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Eastern Washington offense wary of YSU’s defense
Eastern Washington head football coach Beau Baldwin spoke earlier this week about his team’s matchup against Youngstown State in the FCS semifinals and knows the Eagles can’t just waltz through the Penguins to the championship game.
“They’ve got a couple first-team defensive ends that I think are really good,” Baldwin said. “But with that they might overshadow a couple of great safeties and a couple great corners who didn’t get chosen from an all-league standpoint but they’re still really good players.”
Furthermore, Baldwin said he was not only impressed with the athleticism and individual talent YSU’s defense possesses, but how the unit plays together.
“They’re really good as a whole,” Baldwin said. “They’re aggressive when they need to be aggressive but they understand situations as well as angles when it comes to tackling.”
EWU quarterback Gage Gubrud said when looking at YSU on film, there’s not many weaknesses that stick out.
“They’re fundamentally sound,” Gubrud said. “There’s not a player on defense you can point out and go ‘OK. We can expose him.’
“They’re all really good players and I have a lot of respect for them.”
While YSU head coach Bo Pelini always preaches that his team treats every week the same, Baldwin said a mindset like that is particularly important at this point in the postseason.
“You don’t treat it differently than what got you here,” Baldwin said. “Sometimes you can make too much of it, like we have to [do something different], but that can create tightness.
“You want to continue to grow, be better than last week and understand you don’t have to do anything different. Our preparation allows us to play free.”
In a one-game scenario that is going to determine a spot in Frisco, Texas for the FCS title, Baldwin said focusing on the small details this week are one of the keys to victory.
“We know the margin of error each week is a little smaller so we have to pay attention to the details,” Baldwin said.
Those details aren’t as apparent to a layman’s eyes in EWU’s 38-0 FCS quaterfinal win over Richmond, but Baldwin said his team did very well in every small category that is needed in close games.
“Even if it had been a close game we felt we took care of the details we were hitting on that allowed us to be the better team on Saturday,” Baldwin said. “Things like the turnover battle, red zone, third down percentage. The little stats that lead to wins. We did them at a high level.”
YSU had a cold win against Wofford with a temperature at kickoff of 28 degrees and winds of 10 mph, but Eastern Washington did too. The Eagles played Richmond with temperatures at 20 degrees and 8 mph winds.
Gubrud said last week should help the teams in throwing the ball in what are supposed to be below-zero temperatures at some point during the game. His favorite target is NFL prospect Cooper Kupp (107 catches for 1,520 yards, 15 TDs).
“[The ball] does get a little harder [in the cold],” Gubrud said. “But you’ve just got to keep your hands warm. They do a good job of keeping the footballs warm on the sideline for us.”
The playing surface also could be slippery in the cold, something the Eagles are familiar with.
“You could kind of notice it last weekend with the turnovers,” Gubrud said. “It was too slippery for Richmond but we knew what the surface was going to feel like which made it a little easier to adjust.”