BOZEMAN, Montana — As Brent Vigen stood outside the locker room at Providence Park in downtown Portland, a look of disdain was written on his face.
No, Montana State would take no silver lining from a 40-point loss, even if the Oregon State Beavers would almost beat Top-10 ranked Southern Cal the following week.
Instead, Vigen vowed his Montana State squad would collectively own the 68-28 thrashing, put it behind them and move into Big Sky Conference play with renewed focus.
Such words, said in moments of emotion, can sometimes come back to haunt a man.
But not Vigen and the Bobcats, at least not 20 games until the tenure of the stoic, towering head coach.
Last week, Montana State gutted out a 38-35 win against Eastern Washington in Cheney, becoming the first team to win on Eastern’s disdained red field two years in a row, ever. Following last week’s win, Vigen stated that it was the type of win that could propel a team forward.
These Bobcats have become very good at making their head coach’s words come to fruition. And Saturday night, Montana State did it for the second week in a row, defeating a playoff team for the second consecutive week, this time under the lights at Bobcat Stadium and in front of a national television audience on ESPNU.
The fourth-ranked Bobcats moved to 2-0 in Big Sky Conference play and 4-1 overall with a resounding 41-24 win over UC Davis in front of 21,637 during a Saturday night game that almost turned into Sunday morning at Bobcat Stadium. And they did it without their golden boy quarterback, instead turning to a former transfer who once didn’t know where he might write the final chapters of his football story.
“We fought that day (against Oregon State) but we weren’t able to change momentum. You look at these last two weeks and we were able to take some blows and whether it’s offense, defense, special teams, tilt it back in our favor,” said Vigen, who moved to 16-4 as MSU’s head coach.
“That’s what we need to do. This is a good league and you are going to get tested week in and week out.”
The loss dropped Davis, the preseason No. 25 team in the country and one of five playoff teams from the Big Sky last season, to 1-4. The Aggies have played one of the toughest schedules in the country. Before Saturday’s loss, Davis also fell at Cal (34-13), at No. 2 South Dakota State (24-22) and at home to No. 10 Weber State (17-12).
“They are a good team and they’ve had a tough schedule to start,” Vigen said. “They are well-rounded, a lot of different guys who can hurt you offensively. The quarterback (Miles Hastings) played another solid game (20-for-34, 220 yards) and (All-American Ulonzo) Gilliam is obviously a lot to handle.”
The news coming out of last week (other than MSU’s historic triumph at the Inferno) was the head injury suffered by star sophomore quarterback Tommy Mellott. Sean Chambers came off the bench to will Montana State to victory.
With a full week to prepare as the starter, Chambers transformed from multi-use offensive tool into a shooting star. And he shined as bright as he ever has during a career with highlights and low lights mostly stemming from a series of serious injuries that ultimately led him to transfer from Wyoming to Montana State.
On Saturday night against a struggling yet skilled, talented UC Davis team, Chambers was unstoppable. The 6-foot-3, 235-pounder scored a 78-yard touchdown on the second play of the game and never stopped hard charging.
His 29-yard touchdown strike to Clevan Thomas six minutes into the second half helped Montana State keep the momentum. His 65-yard rushing touchdown late in the third quarter gave MSU a full two-score lead. And his ability to engineer a punishing, victory-sealing drive that led to a Blake Glessner field goal put the game on ice.
“Tonight felt different,” said Chambers, who threw two touchdowns, rushed for three and finished with 430 yards of total offense. “Tonight felt like I was in complete control. It felt like the game was moving slow and quite frankly, that’s never happened for me in my career. It felt like everything was happening exactly how we wanted.”
Without Mellott, Montana State’s offense played with a blinding tempo, moving the ball up and down the field at a breakneck pace.
The second quarter began with UC Davis leading 10-7 after Montana State’s second possession ended with a 4th & 1 conversion coming up short. The second frame began with Chambers throwing a 37-yard strike to streaking senior Ravi Alston. Seconds later, he perfectly executed a quarterback power option into a pass to Elijah Elliott in the middle of the field for another 37-yard gain. Chambers capped the four-play, 83-yard drive with a 3-yard touchdown, time stamping the march at one minute, 21 seconds to give MSU a lead it would not relinquish.
Davis converted a 4th and 23 with a fake punt on its next possession, giving the visitors the ball at the MSU 9-yard line on the next possession. But Montana State thwarted the charge as James Campbell snared his first career interception.
“It was definitely a shock but we definitely needed that as well so I just wanted to take the whole moment in,” Campbell said. “It was a big part in the game. We needed a turnover and it was a sudden change on defense.”
Montana State responded with a 10-play, 91-yard drive that lasted just three minutes. The possession turned from methodical to break-neck once again when Chambers hit Willie Patterson for a 34-yard gain and four seconds later, hit Patterson for a 18-yard touchdown, the fifth of the season for the senior.
“They had some really big defensive lineman, defensive tackles, like 350 pounds big so we could gas those guys out and anytime you tempo like that, defenses can’t really get their call in that they want to get in,” Chambers said. “It worked well tonight.”
One point of emphasis coming out of the Oregon State loss was on special teams. Marqui Johnson had a kickoff return for a touchdown against OSU but MSU also gave up almost 200 return yards in the third quarter alone. On Saturday here, the units looked much more disciplined and the return game remained potent.
Gilliam, the Big Sky Preseason Offensive Player of the Year, rushed four times to set up a halfback pass that saw Davis’s all-time leading rusher throw a touchdown pass to McCallan Castles from 22 yards out that drew Davis within three, 24-21, with 9:58 left in the third quarter. He finished the evening with 117 yards rushing, marking his fourth trip over the century mark in five games.
But Johnson answered that trickery and Chambers threw another dagger. Johnson returned the next kickoff 67 yards deep into Davis territory. And Chambers threw his second touchdown pass, the 29-yard strike to Thomas, a former Kentucky transfer, to push the lead to double digits again.
‘We were simple,” Vigen said of the tempo and the offensive game plan. “And we recognized last week, we probably didn’t go after enough on the edge. Last week, our passing game was not as dynamic as it needed to be and we felt like we could go after some things today.”
When Chambers glided in from 65 yards out, showing exceptional patience and vision along the way, he officially entered rare air. He finished with 227 yards passing and 203 yards rushing.
Chambers is the second quarterback in Big Sky Conference history to rush and throw for more than 200 yards each in a single game, joining former Montana quarterback Dalton Sneed, who did it in a 41-34 UM win over Sacramento State in September of 2018.
Many questioned why Vigen would bring in Chambers after Mellott took the country by storm with an unforgettable three-game run through the FCS playoffs in his first three career starts. Chambers pushed Mellott all off-season, then shined when he got his chance.
“He did not want to get to the situation he got to, he did not want to go to another school and it’s just the way it worked out,” Vigen said. “To be fully invested now as a Bobcat and for our team to fully believe in him and for him to make the most of his opportunity, that’s complicated. We are there. We will get Tommy back and we will be able to utilize them both again. But he answered the call today. I knew he could.
“That’s what transferring should be about. It’s about getting a chance to go some place and continuing to write your story. He didn’t need his story to end at Wyoming so to have his story continue on here is a pretty neat deal.”
The noise surrounding the Montana State football program coming off of last season’s spectacular run to the national championship was almost deafening.
How would MSU replace the most talented senior class in school history, a group that included four players who made active NFL rosters including two that were drafted?
What could Mellott possibly do for an encore?
How would Vigen put a stamp on the program in his second season?
What would the offensive line look like?
Who would lead the team with Troy Andersen now playing for the Atlanta Falcons?
Why would the coaching staff bring in a transfer quarterback?
As the Bobcats hard charge to the middle of the 2022 schedule, the offensive and defensive lines remain top-notch among their Big Sky Conference peers. The receiving corps is explosive, confident and eager. The defense has shown a knack for big plays while also showing consistent lapses that lead to gashes, yet the ability to seize opportunity has thus far outweighed the miscues.
And despite a scary injury to Mellott, all of a sudden, Montana State’s long-lasting quarterback issues seem like a thing of the past, at least for a moment on an evening when a Bobcat Stadium swelled with its second-largest crowd ever and a previously demoralized gunslinger found joy quarterbacking an offense once again.
“We got into conference play right after the Oregon State loss and we knew the price of poker was going up,” Chambers said. “We knew these are the games that mattered, not necessarily the Oregon State game. We wanted to win that game but we had to keep moving forward and prove to people we are a good football team.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez and Jason Bacaj. All Rights Reserved.
