BOZEMAN – Following what ended up being Jason Eck’s last game coaching at South Dakota State, the soon to be Idaho head coach made sure to immediately pull up Montana State’s roster the moment he sat down on the bus.
He realized that MSU’s mercurial quarterback Tommy Mellott was only a freshman. The next thing Eck did was look at Idaho’s 2022 schedule.
“I saw that Idaho was not playing Montana State and I was pretty happy,” Eck said with a hearty chuckle. “He was such a good player and that was only his freshman year. Now he’s continued to get better. I think he’s even more accurate now and you can’t commit to stopping the tailback because with all their zones, some of them are zone reads and he can pull it and hurt you.”
That December afternoon in 2021 is one of the most unforgettable in Bobcat lore. Mellott, in just the third start of his now storied career, threw for 233 yards and two touchdowns while rushing 34 times for 155 more yards and two more scores to help will MSU to a 31-17 victory in the semifinals of the 2021 FCS playoffs. That victory not only booked Montana State’s first trip to the national title game in 37 years but also announced to the world that Touchdown Tommy was the solidified face of Bobcat football.
More than three years later, now Eck gets a chance to see Mellott up close and personal from the opponent sideline, this time as the head coach of the Vandals.
“Now he’s continued to get better,” Eck said on Nuanez Now on ESPN MT on Tuesday. “I think he’s even more accurate now and you can’t commit to stopping the tailback because with all their zones, some of them are zone reads and he can pull it if you are over compensating and hurt you.
“He definitely does a great job too of if things aren’t open in the passing game, pulling the ball down and scrambling. You have to have people accounted for him.”
Mellott has been historically successful as MSU’s starting quarterback. The Bobcats have posted 25 wins in games he has started and finished. MSU is 29-8 overall since Mellott took over ahead of the playoffs beginning in 2021. Of those eight losses, two are to North Dakota State in the playoffs, two are to South Dakota State (one regular-season, one playoffs), two are at Montana and one is to Oregon State.
The lone “outlier” – and that’s no shot at Eck’s Vandals, a team that played in the quarterfinals of the FCS Playoffs last season — came a year ago in a 24-21 loss at the Kibbie Dome.
Nearly a year ago, Mellott and Montana State got a reality check after bolting out to a 6-1 start with its only loss being a controversial one at SDSU, the reigning and eventual repeat national champions.
The Bobcats rebounded from that loss to SDSU to win five straight games, including a pair of road wins over nationally ranked Weber State and Sacramento State. They rolled into Moscow, Idaho feeling very confident about their chances against a University of Idaho team that had just lost at home to Montana and narrowly beaten Sac to open conference play.
To say things didn’t go as anticipated for MSU would be an understatement. Not only did the Bobcats lose, but they failed to get a first down until their fourth, and last, possession just before the end of the first half. The Bobcats dropped three passes, including one that would’ve drawn them to within three points on that final drive, in the first half. Still, MSU would battle back and take 14-10 and 21-17 leads before seeing a Brendan Hall field goal attempt in the waning seconds go wide as they succumbed to the Vandal, 24-21.
The loss threw MSU’s season, which appeared destined for a highly anticipated rematch with the Jackrabbits in the title game, into one where getting a coveted top two seed and a Big Sky Conference title was now in question.
“Last year it may have been a little bit of, ‘when are we gonna get to the playoffs, when are we gonna get into the Big Sky championship game,’” Mellott said. “We’re just about that 1 and 0 mentality now and that’s what we’re doing (this season).”
Mellott remembers the 2023 Idaho game well.
“Obviously, that’s one of the reasons we didn’t win the Big Sky last year,” Mellott said looking back at the loss. “We went (to Moscow) and we let a few things slip and we didn’t get started fast. There’s a lot of things we can correct from last year. We’re excited for the opportunity.
“Coming back home, staying home, having our fans behind us. It’ll be a really big deal there with an 8:15 kick. We just really can’t wait for them to get up and to see where we are.”
Mellott started out slow in the game and he didn’t get much help from his receivers as Ty McCullouch dropped a deep pass down the sideline on MSU’s second play of the game and Taco Dowler, who was back for the first time all season after suffering an injury, dropped a pass in the flat to stunt the next possession.
Mellott was 0 for 4 to start the game and was just 2 for 10 at halftime for 27 yards, including another drop by Dowler that would’ve been a touchdown. On the same play, Mellott had ample room to run but went to Dowler instead. The effect of not running may have been enough to cause a missed field goal attempt moments later.
He would battle back in the second half as he completed 10 of 14 passes for 164 yards and two touchdowns as the Bobcats appeared poised to earn a come-from-behind win.
Eck, who was an assistant coach at Montana State in 2015, is well aware of Mellott’s prowess.
“The most effective way to stop him is to have him on the sidelines,” Idaho head coach Jason Eck said of Mellott. “He’s a great player. We kept those guys off the field last year. They only ran 47 plays, but I don’t know if we can count on it going that way this year.”
Back in 2021, the Jackrabbits did not keep Mellot on the sideline and he ran wild.
“When he was a freshman, when they beat us in the playoffs, he hit a lot of one-on-one balls,” Eck said. “We were really stacking the box to try and stop their running game, and they had a really good receiver at the time that played in the NFL (Lance McCutcheon). The 50-50 balls were more like 80-20 balls favoring Montana State that day and they beat us.”
The Bobcats’ offense won’t be quite the same as it was in 2023 for Eck and his staff to prepare for. A year ago, MSU had Mellott and Sean Chambers sharing the quarterback duties although Chambers didn’t play much against Idaho.
“Last year they had two starters,” Eck said. “They don’t want (Mellott) running 20 times a game. That’s a recipe for breaking your quarterback, so they’re relying more on their passing game. They’re still going to use him as a runner. He has 34 carries on the year, so that’s six times a game and in a big game that could probably be a few more. He’s shown that he’s a great passer–68% completion is something I aspire to with our offense. He’s taken the next step and he’s one of the best, if not the best, quarterbacks in our conference.”
The Vandal’ defense was stout throughout the first half of last season’s game as they held MSU to just 25 rushing yards on eight carries and 52 total yards after the Bobcats came in averaging in excess of 300 yards rushing per game and nearly 500 yards of total offense. Idaho has been especially successful in 2024.
“They’re super sound,” Mellott said of the Vandals’ defense. “They do things right. They play with a high motor. That’s what they’re all about and they’re very good at what they do. We’re gonna see what they’re gonna want to bring into the stadium to try to compete with us. But I’m sure they’re gonna do what they have done, they’ve been effective with it on defense, so we’ve been preparing for that.”
The Vandals have a new defensive coordinator in Dan Jackson, who played at South Dakota State and was coaching at Vanderbilt prior to joining Eck’s staff in Moscow. Despite the new face, the Bobcats don’t expect to see anything drastically different from the Vandals, who lost some starters from a year ago.
“A lot of the players were there, they just weren’t the starters,” Mellott said of the new faces on defense for Idaho. “They don’t have a whole list of transfers I wouldn’t say. They have a couple guys that didn’t play against us that are healthy now and will be playing. Certainly, each year for college it’s different. I wouldn’t say we’re preparing for a new team. Their scheme’s pretty similar and they have a lot of players that, obviously, are returning.”
The Bobcats continue to work out their game plan against the Vandals this week in preparation for their ESPN2 showdown, which is slated to start at 8:15.
