Eckenrode
Freshman quarterback and business major Tyler Eckenrode will get the nod from Emporia State football head coach Garrin Higgins to start this Saturday’s home game at 1 p.m. against MIAA foe Northwest Missouri
“We just felt like there needed to be a change made, we had turned the ball over ten times the last few games and won one game,” Higgins said. “Eckenrode is a young quarterback, and we wanted to give him an opportunity – he deserved the right to have that opportunity.”
Eckenrode realizes that being a young quarterback is a learning experience but embraces the challenge.
“I make plenty of mistakes and still have room to grow, but I feel like I’m getting better every week,” Eckenrode said. “I think I’ve learned a lot, especially from these past two games and learning what it’s like at the college level.”
When asked if the young quarterback had passed the “Higgin’s Test,” coach Higgins said with a smile, “He’s done a good job. He’s secured the football and done everything we’ve asked of him. He’s gotten rid of the ball on time and played well. He hasn’t played great but he’s played well.”
Whether or not Higgins has a young Tom Brady on his hands is yet to be determined. Higgins knows that the quarterback still has some steps to make.
“I still think there’s a ways to go with him,” Higgins said. “He’ll look at last week’s game against Pitt State and see some things that he did, he’ll see some mistakes that he made with just begin a young quarterback. The more repetitions he gets, the better off he will be.”
The defense also knows that they will have a task on their hands come Saturday – that task will be to control the powerful Northwest Missouri offense.
“It’s a big week for us,” said senior defensive back and sociology major Travis Lee. “We tend to play better at home, and guys are going to come ready to practice. We had a bad game at Pitt, but now we’ve got Northwest at home and we’ve got to come prepared to play. Everyone knows how good they are, there’s probably a lot of talk about how good Northwest is, but we have got to come prepared to play on our side of the ball. We need to show up and be ready to play, especially at home against an opponent like that.”
The offense hopes to do their part in putting points up on the board to weaken the strong Northwest defense.
“It’s a very even playing field,” Eckenrode said. “Every team from top to bottom in the MIAA is good – anybody can beat anybody on any given day. You just have to play smart football, we have to win the turnover margin and have a couple more big plays than they do and come out with a win.”
The team knows the problems they are having and know what they have to do to turn the season around and win the remaining games.
“It’s like what coach has told us these past few games – it’s a saying he says, ‘You’ve got to make your own breaks,’” Lee said. “We’ve had mental busts and people making errors and things like that, and we’ve been getting the bad end of the stick with some of the calls in games. The main thing is that we can’t wait for something good to happen – we have to go out and make it happen. Once something bad happens we’ve got to respond and bounce back – we can’t snowball and get out of control with it. We’ve got to take it into our hands and stop waiting on things to happen and just make it happen for us.”
Zac Burt/The Bulletin
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