Broncos pick up first win after thrashing NWC

The Lind-Ritzville/Sprague Broncos romped on offense and stymied the Northwest Christian Crusaders on defense in a 36-6 rout in the team's home opener on Sept. 13.

The Broncos football team improved to 1-1 (0-0 in league play) on the young season with the victory, avenging last year's 34-13 loss to the Crusaders in Colbert. LRS dominated from start to finish and on offense, defense and special teams.

"I was really pleased," said Broncos head coach Greg Whitmore, who added that Northwest Christian returned a lot of players this week who missed last week's game against Reardan. "We were up 27-0 at halftime and still didn't play our best football. But all in all we'll take it, and there's still a lot of things we need to get better at."

Defensively the Broncos allowed just eight Crusaders first downs, including just one in the first half. They held Northwest Christian scoreless until the final four minutes of the game, when LRS had mostly backups and second-stringers in the game.

On offense, junior quarterback Drew Kelly and senior running back Austin Thompson led a balanced attack. The Broncos threw for 182 yards and rushed for 167, not including a 68-yard punt return for a touchdown by Thompson midway through the second quarter.

It was a career day for Thompson as he rushed 22 times for 116 yards and caught four passes for 77 yards, scoring both via the ground and through the air. He capped off the Broncos' opening drive with a one-yard touchdown run, returned a punt for a touchdown and took a screen pass from Kelly 35 yards for the score in the third quarter to all but put the game away for good.

"He's capable of doing all those things, and we know that we need to get him the ball when we can," said Whitmore. "He's pretty dangerous. He's a good receiver, a good runner, so we try to give him more touches. You always want to try and give your best players the most touches."

Kelly bounced back from his first career start last week to lead LRS' balanced offense, going 13-19 passing for 128 yards and two touchdown passes to Thompson and senior running back Spencer Gering, which was his second touchdown pass of the season to Gering. Kelly threw one interception in the game, which came when a Bronco receiver fell during his route.

The Broncos' passing game consisted of a flurry of screen passes to wide receivers and running backs. Whitmore was pleased with the team's efficiency, but hoped to open the playbook up further and take more shots down the field in the coming weeks.

"One area we have to improve is throwing the ball down the field," said Whitmore. "And some of that's timing and making sure Drew is throwing it on time rather than trying to wait and see if a receiver will be open, because you don't wait until they get open, you just make the pre-snap read and throw it on time and have the receiver run under it."

Kelly also got it done on the ground, rushing three times for 28 yards, including an 18-yard scramble in the second quarter that he ran in for a touchdown to show off his mobility.

On offense, the Broncos returned senior lineman Spencer Miller to the starting lineup, after missing the first game of the season due to an injury he suffered in the Ritzville Jamboree. He said Miller's presence on the line helped LRS' offense, and hoped to have him back playing defense in this week's game against Lake Roosevelt.

A key to this game that both the offense and the defense will hang their hat on is third down conversions. The Broncos offense converted 8-14 (57.1%) third down attempts, while the Crusaders offense converted just 1-13 (7.7%) attempts. Northwest Christian was also just 1-7 (14.3%) on fourth down.

Whitmore expects his team to face a much stiffer test in this week's non-league home game, against the Lake Roosevelt Raiders of the Central Washington 2B Division. The Raiders played their first game of the season last week, thrashing Oroville 55-14. In 2018, Lake Roosevelt advanced to the 2B State Tournament.

"It's a big challenge," said Whitmore. "They're one of the favorites to win [their league] ... so it's going to be a big challenge for us."

Kickoff between LRS and Lake Roosevelt is set for 7 p.m. at Jimmie Snider Field in Ritzville.