EIU Football Season Opens Saturday

This year’s slogan for Eastern Illinois football has been All GAS No BRAKES (#AllGasNoBrakes).

In Saturday evening’s last scrimmage of the preseason, the Panthers offense appeared to be revving on all cylinders as EIU opens the season on Sept. 1 at SEC member Arkansas with a 3 p.m. kickoff on the SEC Network.

The team played a half of live football with the offense having 11 drives all starting from inside their own 30 yard line.  The result was six touchdown drives, one made field goal and one missed field goal as four quarterbacks got work in preparation for the opener.

Johnathan Brantley who is listed as a co-starter with Harry Woodbery for the opener at Arkansas took snaps on the first drive and led the offense to a 75-yard touchdown drive finished with Nick Atoyebi’s 16-yard touchdown grab, his first of two touchdown catches on the day.  The drive saw the offense produce four first downs as they racked up 19 first downs during the scrimmage.

The defense was solid on the ensuing two drives forcing back-to-back 3-and-out’s for the offense.  The defense this week had one team sack during the fourth offensive drive and a pass break-up by Josh Price in the ninth drive.  Transfer defensive lineman Ryan Coleman had two tackles for loss.

Brantley would lead the next two scoring drives for the offense capping one drive with a 1-yard quarterback keeper while the other resulted in a Nate Severino 40-yard field goal.

Woodbery would lead two scoring drives of his own later in the scrimmage.  He connected with Alexander Hollins on a 57-yard touchdown and then hit Atoyebi for a 4-yard strike that wrapped up the Saturday scrimmage.

The final two touchdowns for the offense came on the ground with Jamal Scott scoring on a 36-yard touchdown run and Robert Columbus bulling in from 1-yard out.

“It was good to see the offense put points on the board this week,” said head coach Kim Dameron following the scrimmage.  “Last week the defense had the upper-hand and we held some of the starters out to give guys a chance to battle for spots. Today we had the starters in there and they showed that this offense can be a lot of fun to watch.”

EIU opens the season on Sept. 1 playing an SEC school for the first time in school history. After the opener at Arkansas, EIU travels to Illinois State on Sept. 8 for the 107th playing of the Mid-America Classic.  The 2018 home opener is Sept. 15 against Indiana State at 6 p.m. at O’Brien Field.  Season and single game tickets are now on sale by calling 217-581-2106 or online at www.eiupanthertickets.com