HUNTSVILLE, Texas — What if Montana State found a quarterback?
It’s been the omnipresent question around the Bobcats for the better part of half a decade.
Consider the question answered.
And consider any demons of the recent past after enduring an emotional roller coaster the last month vanquishes.
Saturday night here at Elliott T. Bowers Stadium, Montana State shocked the FCS world. But the least surprised among the smattering of fans, observers and participants on a crisp, unusually cold Texas evening were the driven group of young men wearing blue and gold.
Freshman quarterback Tommy Mellott caught a touchdown, threw a touchdown and rushed for a touchdown before the first quarter was over.
Sam Houston’s dynamite defense had no answer for Mellott’s ability to throw bombs down the field.
And Montana State’s fearsome defense, led by a few seniors who do not want their college football careers, continued the pursuit of the title of the best defense in America with a high-pressure, disciplined effort to stop the Bearkats’ explosive offense dead in its tracks.
The sum result was a comprehensive, thorough and historic 42-19 Montana State victory over the top-ranked and previously undefeated No. 1 seed from Sam Houston.
“I don’t think anyone outside of Bozeman, Montana really believed in us to come down here and knock these guys off after being undefeated this calendar year,” Mellott said. “But we trusted each other, we believe in each other. We knew what we needed to do. We practiced really hard, great weather, blessed with that, and we executed.”
The victory is Montana State’s first true road win in its FCS playoff history and the program’s 12th FCS playoff win overall. The triumph also hands Sam Houston its first playoff loss here in the Bearkats’ program history.
The win boosts Montana State into the semifinals of the FCS playoffs for the second year in a row. MSU hosts South Dakota State on Saturday at noon at Bobcat Stadium. SDSU won its second straight playoff road game, knocking off fifth-seeded Villanova 35-21 in Philadelphia.
“This was a huge win for us,” said McCutcheon, a Bozeman native who went over 1,000 yards this season with his 98-yard evening Saturday. “We are excited, came down here and got a big win against the No. 1 team. We are happy with the way we played and now we get one more chance to play at home.”
For the hosts, Saturday evening ended one of the most unique runs in college football history. The Bearkats won 21 games in a calendar year, a mark that will likely never be broken, but could be tied. James Madison’s 28-6 win over Montana Friday night was the Dukes’ 19th win this calendar year.
“It’s been since November of 2019 since I had to get up in front of a group and talk about a loss,” Sam Houston head coach K.C. Keeler said. “What an amazing run. I told the guys downstairs that we did something historic. We had 21 straight wins in a calendar year, two training camps, a national championship, just mind boggling.
“And we lost to a really good football team, a really good, well-coached team that made more plays than we did. We knew they were going to throw the ball at us and they beat us on 50/50 balls and we had three turnovers, things you can’t do if you want to win.”
Keeler, who was the head coach at Delaware from 2002 until 2012 before taking over at Sam Houtston in 2014 suffered his first home playoff loss in 31 outings as a head coach.
“They were looking to make an unprecedented run,” MSU first-year head coach Brent Vigen said. “They were champs in this calendar year and to do this, that’s really hard to do. We were fortunate to come down here and beat a very good team. There’s a lot of winners on the opposite side.
“Our guys were not intimated by their success but knew we needed to play well in all four phases. Getting off to a great start was a big part of that. We knew we had to out-rush them, win the turnover margin and limit their explosives and make some explosives for ourselves. We did all of those probably better collectively in a game in a while. Credit to our guy and their resolve.”
Montana State mounted a nine-game winning streak during the regular-season, climbing to No. 3 in the national polls and giving the team an inside track on a playoff seed along with momentum heading into a pair of rivalry games to end head coach Brent Vigen’s first season at the helm leading a program that endured a coaching change during a pandemic that followed MSU’s first run to the FCS Final Four in 35 years.
But MSU looked shaky in a 20-14 win over Idaho in its regular-season home finale. And the following week, Montana State had its four-game winning streak against archrival snapped in abrupt fashion in Missoula.
A variety of injuries started springing up, including to about to be All-American running back Isaiah Ifanse and All-Big Sky Conference defensive back Ty Okada the last two weeks of December.
Despite the loss to Montana, Montana State earned the No. 8 seed in the FCS playoff field and the week off that comes with it. Vigen and offensive coordinator Taylor Housewright decide to make a move away from junior Matt McKay, a former N.C. State transfer went 9-2 as a starter this season, to Mellott, a hyper athletic and aggressive rookie who’s done everything from work out of the Wildcat to run routes at receiver to cover kickoffs and punts.
That move caused for a heap of external drama as McKay publicly announced he was entering the NCAA Transfer Portal just days before Montana State’s second-round playoff game against Tennessee Martin.
All of a sudden, a Bobcat team striving to leave its mark as one of the great squads in program history faced starting a fresh-faced, raw talent under center on a blustery Bozeman Saturday in potentially the final home game for some of the most memorable players to play at Montana State.
MSU rushed for nearly 400 yards and shoved its way to a 26-7 win to advance.
A team on a college football-best 22-game winning streak who captured its first FCS national title in the spring awaited the Bobcats.
Sam Houston has carried the No. 2 ranking from the beginning of this fall season after racing to 10 consecutive wins, including come from behind victories over James Madison in the semifinals and South Dakota State in the spring playoffs.
SHSU had never lost a home playoff game before Saturday. One of those wins was a 49-13 shellacking of the 2011 Big Sky champion Bobcats a decade ago.
But this Bobcat team is different. Let by a college of impassioned seniors like inside linebacker Troy Andersen, who played most of the second half with a bum shoulder, and defensive tackle Chase Benson, who was knocked out of the game in the first quarter but still coached up teammates, to defensive end Daniel Hardy, who notched two sacks, including a fourth down takedown of Sam Houston quarterback Eric Schmid late in the game to all but seal the action to wide receiver Lance McCutcheon, who’s 68-yard touchdown early in the third quarter squelched the only rallied made all evening by the hosts.
“This group is really close and they have been through a lot,” Vigen said. “You think back to two years ago and they were in the semifinals. Then 2020, everybody dealt with that and then 2021, they get a coaching change and they weren’t going to play. But it’s been evident since I got to Bozeman in February that this group is ready to make that next step. We are back to where they were in 2019, back at home and we get a shot to take another step as a program.”
Those leaders helped Montana State throw perhaps the biggest haymaker in Bobcat playoff history, then never let up on the way to one of the biggest postseason wins in Montana State history.
Mellott, who finished 6-of-11 for 165 yards while also rushing for 76 of MSU’s 190 yards on the ground, hit McCutcheon with a 30-yard bomb on the first possession of the game. Later in that drive, senior wide receiver Nate Stewart – a former Akron transfer who missed the first 10 games to the season with a leg injury – drew a pass interference penalty that got MSU into he red-zone.
Montana State capped the opening possession as junior Willie Patterson – a former high school quarterback from Tacoma, although Vigen teased about Patterson’s throwing “skills” in the post-game — operated a “Philly Special” like play that resulted in the slot receiver throwing a touchdown to Mellott.
Bobcat safety Tre Webb, an All-Mountain West performer at San Jose State before transferring to MSU last summer, snared his first interception of the season on Sam Houston’s first possession, one of four times the Bobcats picked off the Walter Payton Award finalist. One of junior safety Jeffrey Manning Jr.’s two interceptions, he returned inside the 5-yard line to set up one of Mellott’s two rushing touchdowns. The other Manning pick did not officially count as an interception because it came on a two-point conversion when SHSU perplexingly went for it after their first touchdown trailing 28-6.
On the very next play after Webb’s pick, Mellott dropped a perfect deep throw into Patteron’s breadbasket for a 31-yard touchdown and Montana State led 14-0 just three minutes into the game.
The early onslaught continued as Sam Houston showed desperation less than 10 minutes into the game. The Bearkats went for it on fourth down near midfield and did not convert as junior Ty Okada, who would also later get knocked out of the game after re-aggravating a shoulder injury suffered earlier this season, stuffed Noah Smith for no gain.
A 25-yard strike from Mellott to Stewart and four straight Melllott runs helped Montana State take a 21-0 lead less than a minute into the second quarter.
Benson got knocked out, former junior college transfer Ben Seymour in and rolled up a sack. Then Brody Grebe, a former walk-on from tiny Melstone, Montana, got in on the party, notching his 6th sack this season to force yet another SHSU punt.
Montana State and Sam Houston traded punts before Manning’s first pick set up Mellott’s second rushing touchdown.
And so it went. Every time Sam Houston tried to mount a rally – whether the effort came on a 14-play, 75-yard drive capped by a Schmid touchdown for SH first score or electric slot receiver Ife Adeyi ripping off a pair of 61-yard touchdown, one on the first possession of the second half, the other on a nifty trick play in the fourth quarter— Montana State responded.
The Bobcats refused to fold. McCuctheon’s long touchdown answered Adeyi’s second TD burst and helped put him over 1,000 yards this season. That makes the first time since Elvis Akpla finished the 2011 season with 1,135 yards that a Bobcat had that magic number in a single season.
The touchdown also helped keep the margin at three scores. When Sam Houston’s last possession of the third quarter, an 11-play march, ended with Seth Morgan missing a 34-yard field goal wide right, many of the listless 7,550 in attendance started filing out before the final quarter even began.
Adefi, who’s second long rip gave him eight catches for 185 yards for an offense that was otherwise dominated by Montana State’s fearsome four-man rush, gave the hosts one last breath, cutting the lead to 35-19 with 7:33 left.
But Montana State slammed the door. Ifanse, who had just 62 yards on his first 23 carries Saturday, broke into the open field and sprinted to a 42-yard exclamation point touchdown that sealed an unforgettable playoff win in the Lone Star State.
“The one thing this group has done every week, it doesn’t matter who we play, if we win, it’s the same and they have really bought into that,” Vigen said. “It’s not always perfect. But our effort, the way we prepare, Monday through Friday, that’s what wins you games. I appreciate our guys understanding that. It’s an easy task to take on when you are truly playing for one another.
“ We have great continuity on this team, great leadership and a whole heck of lot of seniors who want this thing to keep going.”
The long rip gave Ifanse 104 yards, marking his 17th 100-yard outing, tying him with Ryan Johnson for the most in program history. He also 1,539 yards this season, breaking Johnson’s single-season record. And Ifanse was the first player in 34 games to rush for more than 100 against a Sam Houston defense that has been one of the stoutest against the run all year long.
“We are getting everything we can out of Isaiah right now,” Vigen said. “He’s getting the bulk of the carries right now. We balanced them out during the course of the regular season but come playoff time, he is going to have to keep being a big-time player.”
Andersen, the Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year and a Buck Buchanan Award finalist, piled up 11 tackles and 2.5 tackles for loss for a Bobcat defense that held the explosive Bearkats to 433 yards and 20 first downs.
The spirited efforts were spread across the roster as MSU won its 11th game this year, meaning this senior class has been a part of 35 wins and counting.
Montana State is in the FCS Playoffs for the seventh time since 2010. During that span, the Bobcats have lost to just three playoff opponents: North Dakota State in 2010, 2018 and 2019, Sam Houston in 2011 and 2012; South Dakota State in 2014.
Now the Jackrabbits make their much-anticipated return to Bozeman for the first time since Zach Zenner ran wild to lift SDSU to a 47-40 victory in a frigid blizzard several years ago.
“Everyone is excited to keep getting the opportunity to play,” Mellott said. “This is what we work all year long for. We are only guaranteed 11 opportunities and we are fighting for more. We can’t wait to get back to Bozeman.”
