Gunnar Brekke is usually engaging and friendly, a leader of his teammates who is well liked by all. During the first game of his senior season however, Brekke was anything but happy.
As he sat on his couch in his Bozeman home, several of his teammates came over the watch the game. Brekke, a senior running back and team captain from Helena who labored all off-season for a chance to shine in his final football season, was in a place he did not expect: left off the travel roster with pneumonia, tuning into watch his team’s season-opener at Idaho on the television.
[restrict paid=”true”]“I was really kind of crabby,” Brekke said following Tuesday’s Montana State practice at Bobcat Stadium. “I had some guys come over and watch the game and the first thing they said to me was, ‘man, you aren’t very friendly tonight.’ I was like hell yeah I’m not, I want to be out there.”
The star tailback has been waiting his turn since breaking into the rotation as a true sophomore in 2014. The former All-Big Sky Conference kick returner was a gadget player in Tim Cramsey’s up-tempo offense, a player who could line up in the slot as a receiver, catch balls out of the backfield, return punts and kicks and hit a home run off a handoff when asked.
But Brekke has had to wait his turn to be a featured back. As a true freshman in 2013, Brekke burned his redshirt but sat behind Cody Kirk and Shawn Johnson, earning just 19 carries and catching just three passes as the three-time defending Big Sky champions missed the playoffs for the first time this decade.
In 2014, Brekke carved out a roll as a Swiss army knife, rushing for 424 yards and four touchdowns, catching 21 passes for 204 yards and two touchdowns and led the Big Sky by averaging 27.1 yards per kick. Yet that season, he still earned less carries than Johnson, Anthony Knight, Chad Newell and quarterback Dakota Prukop as MSU shattered its single-season record by scoring 496 points.
Last season, Brekke was MSU’s No. 2 running back behind Newell, a bruiser who earned All-Big Sky honors by scoring 12 touchdowns. The Bobcats fell behind early and often, causing MSU to scrap its prolific ground game more often than not. Newell and Prukop about split 306 carries, leaving just 63 handoffs for Brekke. He gained 293 yards and scored just one touchdown. He did catch 22 passes for 253 yards and scored two touchdowns.
With a change in regime and philosophy under first-year head coach Jeff Choate, Brekke looked primed to up his opportunities while playing simultaneously in the backfield in Courtney Messingham’s two-back offense. But the strategy had to wait at least one week as Brekke watched the game from home.
“What we were repping all fall camp was two-back sets with Gunnar and Chad,” Choate said during his weekly press conference on Monday. “It changed some of the mindset. I think Courtney and the offensive staff did a really good job of adjusting. We knew what we would have available to us not just from a player production standpoint but from a leadership standpoint. Not having Gunnar there, I was proud of our guys. They didn’t flinch. That’s what it’s about.”
Newell in particular didn’t flinch, toting the ball a bruising, physical 25 times. He surpassed 100 yards for the fifth time in his decorated career and scored his 25th career touchdown in MSU’s 20-17 loss. But he left the field on two occasions after brutal hits and did not practice on Tuesday.
Newell’s status is unknown for Saturday’s home opener against Bryant but Brekke returned to practice at full healthy this week. If Newell can’t go, Brekk, junior Nick LaSane and sophomore Noah James are sure to get plenty of carries as MSU tries to control the clock and the line of scrimmage.
“Chad and the offense, they embodied exactly how Coach Choate wants us to play football and hopefully we keep it going from here,” said Brekke when asked about the offensive performance at UI. “Chad will be just fine. We expect him to play.”
Bryant head coach Marty Fine took over at the Rhode Island private school in 2004. Upon his hiring, he took to installing culture of toughness and defensive-minded football. His teams qualified for the Division II playoffs in back-to-back seasons in 2006 and 2007 behind a physical run game and a downhill, hard-hitting defense.
“We were Division II when I first got here and this is my 13th year,” said Fine, who is 72-55 in his career at Bryant. “Before I got here, they had never had a winning season. We decided we were going to build a culture around being a physical football team and we were going to build our team about being able to run the ball and play good defense and keep the ball in front of us, the old-fashioned kind of football. That worked. We went from never having a winning season to winning championships and playing in the national playoffs just in a couple three, four years. Then the school went Division I (in 2009) and that plan has slowed down a little bit.
“We aren’t going to be as successful doing that as we once were. We’ve had to change what we are. We have gotten smaller on defense on purpose. We are playing more nickels and dimes on defense because people spread you out so much, the traditional linebacker really doesn’t play much. We are purposely getting longer and thinner and faster and trying to change what we were. We were a 4-3 defense and we would knock you back at the 3-technique, at the nose tackle or the 6-technique. We were trying to knock you back and we did it every single day and we were pretty good at it. Now you knock people back and they just throw a bubble screen and you chase then around and they are tired after four plays. We have had to chance our identity dramatically.”
Fine points to Montana State’s offensive line as a mismatch for his Bulldogs, calling the unit “huge, mean and outstanding.”
Bryant’s defense features seven senior starters, including all four members of the secondary. The two-deep features 10 players, a far cry from an MSU offense that starts just Brekke, Newell, left guard J.P. Flynn and tight end Austin Barth as seniors.
Burly, versatile nose tackle Marquise Watson, a 6-foot, 309-pound senior who can play over the center with his hand on the ground or roam in the linebacker unit standing up, anchors the unit. The Bulldogs also feature veteran standouts in defensive end Andrew Barton (6-2, 248), senior outside linebacker Patrick Kenney (6-1, 245) and the senior secondary of cornerbacks Aaron Gilmer (6-0, 189) and Charles Wingate (5-9, 161) and safeties Charles Keenan (6-1, 191) and Brandon Owens (5-11, 211).
“They have a core of guys who are very experienced on defense,” Choate said. “They are the opposite of Idaho. They are not a heavy blitz team. They are going to play a lot of base coverage. They are a very disciplined outfit in all three phases. They stick to the plan. If there’s an advantage they have, it’s that they have a tone of experience coming back and continuity with that coaching staff being there for so long.”
Choate pointed to Keenan, Kenney and Watson as standouts, using words like “smart” and “active” to describe the veteran playmakers. MSU sophomore center Alex Neale said he noticed Watson on film right away as well.
“We should be able to handle them but we have to respect them,” Neale said of Bryant’s defensive front seven. “I see a lot of four-down fronts maybe. No. 5 is like a big (MSU senior DT) Matt Brownlow. He moves around, plays a little linebacker which I think is interesting.”
Last season during a 5-6 campaign, Bryant allowed 22.7 points and 365.1 yards per game. The Bulldogs allowed 144 rushing yards per outing, an aspect that will be key in slowing down the Bobcats.
“Montana State has a big offensive line, running back is strong, likes to hit the hole hard so it should be a good challenge for our run defense,” said Kenney, a second-team All-Northeast Conference selection after leading the team with 85 tackles and eight tackles for loss. “The quarterback has a really strong arm, can stretch the field so we have to make sure we get deep in our drops and make it as difficult as we can.
“We will win whatever games we can but when it comes to league, we have to take care of business. That’s our main goal: to win the NEC and make the national playoffs. If we can win these tough games we have, including Montana State, that’s great too but we are just trying to improve every week.”
On Tuesday, Fine played his strongest gamesmanship card, emphasizing how overmatched his team featuring 30 scholarship players would be against the traditionally powerful Bobcats. Although he might’ve been sand bagging a bit, he said Bryant enters Bobcat Stadium with a focused attitude that doesn’t have much to do with concerns regarding MSU.
“This is one of truly one of those games where we are going to work on our stuff,” Fine said. “We have a long season in front of us. I think in our league we have some chances. We understand the competitive nature of athletics, don’t get me wrong and we would like to win the game. But we are not worried about them. We have so much to learn at this age with so many young players, we have to get better at our stuff. We will show them the Idaho film later in the week maybe but right now, we are still working on our game film and we are working on doing our things better.”
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