Here’s a little game of word association. Say the first thing that comes to mind when you read the following phrases. Ready?

Indianapolis Colts? Peyton Manning. New England Patriots? Tom Brady. Akron Zips? Charlie Frye.

The point of this game is to show that for many football teams, the quarterback is the face and the leader of the organization. They get most of the credit for team success and most of the blame for team failure.

When NIU plays Akron Saturday at the Rubber Dome in Akron, Ohio, it will not see Frye. The four-year starter holds 54 school records and is ranked No. 11 in NCAA history with 11,478 yards of total offense. But after Frye was selected in the third round of this year’s NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns, he left a void at the lead position for Akron.

Entering this season, NIU faced a similar situation with the graduation of Josh Haldi. While his stats were not on par with Frye’s, Haldi won enough games to put the Huskies on the national map as a football program.

This week will be a matchup of the replacements. Junior transfer Luke Getsy starts for Akron, while junior Phil Horvath continues his first full season as play-caller for NIU. For NIU coach Joe Novak, game-time experience is the most important issue.

“You have to make sure you’re asking your quarterback to do things he’s capable of doing,” Novak said. “The experience factor is the thing that’s missing. Phil can’t become an experienced QB in one or two games, and Josh was a three-year starter. So we have to live with that.”

However, Horvath’s trial-by-fire as starter has been eased thanks to the seven games of action he saw last season when Josh Haldi was out with injuries. Senior wide receiver Sam Hurd said the camaraderie built from last season now is paying dividends for the Huskie passing attack.

“It is kind of hard to replace because you get used to how and where your routes have to be,” Hurd said. “You have to change up and get good timing with another quarterback. But Phil has been in since last year, too. It wasn’t like a fresh start with a freshman. It’s not too much of a difference.”

Through the first three games, Horvath has completed 66.7 percent of his passes for 701 yards and five touchdowns. But the more impressive stat for Novak is five receivers have at least seven catches.

“We have a good corps of receivers,” the 10th-year coach said. “The thing Phil is doing probably better than what Josh did is spreading the ball around more. Josh had a tendency to lock in on Danny Sheldon and P.J. Fleck, and we as coaches did that, too.”

Horvath’s opposition is Getsy, a transfer who is reunited with his former coach at Pittsburgh and current Akron coach J.D. Brookhart. Getsy is averaging 301 yards passing through the first two games and his favorite target has been senior wide receiver Domenick Hixon, who has 15 catches for 248 yards.

But even with Frye’s departure and last year’s 49-19 thumping of the Zips by the Huskies at Huskie Stadium, freshman defensive end Larry English isn’t taking Getsy lightly.

“I don’t think it will be too much different,” English said. “We’ve been watching film of their last two games, and it looks like they got a pretty good QB. They got a pretty good running back, too, so we’re not going in there thinking we got them because Frye isn’t there anymore. We’re still taking this team serious.”