By Jason Pugh, Northwestern State Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations
NATCHITOCHES – If the first preseason “game” of Northwestern State’s fall camp was an appetizer, this Saturday’s second intrasquad scrimmage may serve as more of a main course.
The Demons will take the Turpin Stadium field around 9:30 a.m. Saturday their second full-pads scrimmage of camp, looking to expand on last week’s balanced effort.
“One more Saturday closer to real game day,” sixth-year head coach Brad Laird said. “This being our second what we call preseason game – for the simple fact in college you don’t have the opportunity to go against another opponent – we want them to understand this not just another practice. We were able to get 60 to 70 snaps last week, and we want to expand that to 100 snaps this week.
“Once you get done with Saturday’s scrimmage, depth charts are going to be close to locked in as we approach the mock scrimmage next week and game week after that.”
In addition to the expansion in terms of plays, Laird and his staff hope to see what has become a trend throughout camp continue along.
The Northwestern State offense started the first scrimmage of camp quickly, scoring a touchdown on the third play from scrimmage and adding another on the third possession before the Purple Swarm defense settled in and turned the tide in the middle part of the scrimmage.
The sides split a pair of two-minute-drill results with Tyler Vander Waal connecting with Twon Hines on a 21-yard touchdown before the defense answered on final-play forced fumble by Justice Galloway-Velazquez that Kwame Sarkodie recovered in mid-air.
“It’s been that way in practice, and that’s a good thing because whoever came out with a hot start, the other side was able to rally back and overcome the adversity and negative plays,” Laird said. “That’s been good to see. That’s been every practice. It’s been the same as far as intensity.
“We’ve been up and down this week. We’ve got to be better consistently as far as learning how to practice. We saw that in Thursday night’s practice. There was a lot better tempo, a lot better energy, a lot better effort than what we had the previous day. Hopefully, we can build off that going into this scrimmage.”
The expanded number of snaps will include more reps for the Demon special teams units, a common occurrence in the second scrimmage of most camps.
Kickers Brett Money and Evan Kern were a combined six-for-six in field goals and extra points in the opening scrimmage, including Money connecting on a 47-yard field goal.
“It’s important to be able to take the reps you did in practice and put it, holistically, in a team setting – a scrimmage setting – go good on good and get some live work,” Laird said. “We’ll see where we are. We talk about all three phases. Last week, we didn’t get as many special teams reps as we wanted because of depth issues. Now, we have most of those guys back healthy. It will be a very important day for special teams on Saturday.”
— Featured photo by Chris Reich, NSU Photographic Services