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It was like two kids on a teeter-totter.
The Eastern Washington University offense and defense responded to each other's big plays with scores and stops throughout the day during EWU's 68-play football scrimmage last Saturday at Roos Field.
The Eagles will scrimmage two more times in the remaining seven practice sessions of spring. The Saturday, April 23 scrimmage will take place in the 10 a.m. hour. The Eagles end spring drills with the annual Red-White game at 2 p.m. on April 30 that will be televised live regionally by SWX.
Eastern's offensive units ended drives with five touchdowns and a field goal on Saturday, but they never had them on back-to-back possessions. The Eagle defense rose to the occasion with stops after each score, including interceptions by cornerbacks Ronald Baines and Alden Gibbs. Two sacks by Paul Ena and one by David Gaylord also helped the cause.
“There was great energy and plays made on both sides of the ball,” Eastern head coach Beau Baldwin said. “That's what I always want to see, as well as the defense and offense responding to a bad situation by coming back strong.”
Eastern's offensive units had 349 yards of total offense, with Eastern's running game especially impressive. A week after they combined for only 25 yards on nine carries in EWU's first spring scrimmage, senior Darriell Beaumonte (5-23), sophomore Mario Brown (8-31) and University of Washington sophomore transfer Demitrius Bronson (9-58) combined for 112 yards on 22 carries.
Brown scored on a 1-yard run late in the scrimmage and Bronson scored on a 2-yard scamper. Bronson averaged 6.4 yards per carry as he had runs of 17, 14, 9 and 8 yards among his nine carries.
“Beaumonte is a veteran who is always ready and has been an incredible leader for us. He's always going to be a factor,” Baldwin said. “Mario started for us at the end of last season and is continuing to get better and more comfortable with the offense. And I think Demitrius is going to be a great addition.”
Eastern's four quarterbacks combined to complete 23-of-33 passes for 241 yards, with returning starter Bo Levi Mitchell leading the way. The MVP of the national championship game completed 7-of-12 passes for 75 yards, and had a 10-yard touchdown pass to Alante Wright to cap a 13-play, 65-yard drive.
Backup Anthony Vitto was 6-of-8 for 73 yards and 1-yard TD to Bo Levi's older brother, Cory Mitchell, which ended a 10-play, 60-yard drive. Nick Gauthier was 7-of-8 for 40 yards, directing Eastern on an eight-play, 48-yard drive that culminated with his 14-yard scoring toss to Greg Herd.
Even the team's fourth quarterback, Greg Panelli, directed the offense on a scoring drive of 65 yards on just six plays. A junior college transfer who redshirted last season, Panelli was 3-of-5 for 53 yards and two interceptions.
Baldwin said he could live with the interceptions, but several unforced errors -- including center-quarterback and quarterback-running back exchanges, as well as a fumble by Bo Levi Mitchell -- need to be addressed in the final two weeks of spring practices.
“We have to clean-up some things and we will,” Baldwin said. “We'll get wristbands for the quarterbacks and make it a little more game-like -- I think that will clean up a couple of things that happened early.
The unforced errors concerned Baldwin. “I can live with a jarring hit and somebody knocking the ball out, or a good pick by the defense,” he said. “ But I can't live with exchange issues - those things we have to improve on as we head through spring.”
Ashton Clark was the team's leading receiver with four catches for 38 yards, and Wright also caught four passes for 29 yards. Cory Mitchell could have also had four grabs, but he couldn't quite haul in a pass to the end zone by his brother and finished with three grabs for 32 yards.
“That was one of the main reasons I came here -- I definitely wanted to play with my brother at some point,” said Bo Levi. Cory Mitchell is a 2006 graduate of Katy (Texas) High School and Bo Levi graduated two years later, so they didn't play much high school football together.
Gaylord was the leading tackler for the defense with six, and Ena added five.
“I feel like we're on a good track with where we need to be,” added Baldwin. “I'm excited to see how the second half of spring practice goes.”
Eastern's defending NCAA Division I champions will open the 2011 season at the University of Washington on Sept. 3.
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