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Sunday, November 15, 2009 9:47 PM CST
COLUMN: EIU offense takes its turn to shine in spotlight
By BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
Everyone is in the door now.
The offense no longer is the outsiders of this Eastern Illinois football team that is one step away from the NCAA playoffs party.
Maybe no one actually said the offense had been just along for the ride on this bus where defense and special teams were taking turns driving toward an Ohio Valley Conference championship.
But players from the offense had to have that feeling particularly after a 16-10 escape from Murray State where the Panthers’ only touchdown was scored on cornerback Rashad Haynes’ interception return.
Shoot, that performance might have really been embarrassing had we known in a couple of weeks last-place Southeast Missouri was going to run for 302 yards and score a 49-13 win over Murray State.
That comparison hardly needs to be mentioned now.
On Saturday Eastern answered plenty of questions with its 49-13 win over UT Martin.
“We’ve talked about it the last two weeks and as an offensive unit: It’s our time and the kids really responded to it” EIU offensive coordinator Roy Wittke said. “They did an outstanding job of executing.”
Unless Jake Christensen’s 18-for-21 passing for 322 yards and four interceptions isn’t good enough for you, yeah, you can say this was pretty good.
Those were among the numbers noted by head coach Bob Spoo, who could hardly stop smiling as he looked at a statistics sheet after the game.
“You name it, we did it right,” Spoo said. “It was one great effort. The coaches, the players, the support staff, everybody. We were clicking on all cylinders. It comes down to blocking and we ran hard. We were ranked very low in the red zone scoring and we were 4-for-4. I’m even in some ways amazed at our efficiency.
“I think that was the best executed game I’ve been around. We dominated in a way I can’t remember. I’ll tell you, it was just an amazing accomplishment. I can’t remember a game when we’ve executed that well.”
The 457-yard total offense day was much more efficient than when the Panthers racked up 523 yards but were plagued by turnovers while struggling to a 23-14 win at Southeast Missouri in September.
The 49 points, topping Eastern’s previous season-high of 31 scored on three previous occasions, came in three quarters. It substituted freely with no need to get any more when taking a who-saw-this-coming 49-7 lead into the fourth quarter.
Soaring from 40th to 18th in the nation though staying second behind Jacksonville State’s Ryan Perrilloux in the Ohio Valley Conference in passing efficiency, Christensen watched the fourth quarter from the sideline without any lobbying to pad his stats even more in a game he became the first EIU quarterback since Tony Romo in 2002 to throw four touchdown passes in a game.
“No, I asked coach to let Bodie (Reeder) play,” Christensen said.
“Everything was just working our way. If we execute we can do that.”
The offense proved that on this day.
“I still maintain we have a maturity about our football team that they understand what’s at stake and what needs to be done,” Wittke said. “Even though it’s been a little ugly at times we’re 8-2.”
Yeah, that ugly win at Murray State counted just as much in the standings. But in this particular case, the Panthers could have won a beauty pageant.
Brian Nielsen is sports editor of the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier. Contact him at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.
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