It took all of 17 seconds for the Eastern Washington University football team to take the lead for good, but a blowout quickly turned to a shootout.
 
A 78-yard pass play from junior Eric Barriere to senior Dre' Sonte Dorton on the first offensive play of the game sparked EWU to a 21-0 first-quarter lead and eventual 59-31 victory for the No. 4/5 ranked Eagles over Lindenwood on Saturday (Sept. 7) at Roos Field in Cheney, Wash.
 
Eastern led 31-0, but couldn't shake a Lindenwood team which scored 17 points in the second quarter and 14 in the third quarter, but none in the first and fourth periods. Eastern had a school-record 769 yards of total offense and Dorton broke EWU all-time receiving yards record with 289 while catching 15 passes and three touchdown receptions.
 
"The game came in three phases," said Eastern head coach Aaron Best. "We started fast and were relentless on offense, defense and special teams. We had a lull, but then we got on the gas again. We have some things to correct, but we came out ready to play."
 
Eastern is now 1-1 on the season while the Lions, a NCAA Division II school in St. Charles, Mo., played in their season opener. The scoring line for the Eagles was 21-10-21-7 as they eclipsed the 59-point mark for the 62nd time in EWU history (16th all-time overall).
 
Barriere completed 32-of-46 passes for 522 yards and five touchdowns as he recorded the second-most passing yards in school history. He rushed for 34 more yards, giving him 556 to come four yards from the total offense record.
 
Redshirt freshman Isaiah Lewis led EWU's 247-yard rushing performance with 64 yards and a touchdown. Senior Dennis Merritt had 50 yards rushing and another 32 on a pass reception before leaving the game early in the second quarter with a serious lower leg injury.
 
Junior Andre Slyter's first career field goal for EWU was a 50-yarder that ranked as the 17th-best in school history and the longest in 11 years and one day since Felipe Macias made a 52-yarder on Sept. 6, 2008.
 
Eastern was led defensively by senior safety Dehonta Hayes with nine tackles, and junior safety Calin Criner had seven. Senior defensive lineman Darnell Hogan had three stops and interception that led to an EWU touchdown and 38-17 lead in the third quarter.
 
Eastern entered the game ranked fourth in the STATS top 25 poll for the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, and fifth in the American Football Coaches Association poll. In preseason rankings, EWU was ranked fourth by STATS and third by the AFCA.
 
 
Records & Rankings . . .
 
* The game was the season opener for Lindenwood while the Eagles picked up their first victory after opening their 2019 campaign with a 47-14 loss at Washington on the Pac-12 Conference on Aug. 31.
 
 
What's Next . . .
 
* Eastern goes on the road for a pair of non-conference games versus FCS foes. Eastern plays at Jacksonville State of the Ohio Valley Conference on Sept. 14 in a game that will begin at 1 p.m. Pacific time. That game is part of a home-and home series that will also include a home game for EWU at Roos Field on Sept. 11, 2021. The Eagles and Idaho will play the final non-conference game against each other on Sept. 21 in Moscow at noon. Starting in 2020, the two schools will be considered "rivals" by the league and will play each other every season. Portland State is EWU's other "rival," while Idaho will face Montana every year starting in 2020.
 
 
Key Stats . . .
 
* Eastern's 769 yards broke the previous record of 743 set on Nov. 2, 2013, versus Idaho State. In the first quarter alone, EWU had a 299-71 advantage, and 355-68 after EWU took a 31-0 lead just 19:23 into the game.
 
* Dorton's 289 yards broke the receiving yardage record set by current Los Angeles Ram Cooper Kupp with 275 at Northern Colorado on Oct. 24, 2015. Dorton's 15 catches equaled the 15th-most, with Kupp owning the record of 20 at UNC. Dorton's previous single-game bests two catches and 52 yards, and he entered the game with 17 catches for 220 yards and four touchdowns in 28 career outings. Dorton's reception was a career long, and was his sixth play in his career of at least 40 yards. He had his seventh later in the game with a 59-yard TD catch.
 
* Barriere's 78-yard TD to Dorton was his longest completed pass of his career and, coupled with a 59-yard TD completion to Dorton in the third quarter, now has 12 plays of at least 40 yards. He is 10-3 as a EWU starter, and his previous career highs in the first 20 games of his career were 352 passing yards and 405 yards of total offense.
 
 
EWU Highlights . . .
 
* Redshirt freshman Tre Weed made the first start of his career for the Eagles at cornerback, and finished with three tackles and had a pass broken up. The 2018 Sumner (Wash.) also returned three punts for 10 yards with a long of eight. He played in four games a year ago as a true freshman, mostly on special teams, but retained his redshirt status.   
 
 
Notables . . .
 
* After winning all five of its regular season home games in 2018 and a trio of playoff games to extend its current home winning streak to nine, Eastern now has a 10-game home winning streak and is 53-10 (84.1 percent) overall at Roos Field since 2010.

* This was EWU's first-ever meeting with Lindenwood. The Lions were a member of the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) last year, and all 11 of their games were league counters. Lindenwood finished 4-7 to finish 10th in the 12-team league, and will move to the Great Lakes Valley Conference in 2019. The Lions spent seven seasons as members of the MIAA from 2012-2018. Lindenwood has been picked to finish second in the eight-team GLVC, ranking only behind unanimous pick Indianapolis.  The Lions received one vote in the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) NCAA Division II preseason top 25 poll.
 
* Lindenwood features All-America junior wide receiver Erik Henneman, who was selected to the 2019 College Football America Yearbook Division II Preseason Starting Lineup.  He had five catches for 42 yards and a touchdown versus EWU. Henneman earned first-team All-American honors by three different platforms (AFCA, CCA, and D2Football.com) in 2018. The 6-foot-3 Henneman had 57 receptions for 639 yards and nine touchdowns a year ago. He broke the school record for touchdown catches in a game with four against Missouri Southern in the second game of the year.  Two games later he hauled in a season-high nine catches with a season-high 147 yards. 
 
* Despite missing nine players near the end of the season who had begun the season as starters – six on defense and three on offense -- the Eagles finished 12-3 overall and 7-1 in the Big Sky Conference to share the league title with Weber State and UC Davis. The Eagles won their last four games of the regular season, then won three home games in the NCAA Football Championship Playoffs before falling to North Dakota State 38-24 in the title game in Frisco, Texas.
 
* The Eagles won their 10th Big Sky Conference title and clinched their 13th berth in the FCS Playoffs in 2018. It was the 12th-straight season the Eagles finished 5-3 or better in the Big Sky, with a 12th-straight winning season and 21st in the last 23 years. Eastern closed the 2017 season with a 7-4 record overall and was 6-2 in the Big Sky Conference in the first season under Best.
 
 
 
Head Coach Aaron Best Comments . . .
 
On Offensive Explosion: "Points and yards are what the fans come to watch and see. We've become accustomed to those sorts of numbers, and maybe have been too fortunate and too spoiled over the years here at Eastern. It's nice to score 59 points, especially at home, but it came against a very, very good Division II opponent who traveled halfway across the country to get here. And they were in the game until the fourth quarter and they were in it for a reason."
 
On Dorton Breaking Kupp's Record: "No. 10 was special back in 2016 and No. 10 was special in 2019. They just have different names – one was Cooper Kupp and now it's Dre' Sonte Dorton. I'll drop a line to Coop and let him know No. 10 stepped up today."
 
On Eric Barriere: "I was very proud of Eric Barriere and how he commanded the offense. It was our protocol today to play faster – we wanted him to play more confident, get the ball out and let our playmakers go to work. That's what we did with Dre amongst others. All and all, I thought it was a very productive day for a lot of players offensively."
 
On Allowing 31 Points in Middle Quarters: "We had a nine or 10 minute lapse in that second quarter. Momentum certainly shifted, but I never felt like our momentum was totally gone. It was just a matter when we would get it back. And we certainly did that in the third and fourth quarters."
 
On Lindenwood: "We can live with are when a ball is placed in a perfect spot for their receivers, but the ones we have a hard time living with are the ones when we have our arms around the quarterback's legs in the backfield and he gets away to move the sticks on third-and-10. Those things are going to happen, but we have to minimize and hopefully eliminate those. We have to try to find more ways to get to quarterbacks with one-on-one situations and with some pressure packages. For a better part of the day their quarterback had a little too much time. We're still young in areas, but that's not going to be an excuse. We need to learn from those things because we are going to face some tough FCS opponents from here on out."
 
On Penalties: "We had way too many penalties and we played way more sloppy in week two than we did in week one. A couple of those were on third down that turned into first downs for them. And they were mental penalties, not physical ones. Those are not going to be penalties we're going to tolerate."
 
On Injury to Dennis Merritt: "It's tough as a coach, but probably even tougher as a player because he's your brother you suit up with. We'll reach to him this evening and find out what's taken place, but our blessings and hearts go out to our brother, friend and fellow Eagle."