With the start of NAU's spring football practice set for today, head coach Jerome Souers is looking for three things to emerge from the Lumberjacks.

After finishing the season 5-6 with a string of four-consecutive losses to close out the year, Souers wants to see the following come about in the next four weeks:

NO. 1: TEAM CHEMISTRY

"That's the development of our leadership and our ability to communicate and trust each other," Souers said. "All the intangible components that affect performance on a Saturday are based on strong communication skills."

Right now, the leadership nucleus revolves around a group of 18 players consisting of juniors and seniors. From that group, Souers will pick the team's captains. There's no time-table set for choosing team leaders, but Souers hopes they'll emerge by the end of spring practice.

"I have more captain candidates right now than I ever had," he said.

NO. 2: THE FUNDAMENTALS

Every team in college football uses the spring to fine-tune the core elements of playing football, but Souers wants to stress a few in particular, specifically the team's ball-handling.

"We had some ball-security issues last year," Souers said. "We were so close to where we wanted to be last year and some of the things that we were missing need to be recovered by strong, fundamental improvement."

NO. 3: OVERALL STANDARD OF PERFORMANCE

There were too many instances last season, in Souers' mind, where the Jacks had 10 guys playing the right way while the 11th man missed an assignment. That one lapse in concentration can affect the outcome of the game.

"We had a significant number of games where had we even made one play out of eight in the fourth quarter, we could have changed the outcome," he said.

By improving those things, Souers believes the Jacks will be more consistent and productive. It doesn't hurt his cause, either, that he has a wealth of veteran experience returning. NAU returns five starters on offense and seven on defense.

Also, for the first time in his tenure as head coach at NAU, Souers returns all of his assistants.

"Anytime you put that kind of continuity together, you are going to improve," he said. "There's less coaching coaches and less of player-coach transition."

In years past, Souers sees as many as two, three or four of his assistants leave during the offseason. He said there were inquiries from other colleges about his staff but everyone stayed put.

"Every guy on the staff knows what kind of year's coming," Souers said. "I think everyone wants to be a part of that."

Among the key returners are senior to-be quarterback Michael Herrick, who was the top junior in last year's Walter Payton Award Voting. He threw for 3,356 yards and 22 touchdowns with eight interceptions on the season. Even with his noteworthy season, Herrick's not absolved from having to work hard this spring.

"We all have something to improve on," Souers said. "He can be a prolific thrower but there's things, looking back, did he every decision 100 percent? No, nobody did."

A problem facing Souers this spring, though, is one many coaches would love to have. Last year, defensive starters Michael Battisti, Cody Dowd, Anthony Llanos and Kainoa Pe'a all used medical redshirts after suffering injuries either in the offseason, preseason practice or in the first couple of games. They're all seniors that otherwise would have graduated and it has created an experienced depth chart for the defense.

"We had to do some crazy stuff to create some production on the defensive side of the football," Souers said about the team last year.

Souers also believes that more starting positions will be up for grabs than it in any previous season. With so many returning starters on defense, nearly everyone's going to have a crack at the starting gig.

The offense is a bit more settled. With Herrick and four-fifths of the starting offensive line returning, it's going to be one of the team's main strengths. The rest of the offense needs to be broken in, though.

"We'll need to get comfortable with each other," Herrick said. "I think we'll be just fine."

Even with the work that'll go into improving from last year's breakdown, Herrick's looking forward to the challenge.

"I'm excited to get on the field and throw the ball. We're going to work and build on what we did last year," Herrick said. "It's going to be fun."

Jacob May can be reached at jmay@azdailysun.com or 556-2257.