DETROIT | Not once did an opposing defense hold NIU to less than 100 yards rushing during their 10-2 regular-season run.

Unfortunately for the Huskies, Miami (OH) would be the first to hold its running game in check in the MAC Championship game on Friday night.

The RedHawks won the line of scrimmage battle as they held NIU to a season-low 92 rushing yards on 32 attempts during their 26-21 victory.

The success that Miami had putting up to eight defenders in the box was too much for NIU to handle and never adjust to.

“When you put that many people in the box, they got more people than you can block; there’s not sometimes a whole lot you can do with it,” Huskies’ head coach Jerry Kill said.

The RedHawks stripped the legs of Huskies’ running back Chad Spann, who stood alone as the only running back in the MAC to eclipse 1,000 yards (1,239) and have over 200 attempts rushing (226).

The MAC MVP didn’t pull off a big run in NIU’s biggest game of the year, something that was familiar throughout the season.

Spann finished with just 57 rushing yards on 17 attempts. The senior’s longest run of the game went for 11 yards.

“You’ve got to make them pay the price for that,” Kill said. “So that’s why you have to throw the football. We threw the ball pretty much but again, we just didn’t make a few plays.”

Earlier in the week, Kill said that his receivers “haven’t dropped a lot of balls” which he credited to “a chemistry between the quarterback and receivers.”

The polar opposite would occur on two plays that weren’t made through the Huskies passing game.

On NIU’s fourth possession of the game, the Huskies literally had six-points go through their hands. Huskies receiver Nathan Palmer dropped a nearly perfect toss from quarterback Chandler Harnish on third-and-16, forcing NIU to punt the ball back to Miami.

One possession later, Huskies’ backup quarterback Jordan Lynch came in and “came up short on” a throw on first and 10, according to Kill. The drive would end up being a three-and-out.

“That’s 14 points,” Kill said of the two blunders committed on offense.

The numbers didn’t lie going into the matchup between the NIU and the Redhawks.

One of teams’ were going to “flinch” in the war waged within the trenches.

Miami ranked third in the MAC in rushing yards allowed, yielding an average of 123.8 yards per game. In fact, the RedHawks had only allowed seven of their 12 opponents less than 100 rushing yards.

Miami safety Jordan Gafford and the rest of his defensive teammates knew the correlation between the success in NIU’s pass and run game.

Gafford credited the RedHawks’ coaching staff for creating a game plan that neutralized the Huskies’ most reliable and prolific dimension of its offense.

“Everything they do in the pass game comes from the way they run the football,” Gafford said. “We knew they were a very good rushing attack so our coaches spent a lot of time developing a good scheme to kind of match that.”