Lights seeing immediate progress

The Montana State University-Northern football team is less than three weeks away from opening its 2016 season. That's why it was no surprise to see the Lights back on the practice field Monday as they continued their fall camp.

Northern actually opened fall practice Sunday morning, but continued with two sessions on Monday, one in the morning and one in the evening.

"I like the way that we are looking so far," Northern head coach Aaron Christensen said. "I think that we have a lot more depth than we did last season. We brought in some new guys and a lot of the guys that we brought back, came back bigger and faster. So those kinds of things are important."

When watching the Lights practice, it's easy to see the difference between this year's camp and the one at the beginning of last season. Northern is visibly bigger and faster, on both sides of the ball.

One group in particular that has drawn rave reviews thus far has been the offensive line, which helped open some nice holes for running back Zach McKinley Monday afternoon.

"I think the guys up front are doing a really great job," McKinley said. "We had some new guys come in this year and I definitely think that the offensive line has improved. They have done a nice job opening things up for us so far."

Throughout the two sessions of practice, Northern worked on all phases of the game. There were individual sessions on both offense and defense, that focused on fundamental drills, while there were also special team's drills, covering kicks and punts, as well as working on returns.

Northern also took part in some 7-on-7 passing drills and at the same time, the offensive and defensive lines took part in separate one-on-one pass rush/pass block drills. Yet, at the end of the practice, the entire team converged onto one practice field for a live team period that was nothing but 11-on-11.

The Lights ran their offense with their usual up-tempo style and often called plays at the line of scrimmage or ran check-with-me's, which give the coach or quarterback a chance to change the play based on the defense.

Junior quarterback Jess Krahn saw basically all of the snaps with the No. 1 offense and thus far in camp, he looks well entrenched as the starter. Although his pass attempts were limited, Krahn did manage to complete a long pass down the field to Ethan Snow. Snow also caught another deep pass later in the practice.

Krahn also connected on a 20-yard seam pass to tight Kagen Khamaneh. Seth Roemmele also had a good showing, catching a pair of passes down the field, one that would have been an obvious touchdown.

While the passing game was able to generate some big plays, the running game was solid too for the Lights, especially when McKinley was toting the rock, as the senior broke off a slew of runs that covered close to 10 yards.

"I think it's important for us to get off to a fast start," McKinley said. "I think we just need to build some confidence on offense, we were lacking that last season."

Yet, the defense also had its say and no one on that side of the ball shined brighter than defensive back Corey Lee, who intercepted two passes, one of which would have been returned for a touchdown.

"Right now, it's hard to judge, but we think we have gotten a lot better," Christensen said. "I am excited about our offensive line and I think we just have more competition at every position and that's the first thing you need to do is to create competition."

The Lights will continue practicing throughout the week and will take part in a scrimmage this Saturday at the MSU-Northern practice field.