Cure Bowl 2021: 3 takeaways from Coastal Carolina victory vs NIU

The 2021 Cure Bowl was the second game of the bowl season and turned out to be a Coastal Carolina victory and here are three takeaways. 

There are few things better than bowl season and college football fans were treated to a fun matchup on Friday night in the 2021 Cure Bowl.

The Chanticleers came into the season hoping to crash the New Year’s Six and wound up falling short of winning a conference championship with two losses by a combined five points.

However, Coastal Carolina won its first-ever bowl game thanks to four touchdown passes from Grayson McCall and a potentially fortunate break at the end as time ran out on Northern Illinois with the ball near the Chanticleers goal-line.

Here are three takeaways from Coastal Carolina’s 47-41 win in the 2021 Cure Bowl.

Grayson McCall is legit

The future is still bright for Coastal Carolina with Grayson McCall around and he capped a stellar season with four touchdown passes. Rocky Lombardi of Northern Illinois didn’t play terribly, but McCall, who completed 73 percent of his passes this season, was lights out throwing for 315 yards and completing 23-of-30 passes as he led Coastal to its first bowl win.

McCall is technically a senior and his 2020 season didn’t count for eligibility reasons but unless he leaves for the NFL or the transfer portal which doesn’t seem likely, he’ll be back and ready for another run in 2022.

Coastal Carolina is lucky to have Jamey Chadwell

Coastal fell just short of winning the Sun Belt championship but the Chanticleers should be the heavy favorite next season especially with both the head coach and standout quarterback expected to return.

However, that shouldn’t last for long. Chadwell has already won a league title and now, has won a bowl game with its 2021 Cure Bowl win. Next year, Coastal Carolina will be a New Year’s Six contender again, and who knows, that could be the final achievement for Chadwell before he moves on to bigger pastures.

Northern Illinois season was still a success

Sure, fans of the Huskies would have loved that 10th win but no one expected Northern Illinois, a team that was 0-6 in 2020, to win the MAC Championship.

That was a hell of an achievement and it was a great job by bowl executives to give us a matchup of two championship-caliber teams. That’s what bowl season is all about and even though the Huskies came up a few yards short of 10 wins, 2021 was still a stellar turnaround.