Sep. 6—Although Eastern Washington got its first victory of the football season on Saturday, 34-24 over the visiting Northern Iowa Panthers , it came with a significant rash of injuries.
The most notable loss — and perhaps the longest-term — was that of redshirt junior linebacker Samarai Anderson , a team captain who was playing in his 30th career game.
Midway through the second quarter, Anderson sniffed out a play-action bootleg by UNI quarterback Jaxon Dailey . But as Anderson changed direction to chase him down, he buckled to the ground and held his knee as Dailey made his way into the end zone. Anderson was helped to the injury tent, emerged from it limping, and by the second half was using crutches to get around the sideline.
"I am putting my money on (Anderson) if he stays upright in that crucial moment," Best said of the play. "Absolutely, unequivocally, the worst piece of football is injuries."
Losing anybody to injury is significant, Best said, but he admitted that it was especially hard for the Eagles to lose someone he called "a defensive bellcow" that the team leans on.
Redshirt junior LJ Roberts, a Portland State transfer, and junior Matt Eskridge II, a Sacramento State transfer, handled most of the second-half reps in Anderson's place, next to redshirt senior Myles Mayovsky, who led the Eagles with 10 tackles. Roberts and Eskridge each finished with four tackles.
By the second half, Eastern was down to five healthy, dressed receivers after Jaxon Branch (head) and Drew Carlson (lower body) suffered injuries. Branch, who caught a first-quarter touchdown, was injured while diving for a pass along the EWU sideline. He was checked out in the injury tent and emerged with sunglasses and no helmet but stayed on the sideline.
Carlson finished with five catches for 45 yards; Branch had two catches for 28 yards. In last week's 34-27 loss at Northern Arizona, Carlson and Branch were the top two targets of redshirt junior quarterback Nate Bell.
After halftime, though, Bell completed 10 of 14 passes and threw a touchdown to redshirt senior Jamai East, who finished with three catches for 24 yards.
"We trust anybody who is going in the game," Bell said. "If they're suited up they're ready to play. That's our philosophy."
Freshman cornerback and returner Zamarie Tellez also left the game due to injury when he was tackled on a kick return.
A Bell-to-Bell backfield
For the second game in a row, Nate Bell and Jaxon Bell shared a backfield for the Eagles, and this time the younger brother was even more effective, rushing five times for 26 yards and catching two passes from his older brother for another 19 yards.
"It's like playing backyard football with him out there, in a sense," Nate Bell said of his freshman brother. "It's super cool."
Jaxon Bell, listed at 5-foot-9 and 175 pounds, had 12 yards on two touches last week and has so far been used as a change of pace to grad senior running back Malik Dotson and redshirt sophomore Kevin Allen III. Allen and Dotson combined for 22 yards on 12 carries Saturday.
"He's a little guy, so people kind of think he's not really as good," the older Bell said, "but he's been little his whole life, so he knows how to use it to his advantage."
Jaxon Bell also returned one punt for 4 yards.
Payback, of a sort
Saturday's victory carried a small measure of extra weight for EWU head coach Aaron Best.
Part of it was because of Northern Iowa 's 17-14 victory over the Eagles last year in Cedar Falls, a game that Eastern may have won were it not for a procedural penalty that nullified a go-ahead touchdown run by Bell in the fourth quarter.
Another part was that Todd Stepsis, who is now in his second year as head coach at UNI, was the head coach of Drake two years ago when the Bulldogs beat the Eagles 35-32 in overtime at Roos Field.
"It's been a two-year bad taste in my mouth with the Drake loss a couple years ago and the loss last year against the same (coaching) staff, so we found a way," Best said. "We have grown a ton from last year. We still have 10 guarantees (regular season games) to go, but we have grown a ton, and we showed that in the first two games."
Eastern improved to 3-0 all time against Northern Iowa in Cheney; in seven tries, the Eagles have never beaten the Panthers in Cedar Falls.
