Eastern looks forward to challenging big boys

The last time Eastern Washington University’s football team scheduled two guaranteed-money games against Football Bowl Subdivision schools in the same season, things got ugly.

Really ugly.

The year was 2006, and the Eagles were in a major rebuilding mode following back-to-back appearances in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. They opened the season with road games against Oregon State and West Virginia and suffered a couple of lopsided, confidence-rattling defeats that set the tone for a messy 3-8 season.

Beau Baldwin was EWU’s offense coordinator and quarterbacks coach that fall. He remembers how the season unraveled so quickly, as his fledgling skill-position players – most of them redshirt freshmen – never recovered from their early-season failures, losing their third game, at home, against Central Washington.

Fast forward to 2008: Baldwin is now in his first season as Eastern’s head coach and looking again at opening the season against another pair of FBS rivals, Texas Tech and Colorado. The Eagles travel to Lubbock, Texas, to face the 12th-ranked Red Raiders on Saturday before visiting Boulder, Colo., to take on the Buffaloes on Sept. 6.

While many Eastern fans are bemoaning the fact their team is faced with the possibility of opening a promising season with a pair of lopsided losses, Baldwin and his players are eager to test themselves against the big boys – with little or no concern about any potential damage to their confidence.

“I don’t care who you’re playing, there were so many freshmen and sophomores on the field in 2006 it was going be hard,” Baldwin said. “And it didn’t matter if we were playing a Big Sky opponent or a Pac-10 opponent. But this is a different bunch. They’re older, and they’ve been down that road.

“We’ve talked about these (first two) games, and the biggest thing for them this year is to not wait until the first quarter is gone to figure out that their 11 guys put on the pads and cleats that same way we do. That can sometimes happen to younger players, but our veterans are doing a great job of leading, and I have no doubt that they’ll come out swinging from Play One.”

Junior quarterback Matt Nichols was a redshirt freshman in 2006 and remembers the disappointment of starting 0-3.

“But we had four or five freshmen receivers – I was a freshman, too, and our defense, maybe, didn’t have all the pieces together, either,” Nichols said. “We could have started against any other I-AA teams and gone 3-8 that year. But this is a much different team than we had in ’06. Now we’ve got the experience and we’ve got a lot of great leaders and great athletes who have been there and done that.

“For myself, I’m going into my fourth I-A game, so I know how to handle the atmosphere and prepare the team so everybody will be ready at Snap One instead of waiting a whole quarter to figure out (our opponent) isn’t much different than us.”

Senior defensive tackle Lance Witherspoon was a sophomore in 2006 and recalls the thrill of playing against big-name schools like Oregon State and West Virginia. He looks forward to getting another chance to do that same against Texas Tech and Colorado this fall, and doesn’t expect the same kind of meltdown the Eagles suffered in two years ago.

“This year we’ve got a lot more ammo to throw back at them,” he said. “And I really like the approach that Coach Baldwin’s taking – that we’re going down there to Lubbock to win. We’re not just going down to try and be competitive.”