BOZEMAN – Even if it’s your team laying the beat down, the essential nature of a college football blowout makes it difficult for a stadium full of increasingly intoxicated fans to maintain the energy they had at kickoff.
By the third quarter of Montana State’s comprehensive 55-21 rivalry rout of Montana in Bozeman on Saturday, the runaway trajectory of the game made it possible to pick individual taunts out of the wall of sound coming from the Bobcat Stadium bleachers.
Run it up!
Let’s put 60 on ‘em!
Are you guys down there – this directed at a clump of Griz players loitering by the stands – talking about the transfer portal?
In a game that Montana had to win to make absolutely certain of a playoff spot – not that any added motivation should have been necessary against the blood rival – there were no responses forthcoming.
And as the Bobcats ran to collect the Great Divide trophy from its plinth in the northwest end zone, the Griz were left to confront a loss that, aside from the visceral and obvious brutality of the final score, shook the identity of the team down to its foundations.
In the ever-shifting cauldron of ambitious innovation that is college football, it’s the most fundamental truth – your biggest strength is also your greatest weakness. That also mirrors the current state of society at times. And Montana is having a hard time, as of late, fitting in.
If you made a list of attributes that defined Bobby Hauck’s Grizzlies in this era, it would include toughness and physicality, a commitment to landing the first punch and controlling the momentum, creating special teams advantages with airtight execution, and a swirling, stunting, confusing defense that can overwhelm and overrun opposing offenses.
The Griz checked every one of those boxes in last year’s 29-10 win over Montana State in front of a raucous crowd at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. UM took a 7-0 lead 48 seconds into the game on a 74-yard touchdown to Junior Bergen, beating up the Bobcats and holding them without a touchdown until the final minute of the game, and sealing the victory with a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown.
It was Montana State head coach Brent Vigen’s first taste of the rivalry. The former Wyoming offensive coordinator and his staff looked unprepared, both for the bloodthirsty atmosphere of the matchup and the unique characteristics of the Grizzlies.
But given a year to scheme up a counter punch – a tectonically slow boxing match, taking place in film rooms and on practice fields in Bozeman and Missoula – Vigen and the Bobcats turned every single one of Montana’s calling cards into a glaring weakness.
With Tommy Mellott at quarterback – last year’s Brawl of the Wild loss was the setback that forced the Bobcats to turn to then-rookie from Butte, who led a run to the national championship game – MSU’s first drive covered 75 yards in six plays, all runs. The Bobcats’ second possesion covered 75 yards in seven plays, all runs.
Mellott didn’t throw his first pass until exactly 16 minutes into the game, by which time the Bobcats already led 21-7. And nearly a season-high rushing total against the previously vaunted Griz defense.
Montana’s twists and stunts are designed to confuse offensive lines and get after the quarterback. But it also takes players out of gaps. It’s chaos, but if you can manage it, there are places to attack.
“Their defense, they do what they do. It’s very unorthodox, it’s extremely unique to prepare for,” Mellott said. “Just getting to know defenses, it’s an extreme outlier. With their twisting, sometimes they’re not gap-sound, which doesn’t really happen in Division I FCS.”
By keeping the ball in Mellott’s hands, Montana State made the Grizzlies account for him on every play, and gashed Montana.
The Bobcats attempted just 10 passes in the entire game, and one was a spike to set up a field goal at the end of the first half. Mellott completed six of his eight attempts for 104 yards, and ran for 141 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries.
“Their defensive rushing numbers are really good, but where they really get you is when they get you in passing situations,” Vigen said. “We wanted to stay ahead of the chains as best we good. We felt we could get on the edges and I believe we did that, and then we could throw some play-action in there.”
After that first punch, it was the Griz that weren’t able to adjust, and it was Montana’s mistake on special teams that helped the game get out of hand, when a punt snap over Patrick Rohrbach’s head late in the first quarter was recovered by Montana State’s Jory Choate in the end zone. Like a judo master, Vigen and Montana State were redirecting all of Montana’s best shots, using the Grizzlies own methods against them.
That included the last and most unforgivable lapse. So much of the mystique of Montana’s football program is based on toughness, on players willing to withstand great discomfort and put their bodies on the line for the good of the program. It’s enough for the Grizzlies to steamroll lesser teams, to show up sleeveless and blow out Cal Poly and Eastern Washington in the snow and cold each of the last two weeks.
It wasn’t enough against a Montana State team that matched (and exceeded) the Griz for talent and motivation and, as the game went on, started to outmatch them for grit.
It’s been a question all season long as Montana continued to eviscerate bad teams and come up short in the crucial moments against quality ones: were the Griz just tough when things were going good? Or is the toughness a facade?
On Saturday, we got as definitive an answer as possible. Montana State fans gleefully sang along to Sweet Caroline in the third quarter while the Griz fans in one corner of the stadium sat with frozen rictus smiles on their faces. The Bobcats started to toy with their prey – dual-quarterback packages with both Mellott and Sean Chambers in the backfield running read-option, a pop pass touchdown from tight end Derryk Snell to tight end Treyton Pickering on fourth and one as all 11 Grizzlies tried to crash into the backfield.
While a group of nearly five dozen reporters and accompanying observes waited eagerly for a synopsis, brash MSU offensive coordinator Taylor Houswright poked his head in the team room door and explained that the Snell-to-Pickering touchdown was stolen from the Tennessee Titans on Thursday night football, implemented Friday, practiced exactly twice, and excecuted.
Meanwhile, Montana sat in the exact same defensive, reconciling with the notion that effort overcomes everything.
It was well-taken revenge by Montana State, even if Vigen denied the notion specifically. After last year’s win in the rivalry game, Montana debuted a video segment at every home game this year of Hauck counting down his top six favorite moments from that win over the Bobcats. If Montana State decides to follow the same route next year, they’ll need Vigen to appear every quarter just to get all the touchdowns in.
“To put that game together, our guys really attacked it,” Vigen said. “From the start, I thought the look in our eye and the execution, especially that first drive, and special teams-wise, kept them in check and didn’t let up.”
Now, the Griz are left with questions even thornier than the usual ones coming out of a 55-21 loss. Among everything else, the Bobcats might have knocked them out of the playoffs as well – Montana finished the regular season 7-4 with no wins over ranked teams.
Worse, they might have exposed and torn up Montana’s whole identity. When you can no longer rely on the things that make you, you, where do you go from there?
Bobby Hauck, no doubt, will – and did, in the post-game press conference – assert that the Griz are still on the right track, missing only some unknowable-to-reporters advancement in game planning or execution to finally fulfill their glimmering destiny.
Other people who were in attendance at Bobcat Stadium on Saturday might reasonably disagree.
After all, when you’re standing on the sideline in no sleeves as your bitter rival wraps up discarding you in humiliating fashion, are you being tough…or just miserable?
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