Apr. 6—MOSCOW — Music blared in the P1FCU Kibbie Dome and players shouted in the intense matchup between the offense and defense.
But the one thing that resounded throughout the whole stadium? The popping of shoulder pads and the clashing of helmets.
The Idaho football team played in its first padded scrimmage of the spring on Saturday. Here's how it went down for the Vandals:
Defensive dominance
There was a noticeable difference in quality of play between the offense and the defense. The defense flew around and made plays, whether it be interceptions or sacks on the quarterback.
Meanwhile, the offense often struggled to move the ball down the field and did not score a single touchdown the entirety of the scrimmage.
But the disparity wasn't entirely unexpected.
First-year Idaho coach Thomas Ford Jr. said that this early into spring ball, the defense will have the advantage over the offense.
The struggle was for a variety of reasons: the installation of offense takes longer than installing a defense and the fact that the offense was playing multiple offensive lines with multiple quarterbacks.
"And offensively we don't have everything in yet," Ford said. "We haven't even done red zone, so you can see when we got in the red area: Well, of course we aren't moving the ball as well because we haven't done any of that.
"So really, today was more about getting out here competing. Seeing some of these guys in a live setting, getting to see guys tackle was a big thing I wanted to see from our defensive group and I thought they did some really good things today. Flew around and definitely had great effort and played physical."
A few players stood out defensively:
Freshman safety Jacob Turagavou picked off a pass from sophomore quarterback Holden Bea on a deep post route on the left side of the field.
Senior Washington transfer Maurice Heims was disruptive on the defensive line and collected himself a pair of sacks.
Senior defensive lineman Donovan Parham, a Mississippi Valley State transfer, also caused havoc for the offensive line and added a couple of sacks as well.
Sophomore defensive lineman Matyus McLain dropped back into the middle of the field and intercepted sophomore quarterback Nick Josifek to get the defensive side of the sidelines exploding in praise, including Ford, who commended McLain on a good spring camp after the scrimmage.
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Junior linebacker Dylan Layne said that he was proud of the young players who were fired up and flying around defensively, but he gave credit to defensive coordinator Cort Dennison for how the defense is designed.
"Coach Dennison is a mastermind; we probably have 40 calls in our call sheet. So when we're all doing our job, doing it right, it can get pretty nasty," Layne said. "The offense doesn't know how to block us sometimes. It was really fun."
Position battles
As any good spring camp comes, so do positional battles. The biggest one for the Vandals is at quarterback.
Sophomores Jack Wagner and Josifek were the focal point of that quarterback battle on Saturday.
"Everybody wants to know about the quarterback battle. I think you see Nick (Josifek) and Jack (Wagner) kind of separate themselves from the other two guys. I would imagine those guys would continue to get more reps as we continue with spring ball to see who's really gonna win that job."
Although neither player made clear headway throughout the scrimmage, Wagner did have a deep completion on a play-action pass to sophomore wide receiver Emmerson Cortez-Menjivar for nearly 60 yards to put them in the red zone. ...
