Only Tyrone Holmes, Montana’s menacing defensive end and the 2015 FCS Defensive Player of the Year, notched more tackles than Mac Bignell last season.
Bignell, Montana State’s fast-twitch, knifing outside linebacker had a breakout sophomore year in his first season as a starter. The 6-foot, 195-pound former walk-on out of Drummond notched 20.5 tackles for loss last season, just one less than Holmes despite playing in two less games.
Bignell might’ve lived in the backfield but Montana State’s defense never gained traction. The Bobcats scored at least 35 points in 10 games yet posted just a 5-6 record. The defense gave up explosive plays far too often and opponents executed game plans at will against MSU. The poor performance resulted in Rob Ash’s firing and Jeff Choate’s hiring. The feast or famine defense stuck out to Choate right away.
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“Mac is a good example being the top TFL guy in the Big Sky because you can’t be a big-play, bad-play defense,” Choate said in an interview last summer. “You have to be consistent.”
Of Bignell’s 20 solo tackles for loss, only seven led to punts by Montana State’s respective opponents. Bignell had five tackles for loss combined against Division II Fort Lewis and FCS independent East Tennessee State and four of the punts came against MSU’s two least competitive opponents. Six times Bignell notched a tackle for loss, the opponent scored a touchdown on the same drive, including five occurrence when the score came within two plays and three different times when the opponent scored on the very next play. Four other times, Bignell notched a tackle for loss on a drive that resulted in an opponent field goal.
Against rival Montana, Bignell piled up 11 tackles, four tackles for loss, a sack and two quarterback hurries. It was the perfect example of a wasted effort. Montana scored a touchdown on the very next play after two of Bignell’s tackles for loss. Two other times, Bignell notched a tackle for loss and Montana still earned a field goal in a 54-35 victory in Bozeman that helped seal Montana State’s first losing season since 2001.
“Teams are going to move the chains a little bit. You have to tighten up in the red-zone, you have to make plays on third down and you have to get off the field,” Choate said. “Staying ahead of the sticks helps. But I don’t care if we lead the conference in sacks or TFLs, but I do care if we are in the top two or three in scoring defense. If we climb the ladder and we are in the top third of the league in scoring defense, you are going to see an eight, nine-win team. I think that’s what it’s going to take for us to get back to where we need to be.”
The ups and downs had nothing to do with Bignell, the son of Montana State Hall of Fame tight end Joe Bignell. In fact, as MSU rebuilds its unit, Choate said it will start with the former Class C star.
“Mac’s a damn good football player,” Choate said. “He’s slithery. He’s hard to block. He’s undersized but he’s dynamic, really explosive, has a great feel for passing lanes. He’s a guy you can utilize in a lot of situations.
“He reminds me of when we were at Boise, we had a kid named Winston Venable who is still playing up in the CFL (Montreal Alouettes) who is very similar. He’s a true hybrid outside linebacker-safety. I think Mac can play drop down safety. It’s a similar position. He gives you flexibility when we get into a nickel package, we don’t have to take him off the field and we don’t necessarily want to because he’s a really good blitzer and his skill set allows him to not be a liability in pass coverage. We will build it around him.”
As Choate, new defensive coordinator Ty Gregorak and Montana State’s defensive staff – Kane Ioane was retained as the linebackers coach, Byron Hout hired as the defensive line coach and Gerald Alexander hired to coach the secondary – try to install a whole new defensive scheme, Bignell is still a focal point. So is sophomore nose tackle Tucker Yates, a starter for eight games as a freshman. Choate seems set with strong defensive end Tyrone Fa’anono and the junior safety pair of Khari Garcia and Bryson McCabe. But the rest of the starting positions defensively are in the middle of heated battles.
“You had four guys together, five including the head coach, who had all done things their own way in different places and we just tried to take pieces from all of it and fit it best to our personnel,” Gregorak said. “Defensively, a lot of people do similar things. It’s just who has better dudes doing it, who has coaches coaching it better and who does it better on Saturdays or Sundays. There’s some similarities to what they did last year but overall, it’s a wholesale change.”
One of the most notable changes is the presence of a Buck defensive end, a standup position that plays on the line of scrimmage, can put his hand on the ground or help out in covering the flats. Senior Jessie Clark, a junior college transfer who took half a season to find his footing but ended up third in the league with 5.5 sacks last season, is playing the position. He is fighting for repetitions as he sits behind sophomore Grant Collins and junior Shiloh Laboy at the Buck. Collins is a 6-foot-4, 230-pound Bozeman native who piled up 88 tackles as MSU’s middle linebacker last season. Laboy is a 6-foot-4, 245-pound former junior college transfer who is making waves under a new coaching staff after toiling on the bench last season.
“Grant is a converted linebacker and Shiloh has as much or more pop than anyone on this defense,” Gregorak said. “He’s explosive. Jessie Clark has some natural pass rushing ability. I’m excited for the competition. We don’t have a No. 1 or a No. 2. Grant and Shiloh are taking those 1s and 2s reps and we are mixing in Jess and (redshirt freshman) B.J. (Ojo) at times. It’s a great competition.”
In Montana State’s nickel package, sophomore Tre’Von Strong has been lining up at nickel back. Collins plays the Buck and Laboy plays opposite of him. Clark mixes in at times as a pass rush specialist as well.
“Here’s what I tell them: you guys are defensive ends who do outside linebacker stuff and I’m going to coach you as an outside linebacker and myself, Choate, and Hout are going to work with you as pass rushers,” said Gregorak, the linebackers coach at Montana every season from 2003 until 2015 except 2010 and served as UM’s defensive coordinator the last three seasons. “The bulk of my coaching career has been spent coaching linebackers in a 4-3 system.”
Choate has spent the last decade working for top level FBS coaches like Chris Petersen at Boise State and Washington and former Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp for one season at Florida. The new nature of defenses to stop spread attacks often features hybrid spots. It’s a big focus for his staff as the Bobcats rebuild their defense entirely.
“Even when we were a 4-2-5 in Boise, we had a guy who was a hybrid defensive end, outside linebacker,” Choate said. “I have a standard line: position versatility is the key to modern football. You have to have guys who can do more than one thing with the exception of maybe a two-gap nose. You are going to get caught at times without the right personnel group on the field so those guys have to be able to play three downs. Position versatility is a key example of that and the Buck is a key example of that versatility.”
[/restrict]Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
