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JOHNSON CITY – One play and it was off to the races for Tyler Riddell in Saturday’s Blue and Gold game for the East Tennessee State Buccaneers.

The redshirt sophomore from Tampa called his own number on an option read and raced 70 yards on the opening play of the last scrimmage of Spring practice. Riddell said the play was on his mind when he arrived at Greene Stadium on Saturday morning. “Me and (quarterbacks coach Price) Partrick were talking about it previously and I went home and thought about it (Friday night) and that was the play I wanted first. Before I could come up to him, he came up to me and told me that was the play he wanted to run first. It was crazy how like-minded he and I are. With the way it’s set up, it’s just a well-ran play.”

ETSU head coach George Quarles was impressed with the legwork of his signal-caller on play number one. “We wanted to run a little bit of option stuff on the first play and that was a new one that we had run parts of and sure enough he took off and took it 70 yards. That was good to see.”

There were several plays which resulted in a Buc finding the end zone. In addition to Riddell’s touchdown, Einaj Carter scored on a fourth and short play, redshirt freshman Adrian Johnson scored and tight end Tim Stayskal ran in from the one yard line. Defensively, Jayvon Henderson and Gabe Westcott had interceptions. “We ran a (run-pass option) and he read it and jumped in front of it and that was nice,” Quarles said of Henderson’s pick. “We need more of those because we haven’t taken the ball away very well and on the flipside of that, the offense has done a great job of protecting the ball. We have to be good in the turnover ratio and we were pretty good at that last year. We don’t need to be in the negative, we need to be in the plus each week.”

Special teams was a challenge due to 35 mph winds in Johnson City but punter Nate Brackett did have a 51-yarder and averaged 43.2 yards on his kicks. The Bucs will be looking for a new place kicker this season as true freshman Ewan Johnson from South Doyle in Knoxville got the call and hit two of his four field goal attempts from 30 and 35 yards but missed a few extra point attempts. “I will say that we have kicked it well all Spring,” Quarles said. “Today was obviously a tough day and we talked about how I wanted to see how they would do when the lights come on and there are people in the stands. I will give them a little bit of a break today with the wind because it’s tough out here.”

“I thought both sides did some good stuff,” Quarles said when surmising the Spring game and the overall performance of the Bucs in pre-season practice. “Obviously, offense makes a big play right off the bat and the defense got a takeaway soon after that. It was tough to complete some passes today with the wind as we missed some open guys and I thought we ran the ball okay and broke some tackles. On the flip side of that, maybe we didn’t tackles as well as we needed to. The best thing was we didn’t get anyone hurt and got out of here pretty injury free and we are excited about going into another off-season, getting back into the weight room to get them stronger and faster”.

“It’s really everything,” Quarles said when asked what his team will have to work on headed into the Summer and Fall. “Obviously we have some depth issues in some spots like the offensive line where we are really thin there and have to find some guys. We have a few coming in from the portal and we will probably have to find a few more. We are thin in the secondary as well so I think it’s depth and I think it’s learning the offense and learning everything we are trying to do.”

ETSU will open the 2023 football season on September 2 when they play at Jacksonville State.