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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eagles wasted no time


Eastern Washington's defense swarms around Northern Arizona ball-carrier Brandon Anthony on Saturday. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – It took 60 minutes for 15th-ranked Eastern Washington to close out a 42-14 win over Northern Arizona on Saturday, but it took just a few seconds for the Eagles to set the tone at the Walkup Skydome.

Eastern’s defense made a statement on the first play when safety Bryan Jarrett knifed through to knock down running back Ryan Williams for no gain.

The offense made even more noise following two incompletions and a punt that set the Eagles up at their 41.

They scored in four plays.

First was a short pass that Eric Kimble, on a slant, broke outside for 22 yards. Then Ryan Cole burst up the middle untouched for 35 yards to the NAU 2. Cole then gained a yard before easily breaking into the end zone and a 7-0 lead 2:07 into the game.

“After that first run, we knew we would be able to run all night and we did, we did just that,” left guard Rocky Hanni said. “This is the best game we put together on the O-line. We’re starting to get healthy. … I think we’re finally getting to be where we need to be with our confidence level.”

If that wasn’t impressive enough, after the defense held again and the Lumberjacks got a good roll on a punt, the Eagles went 97 yards in 14 plays to take a 14-0 lead, the score coming on more Erik Meyer-to-Kimble magic.

Just to reinforce their superiority, the Eagles went 73 yards after the opening kickoff of the second half to boost their lead to 27-7.

NAU penalties costly

Although there weren’t a lot of yellow flags, the ones that hit the turf in the first half were critical.

NAU had three costly flags. Two, for roughing the quarterback and a facemask, came on third down when the Lumberjacks had stopped the Eagles. Both times Eastern cashed in with field goals, late in the first quarter and on the final play of the second, which produced a 20-7 halftime lead. The other miscue was holding after a 55-yard pass play, which would have been worth a first down inside the 10 midway through the second quarter.

Eastern only had three penalties, all on the final drive of the half, and the last one actually helped. The first two, for holding, Meyer took care of with pinpoint passing. The third for was a false start, stopping the clock at 20 seconds and wiping out a sack of Meyer. When he was sacked on the repeat second down, he was able to regroup the offense and spike the ball with 1 second to spare, setting up Sheldon Weddle’s 36-yard field goal.

There were only 12 penalties in the game, five for 43 yards on Eastern.

Meyer displays cool

When Meyer was sacked on second down from the 13 on a play that started with 20 seconds left in the first half, the Eastern field-goal team started to run onto the field.

That was somewhat logical, but Meyer knew there wasn’t enough time to set up a field goal with no timeouts left. He calmly waved off the field-goal team, set up the offense and spiked the ball, giving Weddle a chance for that second field goal.

“One coach [was] yelling, ‘Bazooka field goal!’ which is our hurry-up field goal,” Meyer said. “I knew it was third down and we didn’t have enough time to get a kick off. Right when they started to come, I yelled at them to get off.”

When Meyer spiked the ball, the offense was short a right guard.

Quick kicks

With 95 yards in receptions and 21 on three punt returns, Eric Kimble is 20 yards short of setting the school record for all-purpose yards. He became the 39th I-AA player to catch 200 passes in a career. With his 39th TD reception in 39 games, he is 11 short of Jerry Rice’s I-AA record. … NAU’s most effective player was punter Phian Madrid, who had a 54-yard average on seven punts. … Eastern was 9 of 18 on third-down conversions and 3 of 4 on fourth downs. … The Eagles finally got an injured player back – defensive tackle Keith Grinnan – and it came during the first game in which no player appeared to get hurt enough to miss next week’s game at Montana. … EWU’s 35 first downs were four short of the school record. … The 28-point win was the largest in EWU’s 12 games in Flagstaff. NAU scored 54 points on the Eagles two years ago. … Adam Macomber, a walk-on who was taken off redshirt to play special teams when Gregor Smith was hurt last week, ended up as the fifth Eagles’ running back. Although he studied Smith’s safety position all week, he had six carries for 24 yards in the fourth quarter. … Bryan Jarrett, making his first start in place of Smith, led EWU with seven tackles. No other Eagle had more than three, but that’s not surprising, since there were only 40 plays.