South Dakota State walks into its regular-season road finale on Saturday at 1 p.m. with a task that is harder now than it looked a month ago: slow down Southern Illinois, a team that has found its footing late. The Jackrabbits are at Southern Illinois after a road win at Northern Iowa, and the matchup comes with playoff implications on both sides.
The reason this game has drawn attention is Southern Illinois quarterback DJ Williams, who missed time after injuring his knee early in the season opener against West Florida and is now back to being the kind of problem that changes a game plan. In eight full games this fall, Williams has rushed for eight touchdowns and thrown for 10 more with four interceptions, and he showed both sides of his game in the past two weeks by running for 89 yards and two scores against Northern Iowa before throwing for 211 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions against Indiana State.
That late burst matters because Southern Illinois did not begin the season looking like a team on the rise. It opened ranked No. 16 nationally after a 7-5 season and was picked sixth in the Missouri Valley Football Conference preseason poll, but it has spent much of the fall trying to catch up after the injury to its quarterback. The Salukis are 5-5 overall and 3-3 in conference play, with losses at Illinois, to Youngstown State, South Dakota and Illinois State before their current two-game run.
Jackson said the pattern is familiar. He said Southern Illinois gets better as the season goes on, and he pointed to the recent results as proof. He also said Williams is his own challenge: big, built like Chase Mason, running like Beau Brungard and throwing with Chase’s arm. That is the kind of description that usually comes before a defensive adjustment, and South Dakota State will need one, especially with its rush defense ranked eighth and facing a quarterback who can turn a broken pass play into a first down or more.
There is still a wrinkle in the numbers that keeps this from being a clean momentum story for Southern Illinois. The team has won its last two games, but it did so with a bye week in between, and its early stretch was defined by a quarterback who was not fully himself. Jackson said Williams has been healthy in the last two games and looked very dynamic, which is a different test entirely from the version Southern Illinois had for much of the season. If the Salukis are really improved, Saturday is the stage to prove it against a Jackrabbit team that has seen enough to know the change is real.
For South Dakota State, this is more than a stop on the schedule. It is the last away game of the regular season, and depending on FCS playoff seeding, it could also be the last road game of the year. For Southern Illinois, it is a chance to turn two encouraging wins into something larger and keep a playoff push alive. The next answer comes at 1 p.m., when Williams and the Jackrabbits finally meet a conference foe South Dakota State did not face in Dan Jackson’s first season leading the program.
