BOZEMAN — Ty Gregorak remembers wondering who South Dakota State would roll out at quarterback when Gregorak’s former team prepared to face SDSU in the first round of the 2015 FCS playoffs.
Four years ago, the Jackrabbits waffled between athletic but inconsistent senior Zach Lujan and upstart redshirt freshman Taryn Christion. When South Dakota State came to Missoula to take on Gregorak’s Montana Grizzlies, the choice ended up being the rookie.
Gregorak, UM’s defensive coordinator at the time, remembers acknowledging Christion’s presence but concentrating much harder on slowing down SDSU’s more proven offensive weapons like wide receiver Jake Wieneke, tight end Dallas Goedert and running back Brady Mengarelli.
All three SDSU standouts graduated last season, Goedert moving on as the No. 49 overall selection in the NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles and Wieneke finishing as the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s career leader in catches, yards and touchdowns. The trio played a key role in helping the Jackrabbits advance to the semifinals of the FCS Playoffs a year ago.
Four years later, Gregorak is in his third season as the defensive coordinator at Montana State. This week, his Bobcat defense is preparing to slow down an SDSU attack devoid of the aforementioned three stars but still spurred on by the now veteran Christion.
[restrict paid=”true”]
“I’ve gotten to coach against them three times in recent years and I’ve seen this quarterback evolve,” Gregorak said on Wednesday. “You read his bio on the website and it’s crazy to think when I coached against him as a freshman in the playoffs in Missoula and the kind of career he’s put together since then, it’s astronomical.”
Christion enters Saturday’s showdown with Montana State in Brookings, South Dakota with a 23-8 career record. He’s helped the Jacks qualify for the FCS playoffs four straight times. He already holds SDSU’s career records for career touchdown passes with 72 and career total offense with 9,697 total yards. His 3,714 passing yards in 2016 helped earn him Missouri Valley Offensive Player of the Year and third-team All-American honors. His 35 touchdowns last season are an SDSU single-season record.
“He’s an unbelievable student-athlete,” SDSU 22nd-year head coach John Stiegelmeier said earlier this week. “He’s the whole package. He’s a great leader, a serious leader. He’s a great athlete. He’s very, very smart.
“He’s a picture of what you want at practice because he gets every rep whether he’s taking it or the second-team guy is taking it. He will do coaching when he’s not the go, go over and help out wide receivers. He works for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the summer so he’s a moral guy. He’s doing things right. I think a lot of our guys look at him and think, ‘I would like to be like Taryn Christion.”
Christion’s teammates want to be like him and most coaches that play against him likely wish they had a player the caliber of SDSU’s steady, strong starting signal caller. Christion has completed 60 percent of his passes for 8,515 yards over the last three seasons while adding 1,182 rushing yards and 20 rushing touchdowns.
With less than 1,500 more passing yards, Christion will become the 15th player in college football history to throw for more than 10,000 yards and rush for more than 1,000 in his career. The exclusive club also includes former Montana State quarterbacks Travis Lulay and DeNarius McGhee.
“A lot of slowing him down is on the d-line, doing what we can to keep him in the pocket and if he does roll out of the pocket, not allowing him to get up the field and putting pressure on him,” MSU senior captain defensive tackle Zach Wright said. “What solves all of that is sacks and hitting the quarterback. That would be the most convenient. But you realize playing an athlete like him, that’s not easy.”
What SDSU might look like offensively this season remains largely a mystery. The Jackrabbits’ season opener at Iowa State was cancelled due to lightning. Replacing a tight end in Goedert who had back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons and replacing a player with more than 5,000 receiving yards and 59 receiving touchdowns in Wieneke is unlikely. But with Christion at the helm, Stiegelmeier maintains confidence in his offense entering the Montana State game.
“It’s a different recipe,” Stiegelmeier said. “It’s not the concept of looking at the defense and saying, ‘How can we get the ball to Dallas’ or ‘How can we get the ball to Jake’? We don’t think that way now. We look at the defense now and think, ‘What are the best plays?’
“We aren’t creating plays to get the ball in people’s hands. We are figuring out the best plays in our playbook to run against in this case Montana State’s defense. I think it’s quicker if you will because we aren’t coming up with new scenarios to move Dallas or isolate Jake. But obviously, we’d love to have those guys back, too.”
Montana State has strived to improve its defensive production in terms of sacks and takeaways during the three seasons under the direction of Gregorak and third-year head coach Jeff Choate. The Bobcats showed stark improvements in a season-opening 26-23 win over Western Illinois. Safeties Jahque Alleyne and Brayden Konkol each had second quarter interceptions, the latter setting up a crucial 47-yard field goal by junior Tristan Bailey at the first half buzzer to help the Bobcats enter the break down 13-6.
In the second half, Montana State’s deep and relentless defensive line continued to wear out the WIU offensive front. The Bobcats ditched the stunting and line games they used in the first half, instead reverting to one-on-ones that the players increasingly won as the game wore on.
In the fourth quarter, Washington transfer Bryce Sterk came off the edge for a pair of crucial sacks, one that set up Bailey’s game-tying field goal and the second that sealed MSU’s first season-opening victory under Choate.
“Those two ends they have, 57 (Tyrone Fa’anono) and 37 (Sterk), I think they are difference makers,” Stiegelmeier said. “You have to be aware of where they are at and their ability to effect the game. They play hard. And they played well enough to beat Western, who I think is a pretty good football team.
Last season, Montana State pushed SDSU to the brink. Chris Murray threw for 311 yards and four touchdowns while adding 107 rushing yards. MSU missed two field goals and had an extra point blocked. Those special teams blunders combined with kicker Chase Vinatierri scoring a 31-yard touchdown on a fake field goal helped the No. 4 Jackrabbits escape an upset with a 31-27 victory, one of five one-score losses during MSU’s 5-6 season last fall.
The Bobcats get another shot against the No. 3 team in the FCS, a program with proven status but an unknown set of new personnel. Montana State is embracing the challenge of trying to slow down Christion and the Jackrabbits.
“They are a good team, definitely not a team you overlook but just because they are ranked No. 3 doesn’t mean a whole lot because they haven’t played a game,” Sterk said. “I think them not playing a game plays into our favor because they could be rusty. We have the advantage because we worked out the first game kinks. They will be fresh but mentally, they are still in preseason mentality. We have to capitalize on that.”
[/restrict]
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
