Mount Pleasant — He’s not overlooking Central Michigan’s first three opponents, but head coach Matt Drinkall is excited about the opportunity that awaits his squad in Week 4: A date with the Miami (Florida) Hurricanes.
While betting odds are not out, it’s a safe assumption the Chippewas will be steep underdogs at Hard Rock Stadium against the runnerup in the 2025 College Football Playoff. It’s an even safer assumption that no one wearing maroon and gold cares about what the odds say when it comes to that matchup.
“So we talk about that, that if you’re a heavyweight boxer coming up or a UFC fighter training, you don’t train to beat like the third guy, you train to beat the champs,” Central Michigan head coach Matt Drinkall said. “These guys were in the championship game and they are as good as good gets.”
While going blow-for-blow with a College Football Playoff hopeful might be aspirational, this team has every design on making another bowl trip and competing for a Mid-American Conference title in 2026. Central Michigan, which last appeared in the MAC title game in 2019 and last won it in 2009, opens the 2026 season at New Mexico on Saturday, Sept. 5.
Raised expectations come after the Chippewas pieced together a largely successful campaign in 2025 as Drinkall and a new staff took over in Mount Pleasant, retaining key seniors across the defense and at quarterback. A year later, with an offense that looks quite similar — sans quarterback Joe Labas — and a defense that is very different, the Chippewas sounded up to the challenge.
“We need some evidence of proof,” Drinkall said, “that what we’re gonna do works.”
Optimism for the 2026 campaign begins on offense for CMU, more specifically the offensive line where the Chippewas have seven players on this team who have started at least one game there. Several others have made college starts at prior stops before transferring in.
“Very reassuring,” quarterback Jadyn Glasser said. “You know, it gives me confidence back there. I know my guy is gonna hold up for me, and I’ll hold up for them.
The group is bookended by tackles Jacob Russell and Martin Koivisto, and CMU has a plethora of options to start on the interior, however the shuffle works out.
Drinkall explained that experienced transfers getting healthy in spring means younger players banked practice reps, only heightening the skill and workable depth among that group.
“And you’ve got to get right,” Drinkall said of taking the right transfers. “You’ve got to be right on some of those guys because some of those guys that — if they weren’t injured, I don’t know that we could have recruited them. And (offensive line) Coach (Hayden) Mace batted 1.000.”
The biggest positional question to answer on the offense is also the most important one: Quarterback.
Central Michigan played four quarterbacks in 2025, featuring a heavy rotation unlike basically any other FBS program until injuries altered those plans. With three of those four quarterbacks — Glasser, Angel Flores and Marcus Beamon — are still on the roster. Drinkall and the offensive staff aren’t ruling out various options for deploying their quarterbacks.
“Where’s the breathing room?” Drinkall said. “They’re all gonna show up to everything. They’re all gonna be really good students. They’re all gonna take notes like a robot on a machine. They’re all going to be perfect in the walk-throughs. They all don’t turn it over. So where’s the wiggle room?”
Central Michigan returns just three starters from last year’s defense: Defensive lineman Quavion Bird, edge rusher Korver Demma and corner Jaion Jackson.
The other eight spots will likely be filled by transfers or a handful of returning players carving out bigger roles.
It’s a big rebuild to undertake in one offseason, and it’s something Drinkall and Co. began planning for last winter, he said, knowing they were retaining a large senior class for 2025 that would need to be replaced on defense.
“You won’t see, necessarily, a guy have to put his hand down and play 70 snaps against everything the exact same way,” Drinkall said, “They might have to play 20 snaps and be really good at a couple specific things. So we’re kind of recruiting to evolve the defense a little bit as well.”
One big plus for Central Michigan in bringing along a transfer-laden defensive unit is the lack of a spring transfer portal window, which the NCAA put the kibosh on for this year. And with the roster not partially re-shuffling in April, May and June, team building and acclimatization from the winter and spring are felt more pointedly in fall.
So instead of spending time early this fall camp getting to know everyone, the Chippewas took to the turf at Kelly/Shorts Stadium ready to chase down the new, higher standard.
Andrew Graham is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Central Michigan sizes up MAC contention in Matt Drinkall’s 2nd season
Reporting by Andrew Graham, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Andrew Graham, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
