{"id":280434,"date":"2025-11-09T02:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280434\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T02:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T02:14:10","slug":"eastern-washington-qb-fumbles-spike-in-final-seconds-to-lose-to-fcs-no-2-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280434\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Washington QB fumbles spike in final seconds to lose to FCS No. 2 Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Redshirt freshman Jake Schakel’s first start as Eastern Washington’s quarterback nearly ended in glory Saturday on the road against FCS No. 2 Montana. Instead, it ended in agony.<\/p>\n

With 5 yards standing between the Eagles and a go-ahead touchdown \u2014 and nine, then eight, then seven, then six seconds left on the clock, Schakel received the snap with a dirted ball in mind.<\/p>\n

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But before he could spike it, he fumbled it.<\/p>\n

Even though Eastern Washington running back Kevin Allen III recovered the loose ball, it didn’t matter. The Eagles didn’t have any timeouts to stop the clock.<\/p>\n

That’s why they opted for a spike on third-and-1 after Allen was tackled in bounds and short of the line to gain on the previous play.<\/p>\n

The Grizzlies (10-0, 6-0 Big Sky) celebrated a 29-24 win. The Eagles (4-6, 3-3) were left wondering what could have been.<\/p>\n

Schakel performed admirably in his first start in place of Nate Bell, a redshirt sophomore who was injured in last week’s loss to Sacramento State.<\/p>\n

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The Puyallup, Washington, native hit on 43 of his whopping 63 pass attempts, registering a completion percentage of 68.3% while throwing for 451 yards, 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions.<\/p>\n

Schakel’s passing yardage total tied him for 20th most in single-game Eastern Washington history, and his completion total tied him for fourth-most in single-game program history, per Dan Thompson<\/a> of the Spokesman-Review.<\/p>\n

Schakel connected with wide receiver Miles Williams 11 times for 136 yards, and the second-year signal-caller from Emerald Ridge High School hooked up with wideout Cole Pruett 10 times for 133 yards and a touchdown.<\/p>\n

Montana sprinted to a 22-0 first-half lead before Schakel willed the Eagles back into the game. He bounced back from a pick and a turnover on downs in the final frame to engineer an 11-play, 63-yard touchdown drive that made it a one-score game with 61 seconds left.<\/p>\n

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Soren McKee recovered his own onside kick, and Schakel went back to work. He led Eastern Washington to the doorstep of a monumental upset.<\/p>\n

A spike was supposed to buy him time for the game-winner. He fumbled it before it could stop the clock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Redshirt freshman Jake Schakel’s first start as Eastern Washington’s quarterback nearly ended in glory Saturday on the road…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[61329,63097,399,148480,3326,398,396,397,5780,99,39689,2002],"class_list":["post-280434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-big-sky-conference","tag-eastern-washington","tag-football","tag-kevin-allen","tag-montana","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-program-history","tag-sports","tag-the-eagles","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}