Where There’S Will, Eagles Discover A Way

This is why you have to love the Big Sky Conference: Honored as the league’s defensive football player of the week was Weber State’s fine safety Keenan Gordon, who intercepted three passes last Saturday in the Wildcats’ 52-49 victory over Sacramento State. Now, three picks is obviously a terrific effort - but in a 52-49 game?

It’s like the MVP argument against a 50-homer man on a last-place team: His team still would have finished last without him, so how valuable could he have been?

And while Gordon’s radar was helping keep the Sacs under the land-speed record, the Eagles of Eastern Washington were swapping helmet paint with Northern Arizona in a 14-10 nailbiter which the rest of the Big Sky apparently thought was being contested by alien life forms.

No players of the week in that one. No, sir.

Heretics, yes. Blasphemers, certainly.

“Defense in the Big Sky,” laughed EWU coach Mike Kramer. “Like bringing a fire extinguisher to a house burning.”

Fire extinguisher? Try a squirt gun. Or a shot glass.

It is an annual joke, these pinball totals in Big Sky football, and even Kramer is too much of a realist to think he’s found a cure for arithmophobia.

“We’re not bullheaded enough,” he said, “to think that we’re going to hold everybody in this league to 10 or 14 points.”

Besides, he may have found something more important.

Will.

Even in the open-sesame Sky, only twice in the last 36 games prior to this season had the Eagles given up 40 or more points.

In September, they did it three times.

“I can’t speak for the other coaches in this league,” Kramer said, “but our standard of defense is much higher than giving up 48 or 49 points. That’s been our legacy here, and it didn’t start with just me. It goes back to when Dick Zornes was coaching. This whole program begins with defense.

“And playing defense isn’t any different than it was 20 years ago. You get people in the gaps, defend your man all over the field and make the tackle. The rules that have come about in college football haven’t helped the offense to the point that you shouldn’t be able to play defense.

“I don’t know if we can always play at the level we did Saturday, but we are always going to have a passion for quality.”

Alas, along with quality, you have to have some quantity. The Eagles are certainly stretching the limits of that concept.

Against NAU, neither of the usual starting cornerbacks, LeVar McClary and Ole Olesen, was available. Greg Belzer, an all-conference caliber middle linebacker, is out until late October. So is defensive end David Kimball.

Kimball’s loss has actually added a wrinkle to Eastern’s defense. Josh Martin was moved from tackle outside and replaced by David Alcala, and the Eagles gained about 50 pounds up front in the process - to say nothing of a hungry dues-payer.

In the meantime, Travis Reed and Claude Jean-Baptiste did some remarkable work in relief of the 150-pound marvels at corner, and senior Britt Lentz has moved into Belzer’s spot and taken over the Big Sky lead in tackles.

“But who we play isn’t really the issue,” Kramer maintained. “How we play is.

“I was so chagrined by the way we played defense against Idaho and Portland State. We had no grasp of what to do, but mostly we had no emotionalism. We had to get that back, and the last two weeks of practice, we’ve just knocked the socks off the scouts. We’re getting that natural-born killer instinct back.”

This couldn’t come at a better time, what with the offense trying to break in a new quarterback, Chris Samms - though his even-handedness has contributed to keeping the defense out of too many crisis situations.

If Kramer can keep the kicking game from imploding completely, could there be a - horrors - shutout in the making?

Maybe. But don’t bet on it.

In conference games this year, the losing team is averaging 29 points. The winners, you don’t even want to know.

And speaking of numbers …

“In the fourth quarter of that NAU game, we had some people you’ve probably never heard of in there,” Kramer said. “We traveled 52 guys and 48 contributed. I think it’s pretty clear we turned the page on a big blackhead in our program. We played tough in a tight situation.

“But that’s sobering, too. At the end of the game, offense and defense, we had eight backups on the field. You don’t win championships dipping into the depth that far. We need some guys back. I’m not Pollyanna enough to say we should be contenders for the title at the rate guys are going down - but the guys who’ve come in have given us the quiet, consistent effort and toughness on the field we’ve been searching for since the end of last season.”

Though, apparently, they’ve all blown their chances at being defensive player of the week.