EWU QB Eric Barriere named Walter Payton Award finalist

The Eastern Washington Eagles won’t be in Frisco, Texas, this year for the FCS title game, but one member of the team has at least been invited for the weekend.

Quarterback Eric Barriere was named Tuesday as one of three finalists for the Walter Payton Award, which will be presented on Jan. 7, the day before the championship game in Texas. The award honors the best offensive player of the year in Division I FCS.

The other two are running back Quay Holmes – whose East Tennessee State team plays at North Dakota State in the quarterfinals on Saturday – and quarterback Cole Kelley, whose Southeastern Louisiana team lost last weekend to James Madison.

Kelley won the award last year. Barriere finished second, and he has said that a motivating factor for returning to Eastern for the 2021 season was to finally win the Walter Payton award.

This season, Barriere led the Eagles to a 10-3 record and broke a number of Big Sky Conference career records in the process. He finished the season with 5,070 yards passing and 46 touchdowns while completing 65.4% of his passes. All were career bests. He also rushed for 222 yards and four touchdowns.

Kelley, also a senior, played the same number of games (the Lions finished 9-4) with similar passing statistics: 5,124 yards, 44 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. But Kelley completed 73.4% of his passes and also led his team in rushing yards (491) and touchdowns (16).

Holmes, a junior, is second among FCS running backs with 1,518 rushing yards and is tied for first with 17 touchdowns. He also has 27 receptions for 299 yards and three more scores.

Barriere was already named the Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year for the second year in a row.

He ranks third all time in the FCS in total offense (15,394 yards), third in passing yards (13,809) and is tied for fourth in passing touchdowns (121).