Look for Alex Gubner and you’ll see him, right in the middle of the Montana Grizzlies’ defense.
The big senior defensive tackle, 6-foot-3 and 284 pounds with No. 99 plastered across his chest, isn’t exactly hard to find.
As they prepare to play South Dakota State in the national title game on Sunday, the Grizzlies again have one of the best defenses in the nation, a unit that’s driven this year’s Montana team to Frisco, Texas, and the brink of immortality. Gubner is the fat slice of why.
But to see that, you have to really watch him. Watch, because what he does won’t show up in the stats, and concentrate, because Gubner operates in muddled scrums on the line of scrimmage, the desperate trench warfare for leverage that most fans disregard but that decides games as surely as any quarterback’s throwing arm or receiver’s speed.
To appreciate him – to see how special he really is – requires time, effort and knowledge. It’s a test. That’s why coaches – his own, those in his league and those across the country – love talking about him.
“I think Gub’s the best defensive player in our league,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck said simply at the Big Sky Kickoff in July.
“He’s very disruptive, and that’s what makes him different. Some of the best things that he does don’t show up on the stat sheet,” Montana defensive line coach Mike Linehan said. “I mean, he causes offenses sometimes to get away from stuff that they want to do, because he’s just always in the backfield. It’s hard to block him. So they have to change up their schemes a little bit, which is only good for us.”
“I think it all starts with 99,” Northern Colorado coach Ed Lamb said before the Bears played Montana in late October. “The thing that makes it hard is, even though you might be able to sniff out the blitz and where it’s coming from, you still have to deal with No. 99, whether you have to single protect against him or get him blocked somehow in the run game. To me, that’s where it’s built around. He makes that whole thing go.”
“He’s the one that sets the point for them up front and can cut a formation in half,” now-former North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz said before the semifinal classic between the Griz and the Bison. “He doesn’t have gaudy stats, but you know where he is on every snap.”
The Big Sky coaches chose Gubner as the best defensive player in the league this year although he had just 39 tackles in 14 games, a testament to Gubner’s talent that speaks as loudly as any number of glowing quotes.
If a defensive tackle has every coach who plays him gushing, then you know he’s a good one. Gubner is a very good one, the twisting, penetrating, relentless force at the heart of Montana’s defensive line, a “dancing bear” whose uniqueness is showcased in his versatility. He’s strong enough to stand up to double teams, agile enough to execute Montana’s endless stunts and skilled enough to drop back into coverage on zone blitzes, as he did for multiple of his four interceptions – the highest total on the team – as a redshirt freshman in 2019.
Most importantly, he’s selfless enough to revel in the punishing responsibilities of a defensive tackle, a position that takes the brunt of the opposing line’s attention and force, play after play, with little chance of recording a tackle to statistically confirm that effort.
“I came here to play for the Montana Grizzlies, and all I want is for us to win, for us to succeed every Saturday and to have our defense dominate,” Gubner said. “I don’t care if I don’t get any tackles, or that I get double-teamed, triple-teamed, that it’s not pretty and my body’s not liking it. I’m doing what’s best for the team.”
Four years after his shocking 2019 breakout, Gubner is finishing a career that’s stamped him as one of the greatest defensive players to come through Missoula in decades. He’s crafted a resume that is already untouchable, and could still add one more legendary bullet point in his 58th career start on Sunday if Gub and the Grizzlies beat two-score favorite South Dakota State for one of the greatest upsets in FCS championship history and Montana’s first national title since 2001.
If you take the time to watch Alex Gubner on the field, if you put in the effort to understand his game the way coaches across the country do, you might come to the conclusion that his story is about talent – dominant, inevitable, can’t-miss talent.
But, fittingly for a player who requires and rewards close observation to grasp his true value on the field, keep looking and you’ll realize something else. Alex Gubner’s story isn’t really about inevitability. It’s about hundreds of hours watching film, scratching notes in notebooks. It’s about countless double teams faced, the sacrifice of taking punishment to let other people make the play. It’s about the burning desire and ambition of a young man who found purpose on the football field, a California kid who found a community of equals in Montana.
“Gubby was the guy that went from very raw, when he was young, and developed into what he is today,” said Barry Sacks, who coached Montana’s defensive line from 2018 through last season. “I was vital in his development, but really, he has been vital in his development. I mean, you can send a message to 100 guys every day of your life and maybe 50% of them are getting the message and then maybe 1% are able to enact it like him.
“It’s really cool to see people recognize this guy. You’re not gonna see all these massive stats on him. I always try to say, football is not always what shows up on a piece of paper. Put the film on. Watch the guy and he’s the most disruptive man on the football field. A lot of that development is Montana football, and credit Alex Gubner for having the frame of mind to do it. Statistically, he’s an anomaly.”
***
When Ed Croson first met Gubner, he wasn’t sure what to think.
Until 2021, Croson was the head football coach at Chaminade, an exclusive prep school in Los Angeles that plays in the Mission League – not quite as heralded as its neighbor, the famed Trinity League, but still one of the best high school football conferences in the country.
(Montana basketball legend Michael Oguine – whose Griz career, ironically, was also defined in large part by his selflessness and sacrifice – attended Chaminade. So did Griz linebacker Erich Osteen, and several NFL and MLB players).
These days, Gubner is a stereotypical defensive tackle, nearly 300 pounds with a low center of gravity, incongruously balletic feet and a granite block of a head that sits like an Easter Island statue atop a squat neck.
Back then, he was an 8th-grader sitting next to his father in Croson’s office, with thoughts that he might be a quarterback.
“I met with him and his dad when they were looking at schools and at that time, he thought he was a quarterback,” Croson said. “Now when he was in 8th grade, he looked like a kid in the band. I mean, he didn’t even look like a football player, let alone a quarterback. We met with them, he ended up coming to the school. And he found out pretty quick that he wasn’t a quarterback.”
In fact, Gubner wasn’t much of anything for most of his high school career. They tried him at tight end and at offensive line. During his first two years at Chaminade, Gubner didn’t play no matter where he went.
But while development wasn’t apparent, it was happening. Gubner, like everybody else in high school, was figuring out where he fit in, what he wanted to be. He wasn’t talented – yet – but he was dedicated.
“I wasn’t really held in high regard. I wasn’t the jock in high school or one of those guys, I wasn’t known for football,” Gubner said. “I just love the game and I knew I had the ability to take it somewhere. … I fell in love with football and the camaraderie. All my friends played sports in high school, that’s who I’m closest with. I love the team aspect of it, and I just love everything about the game.”
Even though he wasn’t playing much, Gubner had found where he belonged. He hung out with the football players – the ones who were really serious about it, like Michael Wilson, a receiver who went to Stanford and now plays for the Cardinals. He loved lifting weights and studying film, beginning his habit of filling up spiral notebooks, line by line, with notes on formations and tendencies – “I can barely remember people’s names, so I take notes on what I’m thinking,” Gubner laughed.
As a junior, he started the season out of the lineup, playing defensive end. A plea to Croson to get on the field resulted in a move to offensive line – “I didn’t really get to play in games but in drills, one-on-one pass rush, me at O-line was not pretty,” Gubner recalled – and, finally, to defensive tackle. You can imagine the movie montage – Gubner dropping passes at tight end and getting blown by on the offensive line before finally, blessedly finding the right position as the music swells.
“I only knew a handful of plays,” Gubner said. “But I just kind of started going. I wasn’t thinking, I was just getting off the ball, and the first few series I’m making a bunch of tackles and I’m like, wow, this is fun. This thing just clicked, like a light bulb went off and I was like, yeah, I think this is where I’m supposed to play. … I think athletes know what I’m talking about. You just kind of know right away, you’re making plays, you’re doing well, you feel confident. You’re like, wow, this is why, you know, this is why you play the game.”
As a senior, Gubner was Chaminade’s Lineman of the Year, and a first-team all-conference and all-area selection for a team that was ranked in the top 20 nationally for portions of the season. Gubner had always known there was a place for him on the gridiron. It had just taken him a little longer than most to find it.
“He’s pretty much a self-made guy,” Croson said. “He started out as just a kid on the team, but some kids find themselves as they go through high school. He made friends and he liked lifting weights and he liked being there with his friends. And shoot, by the time he was going into his senior year, I mean, he had just completely changed.
“He was a guy that we never thought much about, really, until he was a junior and then it’d be like, ‘Have you seen him in the weight room?’ For the first couple of years, we didn’t ever think he would amount to anything. But he pushed himself, really made himself into the player that is now.”
***
Gubner’s slow development, it turned out, was a blessing for Montana. Croson thinks that if Gubner had been able to put a full junior year on tape – had been moved to defensive tackle and felt that light bulb switch on just a few weeks earlier – he would have been far out of reach of the Grizzlies.
As it was, he slipped through the cracks. Bob Stitt’s staff originally offered Gubner in the fall of 2017, his senior season at Chaminade. Bobby Hauck’s new staff re-offered him at the end of that season.
“I saw him on film in high school and I said, you know, this guy’s the guy we gotta go on,” Sacks said. “You can’t find guys that nimble and agile in high school, with his size and everything. I was a fan of his from early on.”
Montana, meanwhile, was the perfect match for a player as completely serious about football as Gubner.
“When I first got here, I truly didn’t understand how big of a deal Griz football was,” Gubner said. “So I got here and it’s so special, the culture. Coming in, coach Hauck has us say a creed and knowing Griz football history and all these things. And it was a shocker for an out-of-state guy like me to see that.”
Gubner turned heads with his speed running down on kickoffs in practice as a redshirt freshman in 2018, and spent the year following the example of players like Jesse Sims and David Shaw.
The culture at Montana reinforced everything that he had learned at Chaminade. In high school, Gubner surrounded himself with people who reflected his hard work, his dedication to the weight room and the film room. In college, that was the entire team, and Gubner fit right in.
“He’s a driven young man,” Sacks said. “He loves football. I would go in on Sundays and catch him watching the game (from the day before) and taking notes on himself on a Sunday when he’s just supposed to go report, get treatment and go home. Every Sunday that I’ve walked down, he’s been down there. And oftentimes my evaluations of him were better than how he evaluated himself.”
Ironically for a player who was a regular for just over a season in high school, Gubner broke into Montana’s lineup as a redshirt freshman in 2019 and has remained there ever since. As a redshirt freshman, he had 36 tackles, 2.5 sacks and those four interceptions, plus five more pass breakups (It’s not exactly a fluke because, as mentioned, Gubner has excelled dropping into coverage throughout his career. But he has not recorded another interception since that season, and those five pass breakups remain more than half of his career total of eight).
He’s never recorded more than 44 tackles in a season, but now sits with a career total of 28.5 tackles for loss that has him in the top 20 in Griz history.
Along the way, he’s become an All-American, a pro prospect and a cult figure in a Montana program that reveres defensive stars. To see his trademark celebration where he squats low and double-pumps his fists like a pair of semi truck pistons is something straight out of a WWF bit from the early 1990s.
Whenever Gubner does the celebration, his defensive teammates go bananas. Whenever it happens at home — like in UM’s 37-7 beat down of rival Montana State when his first half tackle for loss had so much authority, Gubner essentially skipped like a quarter on a pond across the Washington-Grizzly Stadium turf — the UM faithful go berserk.
For all of Gubner’s weight-room dedication, he’s never been a specimen as cut as the late Sims (who has?) or as hulking as the 6-foot-5, 310-pound Shaw….which only enhances Gubner’s unique appeal – one of the best defensive players in the country, as strong and fast pound-for-pound as anybody on the Griz, looks like he works the day shift on the railroad and stops in at the corner bar for a couple beers on the way home.
On the field, he plays like he has a battery pack in his back, bursting off the line at the snap with the kinetic, startling, single-minded violence of a big cat exploding from cover, chasing down running backs on screens from sideline to sideline and painfully adjusting the worldview of freaked-out quarterbacks who generally assume that they’ll be able to beat a defensive tackle to the corner in a scramble drill.
Sacks said some players look the part but the production doesn’t match the physique.
“Gub is kind of the reverse. … (Defensive linemen), they have to be quick, fast, have great leverage, be frantic as hell,” Sacks said. “I think, over time, that’s what Gubby has developed. Get off the block, get up, get yourself vertical, make things happen. Be frantic, be vicious.”
During Montana’s 23-21 triumph over Idaho at the Kibbie Dome in October, Gubner went from being relentlessly held — Montana started bringing extra jerseys to road games because his would get torn from all the grabbing – to getting his finger nearly ripped off. He suffered a jam/dislocation so brutal, it broke the skin.
“Wipe the blood off and put it back in,” Gubner grunted.
The next series, Gubner was back in the game, hand taped, glove on, tape over the glove, wrecking shop like nothing had ever happened.
Off the field, he’s gone from “a city slicker to a mountain man,” as the Missoulian’s Frank Gogola wrote earlier in the year, hunting, fishing, hiking and snowmobiling with the crew of Montana-born linebackers like Braxton Hill, Levi Janacaro and Tyler Flink that’s become the heart of the Griz defense and, by extension, the team.
Perhaps fittingly, the aforementioned Griz core along with senior safety David Koppang and sophomore linebacker Riley Wilson all share a house together. Hill is quick to straighten out the detail everyone is wondering.
“We all buy our own groceries. Are you kidding? Cooking Gub dinner costs like 50 bucks!”
“Yeah, they’re talking about my food bill or something like that. They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Gubner pushed back in an annoyed deadpan. “I don’t eat that much food. It’s kind of a mess, not gonna lie. It’s awesome but at the same time, you know, we got some dirty roommates, especially Braxton Hill actually needs to work on his cleaning skills. Hank Nuce is an abomination. We’re all best friends and we’re pretty close as a house. But yeah, never a dull moment in Hastings house.”
On Sunday, that group and their teammates have the chance to do something that Montana hasn’t accomplished in more than 20 years. For a player like Gubner, now so steeped in Montana Grizzlies lore, that history sits heavy, adding another layer of importance to the title game. To lay it to rest, they’ll have to vanquish a South Dakota State team that some are saying has a shot to be the greatest FCS team of all time.
Just two out of 27 anonymous head coaches picked the Griz to win against South Dakota State. But for all of his complexities that aren’t visible on paper, all of the hidden layers that require time and effort and knowledge to dig out, this is perhaps the simplest and clearest thing about Alex Gubner: If he’s the underdog, it’s probably worth betting on him.
“You know, I had no idea,” Gubner said. “I started college as a freshman and I had no idea that I’d be able to achieve the things I did with this team. I didn’t imagine this in my wildest dreams. I think I’ve tried to work as hard as I can, as hard as anyone in the building, to achieve these goals. But if you told me at 18 years old, before I came to college, that I was going to be able to be an all-conference player and be able to win the Big Sky championship and go to the national championship, I wouldn’t have believed that.
“All the seniors told me, like Dante (Olson) and all those guys, they tell you it flies so fast and you don’t believe them. And then you get to this point, you’re like, wow, they’re right. Like, I can’t believe that I’m going to be done. … My brothers, you know, my best buds – me and Braxton, Flink, Levi, Riley Wilson, Hank Nuce, Hayden Harris, all my really close friends – we’re playing football and we’re going down to Texas together and we’re going to win this national championship.
“I’ve been in the grind with almost all of them for so many years and it’s cool to see our success and how hard we worked and how it came to fruition.”
