Another week has passed and the Cougar football team is now ten days away from its annual Crimson and Gray game.

The Cougars are in full swing for the spring campaign and are working on several things, including running the football. A weak point last year was the offensive line’s inability to get a push off the line for the running backs. Senior offensive lineman Gunnar Eklund believes the process is moving along well this spring.

“It’s going good, it’s an emphasis, you know last year we led the country in passing but we didn’t run for anything,” Eklund said. “A goal going into this offseason, our winter workouts and stuff when we do them by ourselves was really to work on run blocking and all that stuff.”

Eklund has been running with the first team on offense playing left guard this spring. Despite an inability of running the football since Head Coach Mike Leach took over the program, it’s an integral part of the Air Raid offense. He has said that if the Air Raid offense is working like it’s supposed to, then the running backs should lead the team in all-purpose yards.

The offensive line plays a big role in that statistic as the running backs don’t need to rush for 1,000 yards, but they do need to make an impact offensively in order to take pressure off of the passing game. Offensive line coach Clay McGuire said the offensive line is pushing its emphasis toward an increase in production in the running game to better improve the offense as a whole.

“I said, if we get a strong run game, run efficient, it’ll be a lot harder for teams to stop our offense,” McGuire said. “So you know it’s definitely a point of emphasis. One thing I’ve said is we’ve gotten older, we’ve got everybody back. The (running) backs have gotten older, we had a couple things we kind of just tweaked and everything it’s coming along pretty good right now.”

In last Thursday’s practice, redshirt junior Gabe Marks continued making a big impression on the offensive side of the ball. Marks caught four touchdowns during the day and was bearing the defensive backs on nearly every snap.

This past Saturday marked the team’s first scrimmage of the spring. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Luke Falk and redshirt freshman quarterback Peyton Bender spent the most time running the offense. Falk completed 20-29 passes for 209 yards and three touchdowns. Meanwhile, Bender completed 23-30 passes for 241 yards and four touchdowns.

Defensively, the Cougars struggled in the secondary, however, they got to the quarterback frequently and recorded nine sacks. A big factor in the defense’s success was the increased use of blitz packages that new defensive coordinator Alex Grinch has emphasized this spring. He will primarily run a nickel defense, and the pressure has been heavy on the Cougar quarterbacks.

Leach said the tandem of redshirt sophomore linebacker Peyton Pelluer and senior linebacker Jeremiah Allison would help the Cougars.

“Jeremiah’s real explosive, Peyton’s real instinctual, kind of takes a start to the ball pretty quick because he sorts it out quick,” Leach said. “Jeremiah is just a real inspiring guy so I think the two of them together are pretty good.”

The Cougars will have the rest of this week and next week to practice before their spring game in Spokane on April 25. They will have one final practice after the spring game. The Cougars will next take the field at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday in Martin Stadium.