On a chilly, late-winter Wednesday, the Eastern Washington football team wrapped up the third of its 10 official offseason practices a little bit early, a nod to the players who might be traveling away from Cheney for the university’s spring break.
The Eagles will reconvene March 31, with no more interruptions in a schedule that culminates in the Red-White game on April 18.
As players broke the full-team huddle on the logo at Roos Field, they moved into position groups, a configuration that made clear the limitations of these 10 spring practices, as well as the opportunities for those who are present and available for them.
For the time being, the Eagles have just barely more offensive linemen than tight ends, and even many of those lineman are banged up.
“To be honest, we’re far, far away from where we intend to be,” EWU head coach Aaron Best said before that practice Wednesday. “All in all, I think the energy’s been pretty good.”
Figuring out which players will ascend into the five vacant starting roles on the offensive line is a question that won’t be answered in full until August. Best said more players will join the team over the summer, but until then they have who they have.
“That really is the biggest (spot) from a positional standpoint where we’ve got to make the biggest difference,” Best said.
The players taking the snaps behind those linemen, though, might be the position group with the most intrigue.
The unquestioned leader of the offense at this point is Jared Taylor, the fifth-year quarterback who ran for 708 yards last season, 10 shy of team-leader Tuna Altahir, the running back who chose during the offseason to transfer to Stanford.
Gone is leading passer Kekoa Visperas, who is spending his final season at FCS Tennessee Tech in the Ohio Valley Conference. And then there’s the absence of Michael Wortham, who was granted an extra year of eligibility because of his previous years spent at a junior college, and so is set to play next season at Montana.
Aidan Carter, who just finished his redshirt freshman season, also left the program, at least for a while: This winter, he accepted a call for a two-year mission through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And so, as the Eagles huddled with their position groups, first-year offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Marc Anderson stood with four players: Taylor, redshirt sophomore Nate Bell, redshirt freshman Jake Schakel and true freshman Anthony Quinones.
“The main difference from last year is we’ve got a lot of new guys, like 8,000 snaps we’re trying to make up,” Taylor said, speaking not just to the offense but the whole team. “Spring is good to get guys going.”
During the 2024 season, which was Taylor’s second full one in the program after transferring from Feather River (California) College, Taylor was used more like a battering ram than a gunslinger. He played in 11 games, but in just one of those did he attempt more than five passes. That was against Montana State, a game for which Visperas was not available.
Otherwise, Taylor’s playcalls mostly sent him directly toward the line of scrimmage. It was effective: He ran 137 times and scored 10 touchdowns.
But Best and Taylor suggested that may not be the case this season.
“The special thing about the offense here at Eastern is that it’s been about 60 to 70% the same,” Best said. “The premise and foundation (is the same). We’ve been pretty dynamic over the course of 2½ decades here.”
Against that historical backdrop, Best characterized last season’s run-heavy approach at the quarterback position (Visperas also ran for 375 yards and nine touchdowns) as the latest example of what the program has done best: play to its strengths.
“We’ll still use the plus-one QB run (this season),” Best said. “But we’ve got to throw the ball downfield more. We’ve got to be successful in those moments, so that’s probably the biggest difference you’ll see is we probably won’t be throwing the ball (a maximum of) 15 times a game at times.
“But when you have five seniors (on the offensive line) and a quarterback like Jared Taylor last year, who did what he did with the ball in his hand, and you’re successful, you lean into that more.”
The assumption that Taylor ran because he couldn’t throw is one the quarterback will refute with words and with statistics. Some of those statistics stem from his time at Feather River, where he completed 294 of 461 attempts (63.8%) for 4,211 yards and 45 touchdowns in 24 games from 2020 to 2022.
But when asked to throw at Eastern last season, he was efficient, completing 20 of 27 for 144 yards and two touchdowns against Big Sky champion Montana State, a game that was within a touchdown heading into the fourth quarter.
“Last year I was playing a different role verbal and position-wise, playing quarterback kind of differently last year,” Taylor said. “I’m getting back to playing true quarterback again, and it’s been a lot of fun for me.”
It remains to be seen how much the Eagles will use their other three quarterbacks. Bell only appeared in two games last season. Schakel, a three-star recruit out of Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup, Washington, redshirted. Quinones graduated early from Liberty High School in Murrieta, California, to join the Eagles for the spring. He will be joined by freshman Kaden Rolfsness, from Puyallup High School, later this summer.
For now, the Eagles have who they have, at quarterback and at other positions.
“That (quarterback) room roots for each other more than anybody on this football field, all the while staying competitive,” Best said. “It didn’t just start the last couple years. It’s been a pretty good room the last 2½ decades.”
