A look back at EWU’s loss
Like Eastern Washington head coach Beau Baldwin explained, in this S-R story, following Thursdays 49-24 road loss to Nevada, the Eagles have some positives to build on despite the season-opening defeat.
One of the biggest was the play of junior running back Taiwan Jones, who gets a few props in this game story that ran in the Reno Gazette-Journal this morning. I've also included this link to the gamer that was posted on EWU's website, and this link to Chris Murray's assessment of Nevada's performance on his Wolf Pack blog.
Some additional personal thoughts and a few more postgame comments from Baldwin appear below, so read on. And leave any comments you might want to share on the game right here.
PASSING THOUGHTS
Eastern's short passing game was highly effective against the Wolf Pack, the Eagles accomplished very little when trying to throw deep -- especially against Nevada's blitz package.
Several times, junior quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell threw his hands up in frustration after missing receivers on deep fade routes, and it was hard to tell who was at fault, even for Baldwin.
"We'll look at film," he said when asked about Mitchell's inability to get on the same page as his receivers on the long ball. "Obviously, we need to do a better job of making teams pay when they press and get in our faces by hitting a few more throws downfield.
"That'll be something we work on. And in Bo Levi's defense, that's his first time playing in this system in an actual game, and his first time playing with these receivers. So they're going to get better together, no question.
"We have the tools on offense, in my opinion, to be a very strong offensive team in our conference."
Baldwin also had this to say about the way his defense battled back from a horrible start while trying to defend Nevada's "pistol" offense:
"When you're playing a team like Nevada that is so effective in doing what they do offensively, sometimes it takes a quarter to kind of get used to it. You can practice all you want, but it's hard to simulate that offense in practice.
"And not only do they have a great offense, but they have great players running it, so that combination is tough. Still, you could definitely see our defense grow into the second and third quarters, just in terms of catching up with the speed of it and what they were doing."
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