BOZEMAN – Montana State survived a sluggish offensive performance to hold off the pesky Yale Bulldogs, who’s impressive Football Championship Subdivision playoff debut came to an end in a 21-13 defeat to the second-seeded Bobcats here on Saturday afternoon.
Without huge defensive takeaways by safety Caden Dowler and linebacker Cole Taylor, the Bobcats may have joined No. 1 seeded North Dakota State, which lost at home to Illinois State, 29-28, marking the first time NDSU has qualified for the FCS Playoffs and failed to make the quarterfinals.
Dowler, the Big Sky Conference Defensive Player of the Year, intercepted a pass in the second quarter and returned it 28 yards to the Yale 40 to set up MSU’s first score – a recovery by wide receiver Chris Long of a quarterback Justin Lamson fumble in the end-zone.
The interception by Taylor, a sophomore linebacker from Great Falls who was a second-team All-Big Sky selection in his first year as a starter, was even bigger as it came with the Bulldogs on the MSU 7-yard line with MSU ahead 7-0 early in the second half.
Taylor, who also had 11 tackles to lead all players, intercepted the pass after it went off Yale wide receiver Nico Brown on the MSU three-yard line and he returned it 27 yards to the 30. Taylor was forced into action in the first game of the season when linebacker Neil Daily was injured. Since then, he’s been one of the many bright spots on the MSU defense.
“Without his growth, our defense wouldn’t have had the year it had,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said. “Today was another call to arms for him. I’m sure the amount of plays he played today were the most he played all season.”
MSU’s linebackers ended up being stressed after Daily was scratched from the lineup due to being sick the past few days. With him out, freshman Xavier Ahrens was expected to see a bigger chunk of the action, but he suffered a lower leg injury in the first half and that left Taylor, Bryce Grebe and Ryan Krahe to take all the reps for the rest of the game.
The Bobcats, now 11-2 and on an 11-game winning streak, went 70 yards following Taylor’s pick with Julius Davis scoring from 3 yards out.
Davis and Adam Jones stabilized the game in the second half for MSU. After running for just 96 yards in the first half with 10 of those coming off a fake field goal by punter Colby Frokjer – a play that was negated by a holding penalty on Titan Fleischmann – the Bobcats ran for 153 yards in the second half. Davis and Jones accumulated 106 of those to go along with a rushing score each. They finished with 170 yards on 30 rushes and two scores. Jones also had two catches for 34 yards to go along with his 18 carries for 107 rushing yards and finished with 141 total yards.
“They ran real hard and they were real effective,” Vigen said. “I think that’s what they’ve been all year. Thirty for 170 is a hard-earned 170. They both broke out a couple times. I’m sure we would’ve loved that to be a little earlier with the effectiveness but ultimately, we did get the run game going to come up with a drive that got us to 14-0. Stabilize: that’s a good word. We found something there.”
After a Yale touchdown early in the fourth quarter appeared to get it back in the game, the Bulldogs opted to go for the two-point conversion and the play went south from the start as wide receiver Nico Brown ran for about 50 yards trying to navigate through the MSU defense only to be stuffed.
The wayward conversion attempt seemed to spark the Bobcats.
MSU answered with a quick seven-play, 73-yard touchdown that was highlighted by a fourth-and-three conversion when Lamson found Dane Steel for a first down followed by Jones’s 33-yard jaunt to give the Bobcats all the momentum.
“Overall, it was a pretty sluggish day for the offense,” Jones said. “It was hard at times because things weren’t flowing super well. After we got that fourth down – it was a huge catch by Dane and good throw by Justin – we knew we had to score on that drive, and I was happy I saw it got blocked up and I saw a crease.”
The Bobcats then forced Yale into a fourth and 18 on its next possession, but they made a big mistake when instead of letting the fourth down desperation heave by Dante Reno fall to the turf and taking over on the Yale 43, Tayden Gray intercepted it and his return to the MSU 36 was brought back to the 17 by a personal foul penalty on Carson Williams.
That infraction seemed to be set to go by the wayside, however, but just as soon as the Bobcats looked primed to put the game away on a Lamson first down run that all changed. He fumbled the ball away at the end of the run and five plays later Yale was back in the end zone with 2:09 to play.
It was a tough game for Lamson, who was the hero two weeks ago when he hit on 18 of 20 passes for 175 yards and ran for 80 yards against Montana. He threw for 92 yards and no touchdowns against Yale and gain 56 yards rushing, including the fumble.
Yale’s consequent onside kick was covered by MSU’s Colson Coon, but Jones was stuffed for a net negative-three yards on three straight carries as Yale got the ball back with 1:00 to go. The Bobcat’ defense took over from there as they forced Yale into a fourth and 25 and nearly scored after a series of laterals ended up in the hands of MSU defensive end Zac Crews, who was stopped just short of the goal line as time ran out.
A sidebar to the game came in the form of massive trash talking by both teams. Williams and numerous Yale players carried on for an extended period before the game began. That seemed to carry over into the game as MSU defensive tackle Paul Brott said he and Yale guard Quinton Lewis were going back and forth all game. After the game, several players on both sides had to be separated and Vigen and Davis were in a heated discussion near midfield.
“Going against their O-line was a lot of fun,” Brott said. “I was talking, they were talking. It was just a great time playing against them.”
Yale’s effort won’t be lost on the rest of the FCS teams as they followed up a dramatic win that included scoring 29 unanswered points to beat Youngstown State with a solid effort, especially on defense, against the Bobcats.
“I do just want to make a statement: our kids just played 12 weeks in a row,” Yale head coach of the defense (their term) Sean McGowan said. “I think there’s a little bit of a misnomer about the Ivy League in itself. I don’t think there’s a lot of respect for the league at all. Our kids did a great job coming to the playoffs and making sure people are aware of the competitive level we can play at. It should be noticed.
“Not to make excuses, but these kids go to school. They go to a real school. They’re challenged academically. They’re probably sitting here worried about exams right now. It’s a credit to them that they can balance all that and be as competitive as we are.”
Yale senior running back Josh Pitsenberger, an NFL prospect, collected 124 yards on 26 carries. Receiver Nico Brown had 11 catches for 107 yards, but the Bulldogs didn’t get much else on offense as those two players finished with 316 of the teams 351 yards.
The effort wasn’t good enough in Brott’s eyes.
“That’s just not how we go about our business,” he said. “Not how we play. We gotta get better. It was eye-opening, and it was good to have that because we go into this week’s practices knowing that, ‘hey we got a lot of things to clean up.’ We played a good team in Yale but that really opens up our eyes for when we go up against these good teams in the playoffs. We got stuff to work on, it’s a playoff win, it wasn’t easy, but we got it done.”
Despite that MSU’s defense allowed just one play over 20 yards on the day and Yale only gained 4.7 yards per play. They forced three turnovers and stopped Yale on both of its fourth down attempts.
The Bobcats will take on Stephen F. Austin next week at Bobcat Stadium. The Lumberjacks, who beat Abilene Christian 41-34, were slated to play MSU the past two seasons, but they backed out of the series in the summer of 2024. That forced the Bobcats to scramble to find an opponent to fill the vacancies. The Mercyhurst Lakers obliged and came to Bozeman the past two seasons.
