2009 MMM Northern Illinois Huskies Preview
by umass09 on Aug 12, 2009 6:00 AM PDT
in College Football
1 comment
Coming off a disappointing loss to Louisiana Tech in the 2008 Independence Bowl, the Huskies look to make significant improvements in the 2009 season. Second year head coach, Jerry Kill, helped turn around a 2-10 team in 2007 into a team that finished .500 in the regular season and made it to a bowl game. Now coach Kill has to get over the hump and win a bowl game at Northern Illinois.
The offense returns Chandler Harnish, who led the team in passing and rushing yards last season. Although he threw for over 1,500 yards, he also threw more interceptions then he did touchdowns which is something that Harnish will need to work on for the offense to be successful and put up points. Harnish will need to look to a group of inexperience receivers to get the ball to. Nathan Palmer should be the number one target, while freshman Ron Walker looks to make an immediate impact in the air.
Although, Harnish can get it done on the ground, the Huskies have plenty of speed in the backfield that could provide some balance to the offense. Me'co Brown, Chad Spann, and Ricky Crider should all see some decent time in the backfield. These guys will take some pressure off of Harnish and have him focus more on being consistent and completing a better percentage of his passes then running the ball.
The defense will look to its linebackers to carry the unit this season. Sophomore, Pat Schiller, will be the starter in the middle and will be accompanied by Alex Kube and Cory Hanson on the outside. Even though the guys up front have some work to do, backers in the middle should be able to hold their ground and make up for the lack of push up front.
The safeties are a lot stronger this year then the corners are. David Bryant and Mike Sobol return at safety and they will be the two leaders who carry the secondary. The secondary could be inconsistent this year with inexperience, lack of depth and having a true shut-down corner.
With Harnish still having to prove how good he is at quarterback and a lack of depth and experience on defense, I see the Huskies finishing .500 again this season.
Prediction: 6-6
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NIU Fan
Our linebacker and safety units should be among the top three in the MAC. Our defensive line still has a lot of experience returning with DJ Pirkle, Brandon Bice, Jake Coffman, and Adam Coleman all having a lot of playing time under their belts. Coach Kill likes to rotate the D-Line and LBs a lot so that’s why we have so much experience still returning even though we lost six starters from our front 7. We would have had another starter returning on the D-Line in Mike Krause but we recently found out he will sit out this season due to some heart condition. I still expect NIU’s defense to among the top 4 units in the MAC. If Coach Kill and his staff have done anything well since showing up at NIU it is putting a strong defense on the field.
Our offense should be better now that we have two experienced QB’s in Chandler Harnish and DeMarcus Grady who played as freshmen last season. Even though we lost a lot of experience at WR i still expect us to get more production out of that position as last season was not a good season for all our WR’s who are gone now. Our run game will be strong as usual. I’d expect to see the offense open up more as well now that the players have had some experience under the new system.
by NIUHuskies#1Fan on Aug 12, 2009 11:34 AM PDT reply actions
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