Don’t tell Nick Saban this, but I am personally overlooking this game a bit for the preview this week. The Eastern Illinois Panthers are 3-8 overall in the year as an FCS squad in the OVC-Big South conference. The Panthers, for what its worth, has put a couple of QBs into the NFL with Tony Romo and Jimmy Garroppolo.
Head coach Chris Wilkerson was hired in 2022 and brought the Panthers an 8-win season in 2023, but then fell to 3-9 in 2024 and will wind up the same record this year.
The Panthers are averaging about 19 points per game, and the passing offense is downright dreadful. QBs Connor Wolf and Cole LaCrue have this weird 2-QB split thing going on where Wolf is the downfield passer and has 1000 yards passing and 36 rushes for -33 yards, while LaCrue is the runner and has 850 passing yards and 122 carries for 514 rushing yards. Neither guy is completing 60% of their passes and have combined for 12 TDs to 10 interceptions. It’s just been…. Not good.
LaCrue’s rushing has pretty much been the only good part of their offense this year, too. RB Charles Kellom has 178 carries, but only 691 yards with them (3.9 yards per carry). Back ups Jacarre Fleming and Jay Pearson have better averages, but only 77 carries combined between them.
Defensively, they’ve not been much better, giving up 27 points per game and only have 13 sacks and 5 interceptions on the season.
Look, this is a tune up scrimmage game for Alabama, and there’s very little to preview for them.
Alabama will play things as vanilla as possible and likely try to get some work in on gaining confidence in the run game and the deep pass. I’d expect to see young emerging players like Red Morgan and guys who are buried on the depth chart but need playing time like Jaylen Mbakwe to get a hefty share of snaps.
The real question will be how soon the Tide puts in Austin Mack or Keelon Russell, and just how much work AK Dear will get at running back. Past those, expect to see a whole lot of rotation across the rest of the depth chart early and often.
Leave in the comments: What players do you most want to see get playing time in this game?
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* [Alabama Crimson Tide Football](/alabama-crimson-tide-football)
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