MISSOULA – The recipe for a redemptive afternoon at Washington-Grizzly Stadium is simple – an overmatched opponent, a key injury return, a dominant effort.
The Montana Grizzlies got all three – plus a showstealing freshman introduction for extra flavor – on Saturday, bouncing back from a shocking second-half collapse at North Dakota last week to beat Morehead State 59-2 in front of 25,808 fans.
The Eagles of the non-scholarship Pioneer League – despite, as Bobby Hauck pointed out in the midweek press conference, a 2-0 record entering the game – were no match for Hauck’s Grizzlies.
Outweighed and outplayed at every position, the Eagles gained 45 yards on 45 offensive plays, only breaking Montana’s shutout bid in the final seconds of the third quarter when Richard Sweeney III scooped up the ricochet from a blocked Griz extra point and returned it the length of the field for two points – cutting Montana’s lead at that point to 52-2.
Montana ran for 410 yards on 55 carries – 7.5 yards per carry – with five different Grizzly ball carriers contributing to the team’s total of seven rushing touchdowns.
“They’re going to do what they wanted to do, and today you saw that,” Morehead State head coach Jason Woodman said. “We couldn’t do enough to slow them down, and we couldn’t do anything on offense because we couldn’t control the line of scrimmage at all. Both sides of the ball up front, they’re extremely good.”
During their demoralizing, question-raising implosion last week in Grand Forks, the Griz looked like a shell of themselves – poor blocking and tackling, no special teams advantage and a total capitulation down the stretch as North Dakota methodically came back from a 24-7 halftime deficit.
On Saturday, Montana got a pregame boost with the return of All-American receiver/returner Junior Bergen, who missed each of the first two games with injury.
Bergen fielded punts in the first half, returning two for a total of 15 yards, and also had two catches for 18 yards in his first action since last year’s national championship game. His 12-yard grab out of the slot on fourth-and-4 on Montana’s first drive led to a 1-yard sneak touchdown by redshirt freshman Keali’i Ah Yat.
First TJ Rausch and then Isiah Childs delivered massive hits to the returner on Morehead State’s first two kick-return attempts of the game, convincing the Eagles to call for fair catches the rest of the night.
And when Ryan Tirrell broke through the line on an A-gap blitz for a sack in the second quarter, the Griz were back to looking like themselves again, turning the rest of the game into a sun-soaked September reverie of dominance.
Defensive end Hayden Harris’ early interception on a screen-pass-turned-tip-drill led to Montana’s only non-rushing touchdown of the game, a 2-yard toss from Ah Yat to Keelan White.
“It was great being back in front of our home crowd and getting that sour taste out of our mouths from last week,” Harris said. “We let up a lot of rushing yards last week, and our goal was to really come out firing in this game. Stopping the run was our main goal, and then getting after the passer.”
Harris had two sacks in addition to his interception for Montana, which held the visitors to negative-14 rushing yards.
Eli Gillman, who ran for 106 yards on just eight carries, got free for touchdown runs of 22 and 13 yards in the second quarter, sandwiched around a 36-yard field goal by Ty Morrison and a 10-yard touchdown run by Nick Ostmo.
Ostmo, who went for 76 yards on 10 carries, became the 8th Griz over the 2,000-yard rushing mark during the game, and also tied Griz running backs coach Justin Green for eighth in the Montana record book with his 22nd career touchdown.
Morrison missed a 32-yard field goal attempt at the halftime buzzer with the Griz already up 39-0, the only blemish on a first half that not only removed all drama of whether Montana would win, but whether the Griz would cover the 32.5-point spread as well.
“Our guys locked in,” Hauck said. “They worried about the little things, they worried about correction, they worried about doing right in today’s game and it showed.”
The second half belonged to backups as Montana rotated heavily throughout the depth chart.
Arizona transfer Stevie Rocker Jr. ran for a 23-yard touchdown in the third quarter and finished with 82 total yards on just five touches, but the real revelation was true freshman running back Malae Fonoti.
Fonoti, making his Griz debut, ran with pace, power and patience, carrying the load as the Griz tried to grind down the clock on their blowout.
His first carry in a Montana uniform went for 13 yards. His next three went for 13 again, then 11 and 14 yards. He later added a 5-yard touchdown, and finished an exceptional debut with 24 carries for 176 yards and one score.
“In our staff meeting this morning, we went through everybody, went through the rotations, the expected substitution patterns,” Hauck said. “We talked specifically about him. I hoped to get him in the game, and I’m glad we did. … I thought he was terrific. That goes hand-in-hand with the offensive line, but I thought he ran really hard. I don’t think he looked like a guy that’s got two weeks of school under his belt.”
That was the exclamation point, but the Griz also handed out debuts up and down the lineup in the fourth quarter.
“The guys that don’t play any plays, ever, they work just as hard as (the starters),” Hauck said. “The work is the work. … It’s really an awesome, wonderful deal when guys get the chance to play on Saturday. What a cool day in the stadium. We had 26,000 people there and our young guys, some of our guys that have not been full-time players, got to play today.”
Now, the Griz will hope that one game was enough to get right before they welcome Western Carolina to Washington-Grizzly Stadium next weekend. The Catamounts beat No. 22 Elon 24-17 on Saturday. Next week’s game is set for a 1 p.m. kickoff.
