One piece of the Northwestern State football team’s offseason growth showed last week when the Demons opened spring practice.
More will be on display when Northwestern holds its lone Saturday scrimmage of the spring at 9:35 a.m. The scrimmage is open to the public and is part of a busy Saturday that also includes the Leon Johnson NSU Invitational track meet that begins with field events at 10 a.m. (racing at 1), softball’s Southland Conference series finale against Lamar at noon, and the league-leading Lady Demon tennis team’s SLC match against McNeese at 1 o’clock.
A slow-moving spring in 2024, just three months after Blaine McCorkle took over the program, presaged a winless season with a very inexperienced roster. This spring, many of those players are back and McCorkle sees the difference.
“We talked a lot before about how much ground we’ve made up physically,” McCorkle said. “That was evident last week the first day we put pads on. Their bodies look different. We’re bigger, we’re stronger, we’re more physical, and that’s been very evident. Now, we have to develop the football skill to go with it – translate that into how we can use that newfound strength and size we have.”
McCorkle said he expects his team to run between 45 to 55 snaps Saturday with emphasis on certain scenarios.
“The first probably 18 plays or so will be short-yardage and goal-line,” he said. “That will be a huge, huge emphasis. Then we’ll work the entire field. We’ll have a coming-out section. We’ll have a move-the-field section in the middle of the field. We’ll have a red-zone section at the end. We’ll move in segments as we go.”
Saturday’s scrimmage will mark the eighth of Northwestern’s 15 spring practices, which culminate with the April 26 Joe Delaney Bowl spring game.
Through Wednesday’s sixth practice, with the seventh set for this afternoon, McCorkle noticed a trend forming, one that has him excited for the remainder of the spring.
“There is a lot of competition at a lot of positions,” he said. “The neat thing is there are a lot of really young players competing with other really young players for some spots. That’s exciting. I’m pretty excited about what we’ve done with our first five days.
“The guys are working hard, and they’ve been really, really coachable. I like this team right now. They’re working hard to get better, and they don’t have any other agendas. That’s an exciting thing.”