Almost an hour had passed since Montana State’s heart wrenching double overtime loss to South Dakota State and Paul Brott hadn’t taken off his pants yet. The Montana State senior captain and the proud bearer of MSU’s No. 41 jersey had at least managed to take off his shoulder pads. But he was stewing.
The preseason All-American was pacing the halls of the Bobcat Athletic Complex. And he spotted a few familiar faces. Of the four remaining media members in the venue that hosts MSU’s post-game press conferences, three were from Billings. So Brott wandered in to speak his mind.
Out of respect for the MSU captain, he will not be quoted here. But it’s safe to say that Brott, and the rest of his MSU teammates, are as hungry for a win as they’ve ever been. The first three-game losing streak in nearly a decade will do that to a proud program that has won two of the last three Big Sky Conference championships and played for two of the last four FCS national titles.
Cut to Tuesday afternoon and Brott’s fellow captain and counterpart across the trench, Titan Fleischmann, who started all last season at offensive tackle but was moved to guard just days before the season opener against Oregon, was still champing at the bit.
Despite having a few days to let things simmer down, the intensity quickly returned to the Idahoan’s voice and demeanor as he recalled MSU’s 30-24 double overtime loss to the Jackrabbits.
“That’s not a fun way to lose,” Fleischmann said. “Great team, great program, but I mean…not very fun. Looking back at the film we did a lot of good things; we did a lot of things we need to improve upon. The biggest thing going into this week is just learning and we gotta learn at a fast rate and we gotta continue to do that with a young group and we will do that.”
After the loss of center Burke Mastel, one of the three returning veteran starters from last year’s offensive line, the Bobcats were attempting to seamlessly reshuffle their interior unit by moving senior JT Reed from guard to center and Fleischmann from tackle to guard. That allowed MSU to bring budding redshirt freshman tackle Braden Zimmer off the bench, but at the same time it meant the Bobcats would virtually have three new starters and no players returning to the position they played a year ago.
The Bobcats pulled a similar feat off last season, but the 2024 unit started out against a non-Power 4 New Mexico, typically a below .500 team out of the Mountain West Conference, and Utah Tech a lower-level FCS squad that had just one win last year. Last year’s offensive line also featured a pair of All-Americans in Marcus Wehr and Conner Moore.
After the New Mexico comeback win, MSU polished its line play until it met up with its first formidable FCS opponent in Idaho in the eighth week of the season. They summarily dispatched the Vandals 38-7 and marched to 15 straight wins before finishing with a loss in the national title game against North Dakota State.
This year, the first two opponents consisted of No. 7 Oregon and 2022 and 2023 FCS national champion SDSU. Now the Bobcats are 0-2 instead of 2-0 and have three weeks to hone in on a big road test against Northern Arizona in the 7,200-foot elevation of Flagstaff. This week’s opponent, University of San Diego, is the first non-playoff team MSU will face in eight games with seven of those teams ranked in the top ten of either the FBS or FCS polls.
“We got some guys getting used to new positions,” MSU offensive coordination Pete Sterbick said. “JT’s getting used to being a center again, Titan’s playing guard, he hasn’t done that for a couple years. So, the guys better get used to it because that’s where we are now and that’s what we’re doing.
“I look for improvement to be coming. Not just from reps but from experience of playing against pretty high competition. Everybody’s got good defensive lineman. San Diego’s got a couple guys that are really, really that we gotta take of.”
In Fleischmann’s opinion there’s no time like the present to start taking care of what ails the Bobcats.
“In spring 2024, I had to adopt that mindset and live that and practice it every day of spring ball and I’m hoping to help the young bucks with that mentality too,” he said. “We have to learn at a faster rate. You get shuffled around and you can’t learn one day at a time. You can’t just say I’m going to take this one thing and get better at it; you have to find a way to get three days better in one day.”
While the final scores don’t show it, the Bobcats didn’t exactly get shut down by the Ducks and Jackrabbits.
MSU finished with more total yards (244) than Oklahoma State (211) had against Oregon. The Bobcats were 23 of 31 passing for 198 yards, while the Cowboys connected on just seven of 19 for 67 yards. Against SDSU, they had 210 yards rushing at 5.0 per carry; a year ago the Jackrabbits, who were the No. 1 rated defense in the MVFC, allowed just 93 yards rushing per game at 3.1 a tote.
“I think the biggest thing is that it really highlights the areas we need to improve upon going into the season,” Fleischmann said. “It’s easy to get away with mistakes when you’re not playing Oregon’s and SDSU’s. Oregon was some dudes; there was some guys out there.”
While the Bobcats are essentially breaking in a new line, they’re also breaking a new quarterback in Justin Lamson, who has the unenviable task of replacing Walter Payton Award winner Tommy Mellott.
“I’ve nothing but the utmost respect for the guy,” Fleischmann said of Lamson. “He sits in there and takes some shots and we will take away some of those shots going forward.
“The biggest thing about Justin that people don’t see is how big of a competitor that he is. We’d play video games together and whatnot and dude would not talk to me for hours if he lost. I was like, ‘it’s just a video game man, chill out.’ But he won’t talk to you for a while. That’s how he is, that’s how his brain’s wired. He’s come a long way, he’s gonna be good. I’m excited for Justin.
Still, it’s understandable why Fleischmann, Brott and company were frustrated.
“They’re a damn good defensive line, but a lot of those stunts and twists that they got home on were our fault and stuff we need to improve on, and we will improve on and those stunts won’t work in the future,” Fleischmann said of the SDSU front four. “The urgency needs to be turned up, but we don’t need to panic. We don’t need to panic, but we need to learn and that learning needs to be amplified a lot quicker and a lot faster. It needs to happen.”
The Bobcats have no room for error the rest of the season if they’re to attain a top two seed for the FCS playoffs. Even winning all their games doesn’t ensure that now, but a loss all but dashes any hope as they prepare to take on the University of San Diego this Saturday.
“I think the attitude going into this week is there’s a lot to learn,” Fleischmann said. “We went through the gauntlet. We’ve faced some very, very high end teams in the country. We’ve had some adversity (in previous seasons) and that’s our situation now.
“For me it’s internal. We have to respect out opponent every week. If we focus on us we’ll be just fine.”
