Sports
Brian Smith Week 8 Press Conference Notebook
By: Andrew Bowlby
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Ohio Football (3-3, 1-1 MAC) is halfway through their 2025 regular season schedule. Coming off a bye week that was much needed, Ohio is gearing up for a big stretch run. Here are some of the big takeaways from head coach Brian Smith’s press conference on Monday.
Team Mentality
Ohio entered its bye week coming off what was a frustrating defeat. The Bobcats fell to Ball State 20-14 on the road as a double-digit favorite. There was little offensive success in the second half – and the defense gave up big plays in tough moments.
Having a week off and being able to put that loss behind the team was important to getting ready for the second half of the season.
“I thought the energy was really good throughout the bye week,” Smith said. “I think that there’s some maturity within the team that they understood the missed opportunities that we had. They did a good job mentally of just addressing that and at the same time clearing it and moving forward with really good energy and being really positive with each other.”
Smith says that the team spent a lot of the bye week focusing on fundamentals and giving some players some much needed rest.
Homecoming Week Opponent: Northern Illinois
For the annual homecoming game, Ohio welcomes in Northern Illinois for what could be the last meeting for a while. With NIU set to depart the MAC at the end of the season, the Bobcats and Huskies may not see each other for a long time.
Despite what the Huskies 1-5 record looks like on the outside, Smith expects to still get a good fight from NIU.
“They’re a far better team than what their record shows,” Smith said. “They’ve played really good on defense and have been hard to score on and create explosive plays. There’s definitely talent there, they have ability, they just haven’t quite put it all together yet.”
Northern Illinois ranks 12th out of 13 MAC schools in both scoring offense and touchdowns scored. While they’ve had offensive woes, their defense is capable.
NIU boasts the 3rd best scoring defense in the conference conceding just over 20 points per game. Quinton Urwiler, a NIU linebacker, is tied for the conference lead with 70 total tackles. He’s also racked up 2.0 sacks and 5.0 TFLs.
There is definitely a challenge facing the Huskies, but Ohio will do it at Peden Stadium on their homecoming weekend.
Ohio is 6-4 in their last 10 homecoming matchups including three straight wins. The last time the Bobcats hosted NIU for homecoming resulted in a 39-36 loss in the 2019 season.
Injury Updates
While Smith would not reveal which players on Ohio’s injury report could return this week, he did hint at multiple guys being ready to go in the near future.
Most notably on the Bobcats injury list are defensive players Pius Odjugo and Jack Fries.
Odjugo was dressed against Ball State and took warmups, however, did not see any game action. Fries has missed four-straight games and if he’s able to return would provide a big boost to the Ohio linebacker’s room.
Kicking Game/Special Teams
Smith did say that with the struggles in the kicking game, it may make him a more aggressive play caller going for it with the offense on more fourth downs as opposed to kicking.
The Ohio special team’s unit as a whole rank 129th out of 138 FBS teams according to Kelly Power.
Remaining Schedule
The regular season is halfway over. With six games in the books, there are six to play as Ohio seeks another berth in the MAC Championship game and another year of Bowl Game eligibility.
It begins with NIU this week and then a trip to Eastern Michigan next week to round out Saturday games for the season.
The Bobcats will then play Miami (home), Western Michigan (away) and UMass (home) in Tuesday night MACtion games before finishing the regular season at Buffalo on Black Friday.
With Ohio currently sitting at 1-1 and in a tie for fourth in the conference. There is a long way to go, and a lot of work to be done before the Dec. 6 date for the MAC Title game.