MISSOULA – After a summer without, the smoke returned to the Missoula Valley on Saturday.
So too did the Montana Grizzlies, with their accompanying off-field pageantry and on-field foibles, and just like the smoke, they settled comfortably into their familiar late-summer routine.
There was “Bring Em Out” and Split the Pot vendors roaming the stands and Pizza Hut in the press box, Monte handwalking down the field and enough kegs at the still-novel beer garden to make everybody forget the temperatures that climbed into the upper 90s.
A man (who turned out to be Griz All-American linebacker Patrick O’Connell’s brother) proposed to his girlfriend on the Jumbotron while “Jessie’s Girl” played – perhaps not the ideal soundtrack for an eternal commitment, but she said yes.
Those who found their eyes drawn away from the real entertainment and towards the field found a Griz team as familiar as the September haze that enshrouded Washington-Grizzly Stadium.
In the Grizzlies’ season-opening 47-0 win over Northwestern State, the 24,096 fans packed into Wa-Griz saw a dominating defense that seemed to consist of 11 individually-deployed cruise missiles. They saw an offense that showed glimmers, peeks at its own potential dynamism shining through stagnant periods of offensive line struggles and uninspired playcalling. They saw special teams units that could both change the game with one play and dictate where it took place on all the others.
In short, they saw a Montana Grizzlies team much like last year’s. Heck, there was even a previously unheralded freshman punter – Kalispell Glacier’s Patrick Rohrbach instead of Helena Capital’s Brian Buschini – spiraling 55-yard boots up through the smoky air.
“To get a shutout, in this day and age in college football, is virtually impossible to do, so good job by our guys,”Bobby Hauck said after the game. “I don’t think (Northwestern State) has any back-down in them. You have to go take it from them, They aren’t going to give it to you, so I’m more than pleased that we were able to get the win.”
The secret of Montana’s defense – this year, same as last – is not just that it’s very good. It’s that it terrorizes quarterbacks, has them seeing ghosts, reduces them to something less than themselves. Even decent ones like Northwestern State’s Miles Fallin, a former Power 5 signal-caller at Kansas who opened the game 10 of 13 but by the end of it was hunched into his seat at the press conference, his 6-foot-6 frame drowned by the sea of Griz logos on the backdrop behind him.
On 15 drives, Montana forced Fallin and the Demons offense into nine punts, three lost fumbles, two interceptions and a turnover on downs. Their longest drive was 34 yards, and they ran three plays in Montana territory all game – an incomplete pass, a screen that led to a chop block penalty and pushed them back across the 50, and a Hail Mary attempt on the final play of the first half that was intercepted by Griz safety Garrett Graves.
There’s not much else to say about Montana’s defense, so instead we’ll just present a list of standouts:
- Graves, who also forced a fumble, recovered by cornerback Corbin Walker, in the third quarter;
- Linebackers Marcus Welnel and Braxton Hill, who tied for the team lead with 10 tackles, with Hill adding 1 ½ tackles for loss;
- Returning Buck Buchanan Award finalist Patrick O’Connell, who picked up his first sack of the season early in the game with a move that perfectly illustrated why bad offensive linemen are called turnstiles, and picked up the first interception of his career late in the game when a by-that-point shell shocked Fallin lasered a pass directly into his chest;
- Special-teams ace Levi Janacaro, who had six tackles, forced a fumble (recovered by Justin Ford) and blocked a punt in the second quarter that his former Missoula Big Sky teammate Tyler Flink scooped up and returned for a touchdown.
“Flink has been my best friend for 10-plus years,” Janacaro said. “It was awesome to see him put the ball in the end zone, it was surreal.”
That score made Montana’s lead 26-0 at halftime and hyped up the Griz crowd after a blazing offensive start lost its fuel. Making his first start with the Griz, San Diego State transfer and sixth-year senior Lucas Johnson led two gorgeous touchdown drives on their first three possessions, capping each with a touchdown throw to senior receiver Mitch Roberts – one a screen pass that Roberts took 30 yards untouched down the middle of the field, one a red-zone slant with Roberts matched up one-on-one out of an empty backfield look.
“Yeah, I actually told Lucas, I felt like the ball was coming,” Roberts said about his second score. “I saw the safety rotate away from me and I knew I had all man (coverage), so I was kind of anticipating that the ball was coming my way on that slant route.”
Those were the Grizzlies’ first and third drives. On their second and fourth? Ten plays, negative-2 total yards. The latter of those featured the entire backup offensive line – Colin Dreis, Cody Kanouse, Kukila Lincoln, Journey Grimsrud and Dillon Botner – replacing the starting unit of Chris Walker, Hunter Mayginnes, AJ Forbes, Liam Brown and Brandon Casey (“It was hot,” Hauck said, when asked why).
At its best, Montana’s offense was nearly as devastating as its defense, stretching Northwestern State out sideline to sideline with the speed of running back Xavier Harris and slot receiver Junior Bergen and then attacking upfield through those gaps. On one sequence, the Griz went from empty-backfield, five-wide on Roberts’ second touchdown to having three backs clustered around Johnson to convert a fourth-and-short on their next drive, then lined starting tight end Cole Grossman up in the backfield on the next play, then moved Grossman to the slot as part of a four-wide, one-back look on the play after that.
Johnson added two more touchdown throws in the second half, both to Bergen, and also led the Griz with 76 rushing yards on seven carries.
“It feels amazing,” Johnson said. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever been a part of before. Just the crowd, everybody was in it and it was amazing to go out there with our guys. We’ve been working so long for this, and it was nice to go out there and play, finally, and come out with a win.”
Even with Roberts posting maybe the best game of his career – six catches, 103 yards, two touchdowns, equaling his career total in one afternoon – even with the defense continuing its frightening dominance, Johnson will be the story coming out of Montana’s season opener.
He’d better be.
Everything else we’ve seen before – even the smoke.
