Eagles upended
For a moment it appeared the Eastern Washington football team was going to claw its way out of a deep hole. But just when there was a glimmer of hope against a heavily-favored opponent, the Eagles tumbled back down, all but burying their season.
Special teams blunders and offensive mistakes doomed a gritty defensive effort as the Eagles fell to their Big Sky Conference rival, the fourth-ranked Montana Grizzlies, 33-17 before a Woodward Field record crowd of 11,583 on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
“The mistakes that we made were big mistakes,” Eastern Washington coach Paul Wulff said. “There’s a difference between a mistake and a big or critical mistake. Those are the mistakes that change the game and give the other team points.”
Eastern (1-5, 1-2) had trouble from the beginning as Rob Schulte returned the opening kickoff 56 yards with a 15-yard personal foul penalty tacked on. That set up an 11-yard Josh Swogger-to-Craig Chambers touchdown pass that put the Grizzlies (3-1, 3-0) on top less than 2 minutes into the game.
Then Tuff Harris turned a 57-yard punt into a spectacular 94-yard return. He caught the ball over his shoulder, spun left, broke through a wave of Eagles and went down the left sideline.
“I like the fact he’s catching it and going,” Montana coach Bobby Hauck said. “He lost where he was a little bit but that’s a return ball. I wasn’t thinking, ‘No,’ at all, I was thinking return ball.”
When freshman quarterback Matt Nichols threw the first of his four interceptions, the first of three by Montana’s Jimmy Wilson, on Eastern’s next possession, the Grizzlies were set up for a 21-0 lead barely 8 minutes into the game.
“The Grizzly game is always one of the biggest games we have,” EWU senior tight end Tim Calhoun said. “I think we were too excited at the beginning. We weren’t concentrating on doing our assignments and that’s what leads to those mistakes that happened early.”
The defense stiffened when protecting a long field and the Eagles got back in the game late in the second quarter. Nichols and Brynsen Brown hooked up on a perfect 43-yard touchdown play and Brett Bergstrom kicked a 39-yard field goal in the final minute to make it 21-10.
But once again disaster struck quickly.
On the first play of the third quarter, after Brown turned a short pass into a 15-yard gain, Tyler Joyce popped the ball free and Kyle Ryan recovered for the Grizzlies. The Eagles defense tried to hold, but on third-and-12 from the 34, Schulte shook off safety Gregor Smith on a middle screen and raced to the 5, setting up a Reggie Bradshaw TD run that effectively ended the game.
“It was a heck of a hit,” Wulff said. “I mean it was a hell of a collision, right on the ball and it popped out. We closed with some momentum in the first half, we come out in the second half and make a nice play and then that happened.”
From there, until a 56-yard touchdown hookup between Eagles backup quarterback Chris Peerboom and Charles Searcy in the final minute, the Grizzlies controlled the clock.
“We were confident coming back out at halftime and then that first fumble kind of took the wind out of our sails,” Calhoun said.
Despite the start and despite three of six turnovers in the first half, Eastern held a statistical advantage. Nichols had 12 completions for 160 yards, two incompletions and three interceptions. The Eagles had 204 yards of offense to just 132 for the Grizzlies.
But the Grizzlies had the ball for almost 21 of the 30 minutes in the second half and the Eagles wore down, leading to two Dan Carpenter field goals.
The final count was 367 yards for Montana, 337 for Eastern.
The Eagles defense, with four sacks coming in, put constant pressure on Swogger. He was sacked five times, knocked down hard numerous times and threw two interceptions.
Swogger also made some big throws and finished with 259 yards on 13-of-22 passing, which was complemented by Bradshaw’s 115 yards rushing.
Montana State 14, Portland State 0: At Bozeman, Mont., freshman Aaron Mason rushed 34 times for 128 yards and a first-quarter touchdown and caught a 3-yard TD pass in the fourth quarter to help the Bobcats (3-3, 2-1) to the victory over the Vikings (3-3, 2-2).
Idaho State 41, Northern Colorado 13: At Greeley, Colo., quarterback Matt Gutierrez and Akilah Lacey connected for three touchdowns to lead the Bengals (2-3, 1-1) to a win over the Bears (1-5, 0-3).
Sacramento State 24, Weber State 21: At Sacramento, Calif., Marcel Marquez threw for 99 yards and ran for 58 more as the Hornets (2-3, 2-1) held on to get the victory over the Wildcats (2-4, 1-2).