Eastern Washington has chance to play spoiler against playoff-hopeful Northern Arizona

With one week remaining in the FCS regular season, the Big Sky has almost certainly secured spots for four of its teams in the 24-team field.

Three – Montana State (11-0, 7-0 Big Sky), UC Davis (9-2, 6-1) and Idaho (8-3, 5-2) – are likely to get top-eight seeds, assuming they pick up wins Saturday against their rivals. Montana (8-3, 5-2), which visits Montana State, is the fourth team.

Then there’s the fifth Big Sky team, Northern Arizona, which needs a victory this weekend to stay in the running for another playoff spot – and that is where Eastern Washington comes in.

“They’re playing for their playoff lives,” EWU head coach Aaron Best said Tuesday during media availability. “They’re not going to beat themselves. We’re going to have to find ways to beat them.”

Northern Arizona (7-4, 5-2 Big Sky) enters Saturday’s game against the Eagles in Flagstaff on a four-game winning streak, tied with Idaho for the conference’s longest active one.

NAU’s resume is complicated by the fact that one of its victories came against Lincoln University, a Division II team. Such victories aren’t factored in when the committee considers at-large bids. It also doesn’t have a marquee win: none of its victories has come over ranked teams.

The Lumberjacks haven’t been to the playoffs since 2017, and only once in six appearances have they made it past the first round.

“It’d be enormous,” NAU first-year coach Brian Wright said Wednesday of potentially making the playoffs. “I think it would certainly be a great start to what we’re trying to build here.”

Eastern Washington (4-7, 3-4), on the other hand, will miss the playoffs for the third year in a row, something that hasn’t happened in the program since the first half of Paul Wulff’s tenure, from 2001 to 2003 (that was part of a six-year streak, from 1998 to 2003, that included the last two years under Mike Kramer).

The Eagles, seeking their first three-game winning streak since 2021, are eager to play spoiler at a stadium in which they’ve not played a football game since a 31-26 victory in 2018. Best said when he asked the team on Monday who had played at Walkup Skydome, the only person to raise his hand was long snapper Tyson Jacobson – and that was in 2022 when Jacobson was with Idaho.

NAU is 4-0 at home this season, including conference wins over Weber State (27-6), Idaho State (30-26) and Sacramento State (34-16).

“I don’t know if that’s an advantage or disadvantage,” Best said of the team’s unfamiliarity with the high-altitude setting. “… Every home team has the upper hand, no matter who you’re playing.”

Northern Arizona has been stingy on defense, allowing the second-fewest points (18.4) and yards per game (303.5) in the Big Sky behind Montana State. DJ VanHook and Mikale Greer each have three interceptions – as a team the Lumberjacks have 11, third most in the conference – part of a pass defense that ranks first in the conference (171.5 yards per game).

But just as important, Wright said, has been the Lumberjacks’ third-down defense, which has allowed opponents to convert a conference-low 28.9% of the time.

“For some reason or another, we’ve found out how to be pretty good on third down,” Wright said. “That’s allowed us to be a bend-don’t-break type of defense.”

Yet there may be no hotter offense in the country than Eastern Washington’s, which is coming off a 704-yard, 77-point outburst against Idaho State last week (when it only faced six third downs all game) and a 538-yard, 45-point effort the week before against Northern Colorado.

Those games followed a stretch of four losses in five weeks against those four playoff locks.

“I see the best offense in FCS football,” Wright said of EWU, “and they’ve played the toughest schedule in our conference.”

Aside from losses to Nevada (49-16) and Southeastern Louisiana (28-24), the Eagles have scored at least 28 points every game, leaning on a rushing offense that ranks fifth nationally in yards per game (238).

“There have been a couple games, maybe two or three, where we haven’t played to our standard (on offense) and as the best version of ourselves,” EWU associate head coach Marc Anderson said. “For the most part, the offensive line has been a pillar for us all year.

“The Big Sky is super competitive … so you’re running into teams that are historically good year in and year out. They’re tough eggs to crack for anybody who goes against them.”

The question heading into Saturday’s regular-season finale is whether Northern Arizona – which did not play UC Davis or Montana State this season – is one of those tough eggs, or if it is something with a thinner shell.

“They play really good football,” Anderson said. “That’s a credit to the staff and the players down there.

“You don’t see a lot of weaknesses. They’ve done a great job from January to now.”

Bengals, Bobcats, Hornets host key rivalry games

Three of the conference’s top four teams will be on the road this week against rivals, including the seventh-ranked Vandals, who play the Bengals (5-6, 3-4) in Pocatello.

Montana, ranked ninth in this week’s FCS Stats Perform Top 25, plays at No. 2 Montana State. The home team has won each of the past four games in the rivalry and has done so by at least 19 points.

Fifth-ranked UC Davis, which last reached the playoffs three years ago, plays at Sacramento State (3-8, 1-6) in the Causeway Classic. The Aggies ended a three-game losing streak in the rivalry with a victory last season.