‘We want to be us’: Eastern Washington ready for look at new group during first scrimmage
Two weeks ahead of its season opener, the Eastern Washington football team will scrimmage at 1 p.m. Saturday at Roos Field.
It is the first of two the Eagles will take part in this preseason, including one the following Saturday. Both are open to the public.
“We want to be us,” EWU offensive coordinator Jim Chapin said of what he is looking for in the scrimmage. “We’ve really tried hard to build an identity of what ‘us’ is.”
With many starting positions up for grabs on both sides of the ball, plus questions about who will return kicks, there is plenty to look for in the scrimmage. Here are a few position groups to focus on.
The quarterbacks
In just about every college football program, the eyes are set on the players who touch the ball the most often. It’s no different for Eastern, where the Eagles are looking to get improved play this year out of the group. That starts with redshirt sophomore Kekoa Visperas.
Visperas, whose one start for the Eagles came in the 2022 season finale, has led well both on and off the field, coaches have said this preseason. In April’s spring game he completed 9 of 17 passes, which would seem to be a reasonable benchmark for his performance Saturday.
The battle for backing up Visperas appears to be a two-man race so far between junior transfers Jared Taylor and Michael Wortham, both of whom have the edge in game and practice experience over the true freshmen Nate Bell (who is 5-foot-9, 182 pounds) and Aidan Carter (6-4, 227).
Another aspect to watch regarding the quarterbacks is how much they use Wortham in the return game, something the Eagles did in the spring.
The defensive linemen
This is a remade group from a year ago, though the middle of the line returns regular contributors Matthew Brown, now a junior, and redshirt senior Jacob Newsom. The Eagles brought in a pair of transfers in Mason Ahlemeyer (R-Sr., Sacramento City College) and Isaiah Perez, a redshirt freshman originally from Othello who spent last year at BYU.
Senior captain Brock Harrison should lock down one of the defensive end positions, but there are plenty of reps available on the other side and more to spell Harrison.
Some of those could go to senior transfer Da’Marcus Johnson, a 6-4, 255-pound transfer from Fresno State. Ben Voigtlaender, a redshirt freshman from Mead High School, is also in the mix. All told, there are 10 defensive ends on the roster, and scrimmages are a good opportunity for them to step up.
The safety positions
While injuries tested the depth of this group last season, Ely Doyle and Keshaun King were steady on the back end. Doyle had a team-high 84 tackles; King had 53.
But Doyle transferred to Tarleton State, and King exhausted his eligibility. That leaves a void.
The Eagles have 10 safeties on the roster looking to fill those spots. The two with the most game experience at Eastern are redshirt sophomores Kentrell Williams Jr. and Armani Orange, who played in seven and 10 games, respectively, last season.
The only senior in the group – there are no juniors – is Trevion Shadrick-Harris, a transfer from Central Florida, where in two years he didn’t play a down. He played at Sierra College the two years before that, and in 2019 there he made 42 tackles and picked off four passes – including two that he took back for touchdowns. Sierra didn’t play in 2020.
Also vying for reps are redshirt sophomore Zane Thornton and a trio of redshirt freshmen in Amdane Aboudou, Amani Pressley and Drew Carter.