Everything that has been broken for the Eastern football team this season pieced itself together in seamless fashion on Saturday as the Panthers pummeled Austin Peay in what was without a doubt a game owned by Eastern from the opening kick.

All of Eastern’s season-long ails disappeared against the Governors. Eastern’s run game finally busted open as senior running back Isaiah Johnson paced the team with 187 yards rushing and three total touchdowns, reminding his hometown team Austin Peay what kind of player they passed on. 

“Oh man definitely (there was extra motivation),” Johnson said. “With Clarksville being my hometown and Austin Peay got us last year, you definitely always want to go back and go home and be able to beat the people that you grew up with.”

The Panthers’ defense, which has been the team’s Achilles’ heel all year, buckled down in every way, holding Austin Peay’s normally potent running back Kentel Williams to just 29 yards on nine carries. The Panthers also forced two turnovers. 

Austin Peay’s run game was the best in the OVC prior to the game and Eastern’s rush defense was one of the worst, but the script flipped on Saturday. Eastern sealed edges, closed gaps and held Austin Peay to 189 yards rushing as a team. 

The performance was a refreshing change of pace for Eastern’s defense. 

“I think mainly knowing that this was our last game at home, everybody just stepped up and I told the D-line before the game that ‘if you do anything, you’ve got to give it your all’ and that’s what they did,” defensive end Josh Price said. 

On paper, the game looked much closer than what it actually was. Eastern only outgained Austin Peay 404 yards to 377, but a lot of that has to do with the incredibly short fields Austin Peay was giving Eastern. 

Eastern needed to go just 16 yards for its first touchdown of the game, 45 yards for its second and 46 for its fourth. Eastern went up 35-0 after recovering an Austin Peay fumble at the Governors 35-yard line; just one play later, Eastern was in for a score. In the first half, Eastern scored four touchdowns without ever having to go more than half a field. 

“It felt like we were in control pretty much most of the game,” head coach Kim Dameron said. “Defensively I was really happy with our plan, how our kids executed it and the physicality we played with.”

The 52 points and efficiency from the offense have come to be expected this season. The Panthers’ 2-7 start to the season was almost solely based on defensive struggles. In the middle of the season, the Panthers switched to a 3-3-5 defense and at times it worked, but it was inconsistent in execution. 

On Saturday, however, the defense finally did what it is designed to do for a full four quarters, delivering Eastern a marquee win over a team with an identical 2-4 conference record to them. 

“Today (the defense) kind of put it all together, the front played, I thought, pretty darn well against their front,” Dameron said. “Our linebackers, now that we’ve been in the three-down for four weeks to five weeks now they’re really starting to get comfortable. I think the biggest part of it, though, is our safety play and our corner play has become to where now it’s where it needs to be. We tackle on the edges, we fit runs and doing those things better than what we were doing them when we first started the conference season.”

Tackles and big plays came from all over the defense against the Governors. Safety Raymond Crittenden and Price led the team with eight tackles each. Linebacker Dytarious Johnson added seven with three tackles for loss. Defensive back Edwyn Brown had an interception and also tipped a punt early in the game that set the Panthers up in excellent field position. 

The win puts Eastern at 3-4 in the OVC with one game left to play. Considering all of the struggles the team has had, if Eastern can pull out another win and finish on the conference .500 and head into the offseason riding two straight wins, that would almost have to be considered a small victory. 

“Definitely the season hasn’t been going the way we want it to go and everybody has been emphasizing about how to send the seniors off right and today they definitely did,” Isaiah Johnson said. “It was great to see us connect on both sides of the ball, special teams too.”

Price, who has been a starter for Eastern all season on defense and been a staple of the unit through thick and thin, put the 52-21 thrashing of the Governors in simpler terms.

“It was great … it was great,” Price said. 

JJ Bullock can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].