Bemidji State Football Spring 2025 Outlook: Offense Under New Leadership

Spring football practice is an opportunity for the players get a few extra full-pad reps in the offseason while the coaches find out who’s who in the zoo.

With BSU just past the halfway point of their spring season, we take a look at some of the team’s key positions that have been or still need to be filled as the Beavers attempt to one-up their program-best NCAA quarterfinal appearance.

This is part one of a two-part series. This time, we’re focusing on the offensive side of the ball, where there are few new, yet familiar faces:

Offense Under New Leadership

At the conclusion of Bemidji State Football’s historic 2025 campaign, associate head coach Karson Pike resigned after seven seasons as offensive coordinator. Former BSU quarterback and wide receivers coach Jordan Hein, who coached under Pike for six years, takes over as play caller. Hein spent last year as the OC as Northern State, but he returns ready to pick up where his predecessor left off.

“The scheme’s a scheme,” he said of the offensive playbook. “There’s a lot of carryover from what we’ve done here in the past and going to continue to do. Obviously [we’re] adding some new tweaks, changing verbiage on a lot of different things, but the nice part is that we had all offseason, all winter, and now all spring ball to dial all that stuff in.”

“The first week was a lot of just running our plays,” he continued. “But now [we’re] getting into more of the situations: the red zone, backed up, two-minute, all those different things that are crucial to winning a football game. So, it’s not just running the plays but understanding different situations and getting better at those.”

With the graduation of Sam McGath, the Beavers will have a new starting quarterback for the second year in a row, and the favorite battling for the position is redshirt sophomore Connor Carver, who had his coming out party coming during last season’s NCAA playoffs when he made several big plays in big moments.

“We had a really good room last year,” he said of the quarterback group. “I had a lot of guys to look up to, a lot of guys to help me. I’ve still got some guys helping me. We’ve got a good room now. Those last couple games gave me some confidence, obviously, but I’m just excited for this year. You know, it’s in the past and I’m ready to roll.”

Carver also talked about what he is working on this spring. “I’ve been able to run the ball around a little bit, but I just got to get more consistent in some of the pass game stuff. Being able to slip protections, be able to see things as a whole.”

There is another battle in the backfield, albeit of a different kind. Last year’s team leading rusher Jayden Washington returns as does Justin Incaprera. The duo were part of a three-man rotation with Jarrett Gronski, who graduated at the end of the 2025 season. The running backs have leaned on that experience and embraced the rotation to improve themselves this spring.

“Every practice, we’re always like, ‘We got to push each other,'” said Washington of this year’s RB group. “We have to because we know when we go in the game situations that we’re going to need it. But as a room, it’s like friendly play, but we’re like, ‘Hey, we’re going to compete today.'”

He also spoke on how play time last year is helped this spring. “Just knowing what to expect. Just having that experience and just letting everybody know that when we do get in those situations to take a deep breath and just go with the flow.”

But to run the ball, you’ll need a solid offensive line, and the Beavers just lost one of the most solid and decorated O-lineman in program history with the departure of center Jake Gannon, as well as three-time All-NSIC tackle Will LeMire. Still, they return three starters up front, including Isaac Hagstrom, Zach Ott, and Conor Kovas, plus two others who saw significant play time in Bill Ketola and Clayton Birdsall.

“I think we’ve been able to transition really well and just following in those footprints that great leaders in the O-line room had given us,” said Kovas, now a redshirt senior. “We’re taking a lot of strides offensively for the beginning part of spring, just getting into the weight room and lifting. But I think we really took advantage of that a lot with a lot of heavy weight and just getting after it in the weight room.”

“Obviously, we have new coaches on the offense, new coaches on defense, new leadership,” he added. “I think just getting used to that is going to be really important for molding and doing it really well. And I think it’s shaping out really well. And I can’t wait to see how we put it all together at [Concordia-St. Paul this Saturday].”

The wide receiver group also saw a large departure with the graduation of the NSIC leader in receiving yards, Brice “Bubba” Peters. Redshirt junior Drayton Lehman is the lone returning starter at that position, although the Beavers do hope to see senior Jake Hill return after missing all of 2025 with an injury.