After a huge 42-14 win over Drake, the Vandals head to Flagstaff, Arizona, to take on the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.
The Lumberjacks are 1-2 this season, beating 2020-2021 Football Championship Subdivision champions, Sam Houston. Their two losses came against Arizona State and North Dakota with 40-3 against ASU and 27-23 against ND.
Although Idaho played well against Washington State and Indiana, beat Drake and have the same record as NAU, they can’t go into this game thinking it will be a win.
In the NAU backfield, sophomore quarterback RJ Martinez has 630 passing yards on 78 completions. He’s thrown four interceptions, two against ASU and one against each of the other two teams he’s played. Sophomore running back Kevin Daniels has 113 yards on 36 carries. He totaled 1146 on 185 carries last season.
The Lumberjack’s wide receiver core also can’t be overlooked. Redshirt sophomore Coleman Owen leads the team in receiving yards with 225 on 20 receptions and has two touchdowns. Junior Hendrix Johnson also has triple digits with 154 yards on 16 receptions. Look for Martinez to target both often.
With the electric Lumberjacks offense, the Vandals defense will have to step up.
Senior linebacker Fa’avae Fa’avae and Redshirt junior linebacker Paul Moala both had eight tackles in the game against Drake. Moala also had one interception. Junior LB Sully Shannon totaled six tackles against the Bulldogs, one-and-a-half of which were tackles for loss.
On the offensive side, continue to look for redshirt junior wide receiver Jermaine Jackson to be elite. He had 92 receiving yards and one touchdown on three receptions last game. Redshirt sophomore WR Hayden Hatten had a rough start to the season, only getting 14 yards on five receptions against Washington State and then not playing against Indiana. He totaled 68 yards on four receptions against Drake.
The running back core for the Vandals is deep, but watch for freshman Anthony Woods and senior Roshaun Johnson to take most of the reps against NAU. Woods had 81 yards on 11 attempts while Johnson had 17 yards and one touchdown on seven attempts against Drake.
With both offense’s playing well in their first three games, neither of them can be counted out at any point in this game.
“We were, on paper, heavy favorites against Drake,” Vandals coach Jason Eck said. “Now you get to a game (where) two teams are evenly matched, and it’s going to be who plays better.”
Coach Eck has mentioned in every press conference that the Vandals can’t beat themselves (they can’t make mental errors that NAU could easily capitalize on). Idaho and NAU have faced off three times since Idaho returned to the Big Sky Conference and 23 times overall. The Lumberjacks lost the first meeting of the return in overtime and then won the other two. Idaho leads the series 17-6 all time.
Kickoff in Flagstaff, Arizona, is at 1 p.m. and can be watched on ESPN+ or heard on Vandal Radio.
This story was corrected to show that Idaho has played NAU 23 times in total instead of three
James Taurman-Aldrich can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jamesaldrich25