Eastern Washington has chance to play spoiler against No. 2 Montana State with FCS playoffs out of reach

With a playoff bid no longer a reasonable goal, the Eastern Washington football team will try to take a step toward a .500 finish Saturday when it plays host to the unbeaten Montana State Bobcats.

Eastern’s record, which sits at 2-6 overall and 1-3 in the Big Sky, is now a matter of pride, though repeatedly this year the Eagles coaches and players have said their record doesn’t correlate to how they prepare each week.

EWU head coach Aaron Best said Tuesday that being in a spot like this “tests the fortitude” of a team and reveals “who you truly are.”

“It kind of shows the wanna-get-betters and the wanna-get-it-overs,” Best said. “That’s what tough times will do.”

After the most recent loss, 38-28 to Idaho, and earlier this week, Eagles players talked about how there wasn’t any quit in this team and that they were still playing for each other and for the university as a whole.

On film, that play-to-the-end attitude is apparent to Brent Vigen, who is 40-9 in his time as Montana State’s head coach, including a 3-0 record against Eastern.

“(Eastern) is a team that hasn’t won the games that it would have liked, but the competitive nature has been there and then some,” Vigen said during his Monday news conference.

“I think we recognize fully how dangerous an opponent this is,” he said.

Montana State (8-0, 4-0) is ranked second in the FCS Stats Perform Top 25 and is also ranked second in this week’s championship committee’s rankings, an in-season snapshot that operates as an “if the season ended now” seeding for a playoff bracket. UC Davis (fifth), Idaho (seventh) and Montana (10th) also made the committee’s top 10.

The Bobcats have dominated the four Big Sky opponents they’ve faced , defeating them by a combined score of 174-55. That includes a 38-7 victory over Idaho on Oct. 12.

Their offense is averaging a Big Sky-leading 511.9 yards per game and their defense is averaging a conference-low 280.8 yards per game. If any team in the Big Sky is the complete package and a national title threat, Montana State appears to be it.

Beating the Bobcats is no doubt a tall order for the Eagles.

But they draw confidence from their close losses to those three other ranked teams, defeats that came by a combined 23 points.

“We’re young in some areas and we need to get out of our heads and just finish games,” EWU senior safety McKel Broussard said on Tuesday. “We just have to trust ourselves and that we have the ability to win games. Talent isn’t the issue. It’s the execution.”

That’s been a theme all season for the Eagles, who despite changing defensive coordinators between this year and last continue to rank among the bottom four teams in the Big Sky in categories like run defense (ninth), pass defense (10th) and opponent third-down conversions (11th).

Broussard, who transferred to Eastern from UTEP last offseason, played on teams with winning and losing records during his four years there. He’s been on teams that folded late in seasons by doing things like showing up late to meetings or skipping them entirely.

He doesn’t see that sort of behavior at Eastern.

“We believe we can win every game, and if we can just execute and finish games, particularly this one, it’s up for grabs,” Broussard said. “We’re not some scrubs. The confidence is still there and people are buying in.”

Visperas has ‘pretty good chance’ to play

Redshirt junior quarterback Kekoa Visperas injured his right leg against Idaho last week. While it didn’t keep him out of the second half entirely, there was at least one drive where he was held out because of it.

“It looks like things are cleared up enough for us to feel like he’s got a pretty good chance of going Saturday,” Best said on Tuesday. “If he’s cleared, he’ll go.”

Sharing snaps with redshirt junior Jared Taylor, Visperas ranks fourth in the Big Sky in passing yards (1,692) and has completed a conference-high 74.1% of his throws. He’s thrown 13 touchdowns and two interceptions while also rushing 74 times – second most on the team – for 251 yards and six touchdowns.

Redshirt junior running back Malik Dotson, out the last two weeks with a leg injury, is again not listed on the depth chart . Dotson has 315 rushing yards, third on the team behind Taylor (369) and redshirt junior running back Tuna Altahir (501).

The Eagles rank fourth in the Big Sky in rushing average (197 yards per game). Montana State leads the Big Sky and ranks second nationally in rushing at 312.9 ypg.