‘The only option is to win’: Eastern Washington’s Brock Harrison ready to lead new-look defense

The last time Brock Harrison knew Eastern Washington was going to be good at football was about this time three years ago, as the Eagles prepared to open the 2021 season.

Harrison didn’t start on that team, but he played in all 13 games and made 30 tackles while also recovering two fumbles.

“That was surreal being part of that team,” the sixth-year defensive end said. “We knew going into every game, we had everything we needed to win the game.”

Harrison is one of 10 Eagles players who played the final game of that 2021 season, a 57-41 loss at Montana in the second round of the FCS playoffs.

The Eagles haven’t been back to the playoffs, going 7-15 in the two seasons since.

But in this team, which opens its 12-game regular season on Thursday evening in Cheney against Monmouth (New Jersey), Harrison sees something different. He sees a team that is ready to reverse the narrative.

“We look at it not as two years of losing, but as two years of learning, to get to where we’re at now,” the captain said. “We’ve been through two years of it, so we understand what (losing) feels like. But we also understand what it takes to win.”

That mentality helped formulate the team’s approach to the 2024 season:

“Our motto going in is, there’s no other option,” Harrison said. “The only option is to win.”

Harrison signed with the Eagles during their most recent run to the championship game at the conclusion of the 2018 season. There is only one Eagles player left from the roster who played in that game, a 38-24 loss to North Dakota State: Darrien Sampson, the veteran cornerback whose career has been hampered by injuries.

“I look at him like a big brother,” fellow starting cornerback DaJean Wells said of Sampson. “He’s helped lead me through the journey of playing corner here. He’s helped lead that group, all of us, along.”

Sampson is also the only member of the team who graduated from high school in 2018, but there are still four 2019 graduates who joined the Eagles program right out of high school (three others on the roster from that high school class transferred in). Harrison is one. Defensive tackle Jacob Newsom and offensive linemen Luke Dahlgren and Matthew Hewa Baddege are the others.

When they talk about why they came back, the message has been consistent: They see great experience and talent in this year’s Eagles.

“It’s building into something that’s going to be pretty special,” Harrison said.

At 46 career games played, Harrison is poised, if he stays healthy, to tie fellow defensive end Mitchell Johnson for second on the team’s all-time games played list should he participate in all 12 regular-season games. That would leave him two games shy of the program record held by offensive lineman Tristen Taylor, who played in – and started – 60 games from 2016 to 2021.

Harrison spent his freshman year in 2019 watching and learning as a redshirt, gleaning what he could from team leaders Jack Sendelbach and Ty Graham as he grew toward the leadership role he holds.

Harrison will wear No. 4 for the second year in a row. It is a number that holds a special place in the program, given to the defender who best exemplifies grit, toughness, effort, leadership and academic success.

In the years since then, he navigated COVID-19 restrictions with the rest of the football team and played in the shortened season in the spring of 2021. That culminated in a playoff loss to North Dakota State, a team he played again last regular season in Minneapolis (another Eagles loss).

He also played at Florida and at Oregon, games that showed him that players at the FBS level were different – but maybe not that much different.

“After you play them, you realize they are just dudes like you are,” Harrison said. “It’s just football at the end of the day.”

The Eagles are looking for Harrison to lead a defense that has been among the FCS’ worst statistically the past two years.

Eric Sanders was promoted from linebackers coach to defensive coordinator during the offseason, and the team also brought in a new defensive line coach, Jaylen Johnson.

“Coach Johnson, he’s got energy,” sophomore Jirah Leaupepetele said after the Eagles’ final scrimmage. “We said the defensive line is like the heartbeat of the defense, the heartbeat of the team, so to come out with juice every day, that’s what he’s emphasized.”

Harrison will start at one end opposite redshirt freshman Tylin Jackson; between them the Eagles will start senior Matt Brown and the grad student Newsom at tackle. Almost certainly they will cycle in sophomores Jaden Radke, Isaiah Perez, Justis La’ulu and Leaupepetele, all of whom played last season. Others will play, too.

“When our ones go down,” Leaupepetele said, “there’s no drop off.”

Entering his eighth season as head coach, Aaron Best has been focused throughout camp on the team making continuous improvement, and he reiterated that message heading into the season.

“We’re worried about getting better legitimately week in and week out,” Best said. “We need to be trending early in the season to be multiple, which we have been, to tackle in open space, which we have been.

“But all that will come out when they start keeping score at 6 o’clock (Thursday).”

Harrison can’t erase the losses of the last two years. But if they’ve left him with anything, it’s a deep desire to win.

“At the end of the day, I want to win so badly, especially after these last two years,” he said. “There really is no other option for us but winning.”