The 2025 MAC Championship Game between the Western Michigan Broncos (8-4, 7-1 MAC) and Miami (OH) RedHawks (7-5, 6-2 MAC) kicks off from Ford Field in Detroit on Saturday, Dec. 6 at noon ET.
Here are the storylines to monitor in the MAC Championship Game:
From 0-3 to Detroit
This MAC Championship is unique, because after the first three weeks of the season, neither team looked poised for a title run. At that point, Western Michigan and Miami marinated together as two of the final 11 winless teams, simply striving for a win to get the momentum going. Once each program won its first game, neither looked back. Western Michigan rattled off eight victories in a 9-game span to produce the MAC’s best record, while Miami claimed six wins in eight games to punch a ticket to Ford Field.
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Both teams felt counted out early on, but the belief in the locker room never wavered.
“One of the things this team has done a great job of, is we have learned our lessons when we failed,” Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor said. “We started the season 0-3 and a lot of people counted us out from that moment. Our first conference game was against Toledo — very gritty game that we had to come back there and win at the end. We have taken lessons from each of our losses.”
With plenty of moving parts this offseason, Miami head coach Chuck Martin didn’t think his team was ready for back-to-back Big Ten road games out of the gate, which caused the RedHawks to slump to 0-3. But once Miami returned home and figured out its personnel, the rest was history.
“Early in the year going to Wisconsin, Rutgers, we weren’t ready to go play big,” Martin said. “We had so many new starters and they wanted to win really bad, but they weren’t ready to go to Wisconsin on a Friday night and handle the environment.”
Miami’s annual trip
The Miami RedHawks are regulars at Ford Field. They are the first MAC team since 2013-15, when Bowling Green and Northern Illinois squared off for three-straight years, to qualify for back-to-back-to-back MAC Championship Games. Given the standard Martin created with the program, earning that bid to Detroit is now the standard. It just unfolded in a way the 12th-year head coach would have never imagined, given a slew of injuries and lack of veteran talent.
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“I definitely thought we could do it this year. I certainly didn’t think we would do it the way we did it,” Martin said. “We lost 28 seniors. The last two years we were there we had a very senior laden team. I think I got five kids that have played in the game on the whole roster right now. It’s incredible. There’s no one on our offense that’s going to take a snap that’s set foot on the field any of the last two years. There’s only five guys on my defense… We’ve had more injuries than I’ve ever had. There’s guys that didn’t even make it to the first game that were lost for the season that were gonna be starters for us.”
Five defenders — Eli Blakey, Silas Walters, Adam Trick, Nasir Washington, and Oscar McWood — played in the 2024 MAC title game and will suit up in the 2025 installment. Thus, it’s up to veterans like the two-time All-MAC safety Blakey to gear the inexperienced RedHawks up for such a high-stakes moment.
“This is my third year,” Blakey said. “Last year, actually, I got hurt the first drive and didn’t really get to play. But my first time I was a younger guy, being able to sit behind the vets at the time and really learn. So now that I’m a vet, I can really help the guys understand these big moments. You got to treat it like another game. We’re going to be playing at a bigger stadium. Lights, camera, action of course, but you just gotta be calm, cool, and collected.”
Feels like ‘16
Western Michigan is far more unfamiliar with the MAC title stage. The Broncos only have three appearances in their entire history, earning a spot in the game in 1999, 2000, and 2016. The 2016 season was a historic one for Western Michigan, as the Broncos started 13-0 with a MAC championship, qualifying for the Cotton Bowl in a dream year under head coach P.J. Fleck. But since Fleck’s departure days after the Cotton Bowl, the Broncos never quite reached that level.
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Western Michigan fielded solid, bowl-caliber teams throughout the years but never pushed back into that upper echelon. However, in the third year under Lance Taylor, Western Michigan made the climb back to the peak of the conference — sitting alone as the only 7-1 team in MAC play this season. It was something the head coach always envisioned when he took this job prior to the 2023 campaign.
“I have high expectations and standards,” Taylor said. “I always felt like we would get here and we would be here. I said that in my opening press conference. Since then, I haven’t talked much about the conference championship or making it to Detroit. It’s really been about laying the foundation and the work to get here. I didn’t know how long it would take and I didn’t want to put an expectation on that, because I don’t think that’s fair as a first time head coach or understanding how competitive this league is.”
Gotkowski makes second start
Last time the RedHawks won a MAC Championship Game in 2023, they utilized the services of their backup quarterback, Aveon Smith, who filled in for the injured Brett Gabbert. In 2025, Miami must execute a similar task, as starting quarterback Dequan Finn left the team in November to focus on NFL Draft preparation. That leaves redshirt freshman Thomas Gotkowski as the No. 1 guy, and Gotkowski enters the MAC Championship Game with one collegiate start.
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However, he isn’t foreign to NFL stadiums, leading Ben Davis High School to an Indiana state championship as a senior, thriving in the bright lights of Lucas Oil Stadium to attain that feat. He plans to use a similar psychological approach as he prepares to start in another NFL stadium with a more monumental championship on the line.
“This is a big game and people see it as a big game, so you just want to minimize that and kind of make it as small as possible,” Gotkowski said. “You don’t want to make the game something bigger than it is. It’s just another week of preparation. But I think just going into it, just rallying the troops behind me and getting everyone on the same page and fine-tuning these little details that we’re going to see in practice.”
Martin claims he is still learning his new quarterback on the fly, trying to determine his strengths and weaknesses. It wasn’t a scenario the head coach saw coming to fruition, but he’s been largely impressed by Gotkowski and the team’s next-man-up mentality in general.
“First two touchdowns last week, Braylon Isom catches touchdown passes from Thomas Gotkowski,” Martin said. “If you told me in January that would be the duo in a win-to-get-in game, I’d have laughed at you like, ‘What are you talking about?’ That’s our third-team quarterback and Isom didn’t play in a game until Week 7.”
Rematch from October
Saturday in Detroit won’t mark the first time Western Michigan and Miami collided on the gridrion this season. On Oct. 25, Western Michigan paid a visit to Oxford, OH and established a 17-9 advantage heading into the fourth quarter. However, Miami completely transformed the script of the game in the final frame, outscoring the Broncos 17-0 in the final 15 minutes to cruise to a 26-17 victory.
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Western Michigan’s only MAC defeat came at the hands of the RedHawks, but Coach Taylor believes that was a necessary learning experience to elevate his team to the level it is currently.
“The Miami loss was a great lesson for our team because we were on a 4-game win streak, we were going into Miami coming off a bye week, and we played really well for three quarters and didn’t finish,” Taylor said. “We had a players only meeting the day after that game and we really just talked about, how can we be better? One of the things they said was making sure that when we talk about the process and worrying about the next play, it applies even in game. We can’t worry about the outcome all of a sudden because the game doesn’t get bigger in the fourth quarter.”
It’s hard to beat a team twice, and nobody understands that better than Chuck Martin. In 2023, Toledo defeated Miami in the regular season, yet Miami got revenge in Detroit. In 2024, Miami defeated Ohio in the regular season, but his RedHawks fell in lopsided fashion to the Bobcats in the December championship rematch. Martin recognizes the firepower of this Broncos team, hoping to find another way to generate a victory to solidify his third MAC title since 2019.
“They were really, really good the first time we played them,” Martin said. “We fortunately, fortunately, fortunately came away. We were down 17-9 with 10:54 to go in the game and got the ball backed up. We put together a couple good drives and somehow eked out a victory. They’re really, really, really good on defense. They have great personnel over there and they’re well coached.”
