re still striving to get those.”

What can the defense do against the Buffalo offense?

The NIU secondary had one of its best games last week, holding Ball State quarterback Drew Plitt to 11-of-26 passing for 126 yards.

They’ll look to continue that trend against Kyle Vantrease, who has completed 61.3% of his passes for 1,836 yards, eight touchdowns and six interceptions. Matt Myers occasionally comes on in relief and has a 54.8% completion percentage, three touchdowns and a pick.

“We kept the receivers in front of us for the most part,” Hansen said. “The D-line did a good job stopping the run. We played a complete game on defense.”

Pulse of the fans

Quick analysis

Wednesday may turn into a heavy workload day for the NIU running backs. We’ve seen when Hammock and the Huskies go up against teams with a proficient pass rush, the passing game tends to take a back seat. Just look at the 17 passes each against Michigan and Georgia Tech that Rocky Lombardi attempted, or the eight against Bowling Green. It’s also worth pointing out the Huskies are 2-1 in those games. Jay Ducker has four straight 100-yard games for an NIU team that has at least one 100-yard rusher in every game except for one this year. It seems weird to think that a passing offense that just re-wrote the NIU record books two weeks ago will take back seat, but Hammock has proven he will commit to whatever he thinks will give NIU the best chance to win, and dropping back 30, 40 or even 20 times against this Buffalo defense doesn’t seem like it.

Prediction

NIU 37, Buffalo 26