Eastern Washington can’t be stopped in 77-42 record-setting rout of Idaho State

Following its victory last weekend, in which Eastern Washington set a single-game record for rushing carries, head coach Aaron Best suggested to his team that perhaps it should pull out some game tape from 25 years ago, just to get a few pointers.

“I told them to check the ’99 film,” Best said. “They probably could study up.”

It was on Sept. 25 that year, with Best starting at center, that the Eagles ran for 456 yards and seven touchdowns, figures that long stood as program records.

That was, at least, until Saturday.

In their final game at Roos Field this season, the Eagles played perhaps the most flawless offensive game in program history, setting a bevy of records in a 77-42 smashing of Idaho State in the Bengals’ first trip to Cheney in eight years.

Afterward, Best spoke to reporters before he addressed the team, but he was pretty sure he knew what players were going to say to him when he went back to them.

“They’re probably waiting in the locker room right now to say, ‘Check out the 2024 film,’ ” Best said. “Just an awesome effort in a lot of ways. There was no quarterback run game back in 1999, so maybe that’s one thing I’ve got going for me that we didn’t have a plus-one run game. But this was an awesome game to watch.”

Behind that quarterback run game, Eastern (4-7, 3-4 Big Sky) has become one of the most potent rushing teams in the country this season. Against Idaho State (5-6, 3-4), redshirt junior Jared Taylor ran 18 times for a career-high 160 yards and three touchdowns. Senior Michael Wortham ran five times for 109 yards and two scores. Redshirt junior Kekoa Visperas ran nine times for 48 yards and three touchdowns.

Even with just those three, the Eagles would have set a program record with eight rushing touchdowns in a game. But they tacked on two more, one each from redshirt junior Malik Dotson and senior Brandon Montoya, who scored his first career touchdown on his last game at Roos Field.

“When you have memories like this on Senior Day, with all the hours you put in,” Best said of Montoya’s score, “ ‘special’ is an understatement.”

The Eagles ran 52 times for 478 yards, surpassing the record set against Cal State Northridge when redshirt freshman Nate Bell scampered around the right side for 17 yards inside the game’s final 2 minutes.

Following their 43-15 win over Northern Colorado last week in Greeley, this was the second game in a row in which the Eagles had a comfortable lead late and gave game reps for some of their younger players, something Best said just cannot be replicated in practice.

Eastern’s 77 points were the team’s most against a Division I opponent, topping a 74-point effort against Portland State in 2018 and a 71-point output against Idaho in 2021.

The Eagles had 11 possessions and scored a touchdown on each . They faced just six third downs all game. They totaled 37 first downs, two shy of the program record. The Eagles didn’t throw an incomplete pass, as Visperas was 14 for 14, Wortham 1 for 1.

Their 704 yards of offense were the eight most in program history, the most since the 2021 team that produced single-game yardage totals of 837 (against Idaho), 754 (against Western Illinois) and Cal Poly (683).

This production came against an Idaho State team that had won two games in a row and was looking to finish with a winning record for the first time since 2018. But Eastern crushed that hope, one handoff at a time.

The Bengals were still plenty effective on offense. Even at halftime, Eastern’s 49-28 lead wasn’t something it carried lightly, considering the way Idaho State came back from 27 points behind to beat the Eagles last year in Pocatello.

“We owed them a little payback from last year, so we had that in mind,” EWU senior nickelback Cage Schenck said. “And we knew for the defensive backs it would be a fun last game on the ‘Red’ with how much they pass it.”

Idaho State senior Kobe Tracy completed 37 of 54 attempts for four touchdowns, 370 yards and an interception (by redshirt freshman linebacker Samarai Anderson), finding Jeff Weimer 14 times for 134 yards and Christian Fredericksen nine times for 130 yards and two touchdowns.

The Bengals also scored on an 85-yard kickoff return by Justice Jackson, who was part of the 2020 Eastern Washington high school recruiting class that comprised most of the senior class honored before kickoff.

But unable to get any defensive stops, the Bengals’ offensive output of 484 yards simply was not enough.

“If it’s working, you keep going at it,” Wortham said of the Eagles’ offense. “We had a lot of success at it, so there wasn’t too much we had to break out in the game plan. We just kept it fairly simple and did what we know we can do best. … it worked.”

Eastern will head to Flagstaff to play a Northern Arizona team that is 7-4 overall (5-2 Big Sky) and aspires to receive an at-large bid in the 24-team FCS playoffs.

“We know how NAU is,” Schenck said of a Lumberjacks team that beat Eastern in Cheney last season. “It’ll be a dogfight.”