East Carolina opened spring football practice under misty, cool and wet conditions Friday afternoon at the Cliff Moore Practice Complex after a cold front turned 75 degree weather into 41 for the start of practice.
Mike Houston’s Pirates return 89 percent of it’s 2021 ground game including first team All-AAC and Rookie of the Year running back Rahjai Harris.
All and all it was a good first day after practice was postponed on Thursday due to the threat of severe weather in the Greenville area.
After practice, third year ECU head coach Mike Houston was elated to get his team back on the field in an official practice capacity and he talked about it afterward.
“Great to be back on the field, that was the best thing. It’s just good to finally get started again. It’s been a year ago just last week that everything got shut down and we had everything taken away from us,” said Houston, “Certainly we have a greater appreciation for just being able to be out there and be together and that was the highlight of the day today. It also was our first spring practice since our first year here.”
It has been quite a while since ECU held spring practice since they did not get one last year due to Covid-19.
“For the vast majority of our team, it was their first spring practice ever. Probably 75 percent of our team has never had a spring practice session. There was so much positive today,” Houston stated, “We’re rusty as crap, we certainly don’t look like we’re in mid-season form or anything like that but the greatest takeaways are incredible attitudes, just effort, guys running. You’re not having to push them to go hard. You’re kind of having to pull them back a little bit and that’s refreshing. A lot of depth which is refreshing too after some of the issues we’ve had the first couple of years.”
“It’s going to be a quick turnaround with the weather this week. With day one we’ll turn around and tomorrow and go again in practice two so we’ll get two practices in pretty quick and take a couple of days off before our first day of contact on Tuesday. Overall it was just a very positive day.”
On offense, a pair of new coaches have joined the staff at running back and tight end/inside receivers with the addition of Chris Foster and Latrell Scott. Houston talked about the evolution of the ECU offense where among many things, the tight end position could begin to play a bigger role.
“The first thing that stands out is I think we have a pretty good chance to be pretty good up front. We have some depth, we have size, we have ability so that group is going to continue to improve. We need to make a more concerted effort to use the tight end because we’ve got talent in that room,” Houston told PI, “I’m really excited about Shane Calhoun. He had a great day today. He’s kind of the guy who can do everything. We have some other guys in there too that I’ve got confidence in.”
“Our receiver group, obviously there is a tremendous amount of confidence in that group because you’re returning a lot of veteran playing experience. I think we all know who we have in the running back room. We’re a little thin on numbers right now but we’ve got quality and we’ve got some more quality coming in this summer.”
In the air, Holton Ahlers returns needing just 106 passing yards to move into fourth place at ECU all time. If he gets to 1,081 Ahlers will move into third place, trailing only Shane Carden and David Gerrard. Ahlers ranked 25th in touchdown passes last season
On the ground, Ahlers could become ECU’s all time leading quarterback rusher with 426 yards. Leander Green holds the record currently with 1,485 yards.
On defense Ja’Quan McMillian, who was sixth in interceptions with four returns in the secondary along with inside linebacker Xavier Smith. Elijah Morris was third in the nation in recovered fumbles with three and outside linebacker Jared Wilson’s three forced fumbles ranked 16th in the country last year.
Defense is going to be a big part of the equation for ECU this fall and Houston talked about some of the reasons for optimism.
“Bigger, faster, stronger. Second year in the scheme. Those guys who were true freshmen, they aren’t true freshmen anymore,” Houston told PirateIllustrated.com, “Confidence, I think some continuity with the staff, attitude, I anticipate on Tuesday that I’m not going to have to worry about the physicality aspect. There are so many things. I think that bunch is going to play with edge so it’s going to be exciting to watch.”
The Pirates averaged 40 points and 470 yards of offense in a two-game win streak including a 28-3 road win in Philadelphia against Temple and a 52-38 home win against SMU to close the season.
A total of 37 different players including 19 on offense and 18 on defense) made starts in ‘20, including 21 first-timers, a number which ranked among the Top 15 nationally among all FBS programs according to statistics compiled by ECU media relations.
The Pirates are slated for their second workout of the spring on Saturday. Stay tuned for the very latest as we begin our 17th campaign of ECU football coverage here on PirateIllustrated.com.
