Around the Big Sky returns for the 2022 football season, with Andrew Houghton breaking down every game from the weekend in the Big Sky Conference. This week, Andrew looks at the simple tricks that had Montana’s offense looking brand new and Eastern Washington’s offense looking the same as ever, plus two near FBS upsets and a statistical monster in Sacramento.
OUTER SPACE
Mitch Roberts had such a wide lane to the end zone on his first of two touchdowns in Montana’s 47-0 rout of Northwestern State on Saturday – a screen that the senior wide receiver took untouched to the house – that he raised a finger to the sky before even crossing the goal line.
Last year, the offense was clearly the weak spot for the Griz, despite having talent like all-conference wide receiver Sammy Akem and tackle Dylan Cook, who’s now on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ practice squad. At times, Montana got so locked into its bread and butter of inside zone runs setting up play-action passes that the Griz were easy to stop.
On Saturday, though, Roberts’ touchdown capped an opening drive that showed a new approach for the Griz. Watch the play again. The reason Roberts has such an open field is that Northwestern State’s #21 (linebacker Jared Pedraza) and #2 (safety PJ Herrington) take themselves completely out of the play by following running back Nick Ostmo’s motion to the left. By the time the ball is snapped, Herrington, who started the play on the right hashmarks (from the offense’s perspective) is in the middle of the field with his back completely turned to Roberts’ side. Pedraza, who started the play in the middle of the field, has shuffled a few steps to the left. By the time Roberts catches the ball, both players are all the way over on the left hashmarks. Montana’s slot receiver takes the cornerback lined up on top of Roberts out of the play, the Griz have three offensive linemen releasing downfield to block the other two Demons on that side of the field, and that’s how you get an untouched 30-yard score.
The reason Pedraza and Herrington bite so hard on Ostmo’s motion is because, even though it’s only seven plays into the game, the Griz have already shown that they’re willing and able to stretch the field east-west. Montana’s first snap was a run up the middle with Xavier Harris. But the Grizzlies’ second was a quick out to tight end Cole Grossman (his only target of the game) on the left sideline, their third was a big scramble by quarterback Lucas Johnson up the right sideline, their fourth was a sprint option to the left with Johnson pitching to Harris, and their fifth (and sixth, after the fifth was wiped out by an offside penalty) were stretch plays with Harris running right. By that point, five plays into the game, Pedraza and Herrington – and the rest of the NSU defense – have already had to run sideline-to-sideline multiple times. They’ve gotten accustomed to chasing the ball laterally, because the Griz have made them do it on every play. The play right before Roberts’ touchdown was a simple throw to the wide receiver, but featured Junior Bergen in motion right-to-left before the snap, a motion echoed by Ostmo on the touchdown.
Montana continued to use lateral pre-snap motion throughout the game, including on Bergen’s first of two touchdowns in the second half:
The Griz have plenty of players with the speed to press the perimeter, primarily Harris and Bergen but also guys like Malik Flowers, Keelan White and, as he showed in his debut, new quarterback Lucas Johnson. Bobby Hauck doesn’t particularly seem like a very east-west guy, but stressing the defense out sideline-to-sideline before hitting them north-south – exactly what the Griz did on their first drive Saturday – is a better plan than trying to run up the middle behind a still-questionable offensive line, and that approach gave the Griz their best offensive moments in a season-opening rout. It’s just a one-game sample size, but the biggest takeaway from Saturday’s game is that the more the Griz exploit the edges of the field, the better their offense will be.
RED (TURF) GIANTS
Plenty of ink has been spilled on Eastern Washington having to replace defending Walter Payton Award winner Eric Barriere with longtime backup Gunner Talkington.
After one week, the line from that preseason piece – “history says that he’ll probably be pretty good” – looks right on the mark after Talkington finished 29 of 46 for 348 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions in a 36-29 season-opening win over Tennessee State, including the winning score on a 13-yard dime to Efton Chism III with 2:39 left.
But just scouting the stat line and watching the final drive obscures what a good job Eastern Washington and first-year offensive coordinator Jim Chapin did of starting the game. Eastern’s first four drives were a masterclass in how to get an inexperienced quarterback into rhythm and build him up into making more complex reads and throws. On Eastern’s first drive, Talkington’s throws were all short and didn’t require him to make any reads – a swing pass to running back Justice Jackson, a 3-yard whip route to Chism. On the second drive, he got the ball downfield a little more with a couple eight to 10-yard hitch routes to Chism and Freddie Roberson but still wasn’t making any reads beyond whether to throw the ball or not.
After Eastern’s third drive started with a quick screen to Roberson, Chapin asked Talkington to make his first real read with a simple two-man concept that had the slot receiver running an out route underneath the outside receiver running a fade down the sideline. Talkington went deep to Jakobie James and missed the throw, but on the next play he hit a deep in to Roberson for 19 yards and a third-down conversion, and on the play after that he made one of his best throws of the day, hitting Nolan Ulm deep for 41 yards after a double move.
That drive ended with a nice throw to Ulm in the back of the end zone on a bootleg to get EWU on the board, and by the time the Eagles were on their fourth drive, Talkington was doing things like reading a three-man concept on the left side of the field, not finding anything, and coming all the way back to the right to hit his tight end Blake Gobel. By that point, the Eagles were running all the four- and five-man downfield passing concepts they normally would — Talkington’s second touchdown throw came out of a four-wide set to Robert Mason III running a wheel route out of the slot.
“I thought he played a pretty flawless game today,” Aaron Best said about his quarterback. The game plan that Best and his new offensive coordinator dialed up had a lot to do with that.
There was some bad news for the Eagles: first, that Talkington was also their leading rusher with 60 yards; more glaringly, that they missed about six tackles and gave up a 67-yard touchdown on their first defensive play of the season and ended up letting TSU’s Devon Starling run for 207 yards on 25 carries.
SHOOTING FOR STARS
Idaho came tantalizingly close to a historic Battle of the Palouse win late Saturday, leading Washington State 10-0 late in the second quarter and taking a potential tying touchdown drive inside the 30-yard line before an interception with 12 seconds left sealed the Cougars’ 24-17 win.
It was not a particularly pretty game for the Vandals, who ran for 1.8 yards per carry. Incumbent backs Roshaun Johnson and Aundre Carter combined for 33 yards on 13 yards while freshman Anthony Woods carried the load with nine carries for 50 yards. With Gevani McCoy starting at quarterback over South Dakota State transfer J’Bore Gibbs, Idaho didn’t score an offensive touchdown until there were just over six minutes left in the game.
Idaho’s defense was very good, recovering four fumbles and making Washington State quarterback Cam Ward, a hyped FCS transfer from Incarnate Word, look uncomfortable and ordinary for long stretches. Ward started 5 of 11 for 25 yards before running back Nakia Watson (18 carries, 117 yards) got established and Ward led two scoring drives late in the second quarter to tie the game 10-10 at halftime.
Fa’Avae Fa’Avae – a former Wazzu transfer, ironically – looks like the next great Vandals linebacker and he had a great game with 11 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and a pass breakup. Previously unknown defensive back Mathias Bertram, a New Mexico transfer, had nine tackles and two forced fumbles.
The other note from this one is that Idaho went for it on fourth down seven times, converting three, in Jason Eck’s first game as head coach. In games like these, those are normally calls that turn a ho-hum 35-14 loss into a 52-7 rout, but they worked on this particular occasion. Eck is already a complete 180 from former head coach Paul Petrino – the former South Dakota State assistant is large and animated on the sideline.
Some more thoughts from Saturday’s games across the Big Sky:
– Given that Colter Nuanez was actually on the sidelines in Bozeman and has a better football mind than I ever will, I’ll let the big boss take it away on the blurb for Montana State after the Bobcats’ 40-17 win over McNeese State: Taco Dowler has mad swag, totally looked like he belonged and he’s an upgrade over senior Willie Patterson at punt returner Day 1. Out of the Billings slot trio of Gabe Sulser, Junior Bergen and Dowler, he’s the sneaky smoothest one. He will have a similar impact this year as Bergen did last year for the Griz. Given Sulser is now at Texas (where he had two catches for 10 yards in his Longhorns debut against Louisiana-Monroe) and Bergen had 728 combined rushing and receiving yards for the Griz last year as a true freshman, that’s good company to keep. Dowler had two catches for 24 yards and one punt return for one yard in his debut Saturday.
– The Griz looked similar to how they did last year, but Weber State looked damn near identical to last year’s edition (and the year before that, and the year before that) of the Wildcats in a 41-5 domination of D-II Western Oregon. Jay Hill’s team held the visitors to negative-34 rushing yards and 95 total yards. Even against an overmatched opponent, Weber’s offense didn’t look very explosive – starting quarterback Bronson Barron finished 16 of 28 for 152 yards and no touchdowns and the Wildcats ran for more yards (178) than they passed for (165) despite averaging 3.8 yards per carry. Thanks to the defense and special teams providing short fields – the Wildcats had three interceptions and Haze Hadley averaged nearly 22 yards a pop on six punt returns – their longest drive of the day went for just 64 yards, and their seven scoring drives averaged just 30 yards in all. Best-in-show defense and special teams that put a methodical, turnover-free offense in good positions? Sounds like Weber State all right!
– Portland State was arguably closer than Idaho to picking up the conference’s first FBS upset of the year, out gaining San Jose State 395-288 and leading the Spartans 17-14 with the ball and just over four minutes left. But the Vikings couldn’t run out the clock on that drive, and SJSU quarterback Chevan Cordeiro ran for his second touchdown of the game with 1:11 left to give the home team a 21-17 win. Portland State should jump higher than any other Big Sky team after that performance – it wasn’t Idaho needing fourth-down conversions and defensive touchdowns to hang in against a better team. In fact, the Vikings could have put the game away in the first half, when they had two drives end inside the SJSU 15 with no points. Beau Kelly continues to be the most underrated player in the league – nine catches, 133 yards and a touchdown – and sophomore quarterback Dante Chachere looked like the real deal, finishing 24 of 37 for 270 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions and a game-high 83 rushing yards on 14 carries.
In fact, Chachere had more rushing yards than San Jose State as a team – the Vikings held the Spartans to just 49 yards on the ground, led by sophomore cornerback Tyreese Shakir with two sacks (Shakir’s brother is former Boise State and current Buffalo Bills wide receiver Khalil Shakir). The Vikings really should have won this one, but if what they showed was real, they could be the surprise contender this year.
– A year after beating Arizona in a huge upset, the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks gave up 267 rushing yards and had 23 themselves on 23 carries in a 40-3 loss to their other in-state Power 5 rival, Arizona State. Reigning conference Freshman of the Year R.J. Martinez was 18 for 28 for 92 yards and two interceptions. But hey, NAU punter Eemil Herranen did get to be the first-ever Finnish-born punter or kicker to appear in a Division I football game (and then the second, and the third, and so on…seven punts in all for Herranen and the NAU offense).
– I wrote a whole article (2,000-some words!) last week about how second-year coaches don’t need to take huge steps, but they do need to show some progress. And, well, Houston Baptist, which was one of three teams Northern Colorado beat last year (a 45-13 pasting in Houston) came into Greeley and whipped the Bears, leading by as many as 19 points early in the fourth quarter before a couple late UNC touchdowns made things closer in a 46-34 Huskies win. Trevis Graham caught two touchdowns for Northern Colorado and two Bears quarterbacks, Dylan McCaffrey and Jacob Sirmon, combined to throw for 425 yards and four touchdowns against one interception, but the UNC defense, missing All-American pass rusher David Hoage to an injury, gave up 543 total yards and couldn’t stop the big play. HBU quarterback Justin Fomby threw for 305 yards on just 15 completions, and running back Ismail Mahdi went for 143 yards on 25 carries. The visitors scored touchdowns of 66, 74 and 78 yards.
– Cal Poly, the other team covered in that article about second-year head coaches, never threatened Fresno State, which led 21-0 at the end of the first quarter and coasted from there in a game that had a listed kickoff temperature of 102 degrees. The Mustangs gave up 549 total yards but could have scored a couple more times themselves, with three drives of 70 yards or better that ended on fourth-down stops inside the Fresno State 10. That makes sense – expect Beau Baldwin to get the offense clicking before the defense. Redshirt freshman quarterback Jaden Jones threw for 211 yards with no interceptions and ran for 59 more.
– UC Davis held Cal to minus-one yard in the first quarter, but the Golden Bears scored 17 points in the second to beat the Aggies relatively easily, 34-13. Miles Hastings threw for 242 yards but needed 50 pass attempts to get there, and the first of his two interceptions, which was returned 39 yards for a touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter, killed the Aggies’ chances of getting back into the game. Hastings will need to be better to keep defenses from stacking the box against preseason Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year Ulonzo Gilliam, who went for 115 yards on 14 carries, including a 60-yard touchdown.
– Sac State’s offense kept rolling in a 56-33 rout of Utah Tech (nee Dixie State). The Hornets put up 378 rushing yards on 42 carries and had two 100-yard rushers, with Cameron Skattebo going for 153 on just 10 carries and Asher O’Hara, half of the Hornets’ quarterback platoon, piling up 101 on 12 totes. As Cameron Salerno of the Sacramento Bee pointed out, Skattebo had a 19-yard touchdown catch, a 57-yard touchdown run and a 43-yard kickoff return touchdown on a late onside kick try by Utah Tech. Skattebo’s 15.3 yards-per-carry average from Saturday continues his statistical anomaly from last year, when he averaged 9.1 yards per carry on 57 carries. I’m pretty sure that Skattebo is not nearly four yards per carry better than NAU’s Kevin Daniels, last year’s non-Skattebo, non-quarterback leader in that stat, but the sample size only keeps going up.
