Vandals Welcome Progress Coach Tormey Likes Defense At Idaho Football Scrimmage

The Idaho defense forced four turnovers and allowed just two fields goals and two touchdowns in 23 offensive possessions as the Vandals scrimmaged on Saturday.

The two touchdowns came with the offense starting at the defense’s 20-yard line. The two field goals came with the offense starting at the 50-yard line and the team using a hurry-up, 2-minute offense.

“We made a lot of improvement over the summer defensively,” said Vandals head coach Chris Tormey. “These guys have worked hard and we are much improved in the secondary. We have a chance to have a dominant defense.”

Redshirt freshman Robert Scott completed 8 of 13 passes for 62 yards, senior Eric Hisaw was 5 of 14 for 58 yards and sophomore Brian Brennan completed 4 of 13 for 34 yards, but also threw three interceptions.

“We’re not going to make a (quarterback) decision based on today’s scrimmage,” said Tormey.

Hisaw, who missed all of spring football recovering from knee surgery, and Scott were fairly satisfied with their performances. Brennan was not.

“I played decent,” said Scott. “I feel I made good decisions, but I can improve a lot on today.”

Said Hisaw, “I would give myself a B-minus. It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t outstanding, but I didn’t make any big mistakes.”

Brennan added, “Our goal was to score every time we had the ball, but we turned the ball over four times and three of them were mine. You can’t win a ballgame doing that. A scrimmage is not a real game, but I’m not making any excuses. I didn’t make very good decisions today.”

Junior running back Joel Thomas was impressive, rolling up 60 yards on 10 carries and scoring a touchdown.

Idaho returns to the practice field this afternoon and concludes two-a-day practices with a 9 a.m. scrimmage Friday.