Aaron Best was on the sideline as Eastern Washington’s offensive line coach for some of the Big Sky Conference’s most exciting teams. The Eagles were arguably the team of the 2010s among its Big Sky peers and EWU is the most recent team from the league to win the national championship.
But it’s been 14 full seasons and going on 15 years since the Eagles claimed the 2010 Football Championship Subdivision title.
That 2010 EWU squad was certainly special. Bo Levi Mitchell was a Walter Payton Award winner (the following season) and Taiwan Jones was a future NFL draft pick who went on to play more than a decade in the league. JC Sherritt was the Big Sky Defensive MVP and Buck Buchanan Award winner, and the Eagles caught fire following a 30-7 loss to Montana State in Bozeman, winning 11 games in a row, including beating Delaware 20-19 in the title game.
While that team was flush with talent and certainly lit up scoreboards, Eastern had comparably — and perhaps more — talented teams in years that followed. The national championship team averaged 31.5 points per game.
The next few years, Vernon Adams throwing to Brandon Kaufman and Nick Edwards, then another trio of future pros, proved a deadly combination and EWU averaged 39.5 points per game on the way to the Big Sky title. In 2013, Adams threw 55 touchdowns that season and Cooper Kupp, then a redshirt freshman, set an all-time college football record with 21 touchdowns, a mark that still stands today.
Big Play VA throwing to Cooper Kupp, Kendrick Bourne and Shaq Hill or Gage Gubrud throwing to that trio formed arguably the Big Sky’s best-ever aerial assault. The 2014 Eagles averaged 44 points per game in Adams’ last season at the helm.
The 2016 Eagles were one of the best offensive teams in college football history. In his first year as the full-time starter, Gubrud threw for 5,160 yards and 48 touchdowns while rushing for 606 and five more scores. Kupp had 117 catches for 1,700 yards and 17 touchdowns as EWU scored an FCS-record 649 points, averaging more than 45 points while racing all the way to the semifinals for the fourth time in seven seasons.
While the 2010 Eags seemed like the beginning of a spread offense trend, the 2013, 2014 and 2016 Eagles all came up short in the playoffs – and in each of those seasons, the Eagles lost to a power-run team.
Those heart-breakers certainly stung, including for Best, who was the offensive line coach on Beau Baldwin’s staff. When Best took over as EWU’s head coach following the end of Kupp’s peerless career in 2016, he understood first-hand that quarterbacks who throw 50 touchdowns a season like Adams and Gubrud or receivers who re-write the record books like Kupp can certainly make you a perennial playoff team.
But since the rise of North Dakota State, South Dakota State and the Missouri Valley Football Conference as a whole, teams with powerful offensive lines, deep running back stables and knockout defenses have completely dominated the FCS. That dynamic has been a huge factor in the pendulum of offensive trends in the Big Sky swinging back the other way.
“You have to run the ball if you want to have a ticket in the playoffs and have success in the playoffs,” Best said earlier this week. “Now, maybe we bucked that trend at Eastern way back when, when we threw it around and we were kind of the opposite of what everyone was. But you minimize possessions when you run the ball and you play good defense. And so instead of having 13 or 14 possessions maybe 15 years ago, where everybody’s kind of throwing it around the yard, now you have to maximize possessions.”
EWU’s 2013 season hit a brick wall when NFL-bound running back Terrance West powered Towson past the Eagles 35-31 at home. The 2014 Eastern season ended in a shocking loss to ground and pound Illinois State, 59-45 in Cheney. In 2016, the heartbreak was even greater as Kupp’s Hall of Fame college career ended abruptly when Youngstown State won 40-38 on the frozen red tundra of Roos Field.
“At the end of the year, when it gets cold, you’re playing outside – and even if you are at home, I don’t know how well the ball drives in 20-mile-an-hour wind and snow,” Best said. “The biggest games, the playoff games, are played in November and December. You have to have a lot of good things going on in those environments and climate for that to go right for you.”
Fast forward to 2021. Coming out of a canceled 2020 fall slate, North Dakota State won yet another national title in January of 2022 to cap the 2021 fall season. The crown was NDSU’s ninth since 2011 as the Bison destroyed Montana State 38-10.
While future Dallas Cowboy fullback Hunter Luepke’s two-touchdown performance helped confirm and affirm just how important the run game is, the rise and return of the tailback was already well under way in the Big Sky. Between the 2019 and 2021 seasons, the league boasted five All-American running backs.
Recently, strong run games have been of the highest priority for Montana State, Weber State, Montana, UC Davis and Sac State, not coincidentally the top programs in the Big Sky over the last five seasons.
Isaiah Ifanse finished his career as the all-time leading rusher in Montana State history (3,742) despite transferring to Cal for his final season. He came to MSU after earning Washington Gatorade Player of the Year honors at Bellevue High outside of Seattle.
Marcus Knight broke Chase Reynolds’ Montana and Big Sky single-season record for rushing and total touchdowns. He was a junior college All-American before coming to UM.’
Josh Davis finished his career as the second-leading rusher in Weber State history while earning first-team All-Big Sky honors four times. He was the Utah Gatorade Player of the Year his senior year in high school.
Elijah Dotson won consecutive rushing titles at Sacramento State and was a first-team All-Big Sky selection two years in a row before transferring to Northern Colorado because of the emergence of Cameron Skattebo, the 2022 Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year. He first team all-NorCal team selection by MaxPreps and was a first team all-metro selection by The Sacramento Bee.
And Ulonzo Gilliam was a four-year starter who piled up more than 6,100 yards from scrimmage, including more than 4,600 rushing yards, and scored 51 total touchdowns in etching out one of the great careers in UC Davis history. He was the Northern California Offensive Player of the Year his senior year of high school.
Seems like an impossible group to replace, right?
Wrong. Although several Big Sky football programs have elected to employ a by-committee approach, the most talented players in the Big Sky this season once again reside in the backfield.
Montana State got a test run when it came to replacing Ifanse during the 2022 season. The bruising, bow-legged brute didn’t play for the first few months of MSU’s Big Sky championship season.
That allowed Montana State to work in an array of ball carriers. Lane Sumner, Elijah Elliott, Jared White and even converted wide receiver Marqui Johnson all took their turns as the MSU feature back of the moment. Quarterbacks Tommy Mellott and Sean Chambers proved to be the most prolific QB rushing duo in league history as Mellott surpassed 1,000 yards and Chambers pounded in 19 rushing touchdowns.
The Bobcats set a new school record with 4,366 rushing yards and averaged 312 rushing yards per game.
“I think having an elite back is important and I think it’s important to have an elite room,” Montana State head coach Brent Vigen said in 2022. “Everybody who has intentions of running the football, you can’t be average back there. I think the nature of that position — that’s a place they come in all shapes and sizes — so good backs, really good backs make their way to the FCS.”
Last season, Wisconsin transfer Julius Davis was an all-conference pick after transferring to MSU from Madison. This season, Davis hasn’t played a game – yet, Montana State is arguably even more dangerous in the run game despite the graduation of Chambers and the accompanying effort to take carries off Mellott’s plate during his senior year. The Bobcats are averaging 326 rushing yards per game, second in the country.
The emergence of sophomore Scottre Humphrey and redshirt freshman Adam Jones as the two speediest slashers the run game has seen during the Bobcats’ “Run the Damn Ball” era has given MSU a new and more lethal big-play element in its already explosive offense.
Humphrey is averaging 7.8 yards per carry and has scored four touchdowns, including runs of 34 and 79 yards. Jones is averaging 8.1 yards per carry and has scored four rushing touchdowns. His 93-yard touchdown run against New Mexico is the second-longest in MSU history and is a key reason why Montana State enters Big Sky play with an undefeated record.
“Our OC, T Walk (Tyler Walker), has been doing great things for us right now and our offensive line with Coach Al (Al Johnson), it’s the best I’ve seen them block in a couple of years,” Humphrey said. “Our quarterback, Tommy Mellott, is making all the right decisions. It makes our job easy as running backs when the QB does his job and the offensive line is elite and the defense keeps getting stops.”
“Those two guys are special talents,” Vigen said. “A few other things have allowed them to get more opportunity and they have both taken full advantage.”
A month into his super senior year, Nick Ostmo has moved into the top eight in Montana Griz history in rushing yards and top seven in rushing touchdowns. And he’s the No. 2 back for the Grizzlies.
Eli Gillman has exploded into the lead in the conversation around the Big Sky’s best tailback. The former Minnesota prep Player of the Year redshirted in 2022 before claiming the Jerry Rice Award as the top freshman in the FCS last season. This season, he’s been even better.
Last week, he rushed for a career-high 175 yards on just 11 carries, thrusting him into the top 20 in school history in career rushing yards. Gillman has already scored 19 touchdowns, which is 13th in UM history.
Gillman has shown a new gear, even better top-end speed and an explosiveness the UM backfield hasn’t seen in years through this season’s first month. He’s averaging 10.1 yards per carry, which leads the country, and enters Montana’s Big Sky opener at Eastern Washington leading the league by rushing for 456 yards and 114 yards per game.
“He’s a good football player,” UM’s 13th-year head coach Bobby Hauck said. “I think he’s maturing in the physical nature of the game where he’s finishing runs. He’s not only able to make people miss but run around people and finish with the ball moving forward.
“The other thing is the yards per carry is pretty impressive.”
Gillman has shown impressive explosiveness on a variety of long touchdown runs that have jacked up his yards-per-carry figure. He had a 37-yard touchdown run in UM’s 29-25 win over Missouri State. He ripped off a 63-yard scoring scamper in UM’s 27-24 loss at North Dakota. He ran for a 22-yard touchdown in a 59-2 win over Morehead State in which UM rushed for 410 yards. And Gillman added a 58-yard run that he did not score on after his 66-yard scoring run got UM on the board after falling behind 17-0 to No. 24 Western Carolina last week.
“I just kept working on my craft,” Gillman said of his off-season and his increased speed. “The whole finishing through contact thing, finishing runs forward. And of course, the offensive line, the whole offense.
“We got a new O-line coach, so blocking is a little different, run scheme is a little different. Just kind of working together and you can see the chemistry coming along as the season goes along.”
It’s not just the Montana schools that have been able to reload.
All UC Davis has done after Gilliam graduated is unleash Lan Larison on the rest of the conference. Despite missing time last season, Larison was named the Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year after piling up 1,101 rushing yards and 13 rushing touchdowns.
He was also the league’s preseason offensive MVP. This season, Larison is averaging nearly 100 rushing yards and 50 receiving yards per game and has scored five total touchdowns.
“He has the ability to do so many things,” UC Davis first-year head coach Tim Plough, who helped recruit Larison when he was the OC, said at the Big Sky Kickoff in July. “He’s a very flexible player in that regard, in that he can play receiver, he can play running back, he can play quarterback. So you can line him up in a lot of different areas and create a lot of matchup issues with him.
“His combination of speed and strength and just his determination as a player … I’ve seen some really good ones over the years in the Big Sky. He’s as good as any of the ones I’ve seen.”
At Weber State, Damon Bankston is the latest in a line of great running backs, although replacing Davis hasn’t been quite as seamless as at WSU’s peer Big Sky schools.
Davis’ senior year, he was all sorts of banged up and managed just 652 rushing yards on 120 carries. That same year, Dontae McMillan rushed for 818 yards and six touchdowns while Bankston rushed for 709 yards and eight touchdowns.
Last season, Bankston had 144 yards and three touchdowns in Weber’s 34-17 win at nationally-ranked Northern Iowa. Three weeks later, he suffered a season-ending injury.
This season, the Katy, Texas, native is averaging 5.9 yards per carry and 94 yards per game during Weber’s 2-2 start.
Big Sky Conference play opens for 10 of the 12 Big Sky Conference football playing members on Saturday. Weber began league play with a 43-16 win over Portland State in Week 2. Bankston rushed for 133 yards and two touchdowns in the win.
“Any time I get the ball, I’m looking to score,” Bankston told the Ogden Standard-Examiner after the game. “When it’s there, I’m going to take advantage of it.”
Following Skattebo’s transcendent 2022 season, he transferred to Arizona State. Last season, he had almost 1,100 yards from scrimmage and scored 11 touchdowns for the Sun Devils. This year, the 5-foot-10, 220-pound beast is averaging nearly 160 yards from scrimmage, including 109 rushing yards per game.
Last season, Sac State managed to rush for 180 yards per game despite Marcus Fulcher, Skattebo’s presumed replacement, being banged up. Because of those dings, head coach Andy Thompson and his staff learned how to operate by committee, helping provide opportunities for Elijah Tau-Tolliver, Ezra Moleni and Zeke Burnett.
Sac State running backs coach Donnel Pumphrey is the all-time leader in NCAA Division I history in career rushing yards with 6,405. He also scored 62 touchdowns during his illustrious career at San Diego State.
“He would tell you he got pushed because Rashaad Penny was playing with him, a first-round draft pick,” Thompson chuckled when considering having that much depth in the backfield. “We think at running back, if you are able to let them have a rhythm but if they are tired, have no drop off when the next guy comes in, it just helps your offense.
“Everybody that’s won a championship has been able to run the football, especially at the end of football games, to close out games. Having a great running back, running backs, is a huge part of closing those games out.”
Hauck, who coached some of the Big Sky’s all-time greatest running backs during his first stint between 2003 and 2009 – players like Lex Hilliard, Justin Green and Chase Reynolds – tends to agree with Thompson, who was a linebacker at Montana during Hauck’s first season at the helm some 21 years ago.
Although Gillman has talent that’s apparent to everyone in the stadium, Hauck is still mitigating his total carries. Gillman has never had more than 19 carries in a game in his career and his high this season is 15 totes.
It’s hard to get Hauck to elaborate or talk in depth about much of anything. But ask him about his theories on preserving running backs — he coached against Pumphrey and Penny for two years while at UNLV and then coached on the San Diego State staff in 2015 and 2016 when they were piling up yards — and he’ll give his full opinion.
“In the old I formation, pro set – it was I formation, it was pro, it was twins or slot, whatever you want to call it – and those guys were running the power, run the toss, run the lead and they got their carries. Whether that was, you know, 20 or 30 or 35 carries, they would get those carries,” Hauck said. “But that was kind of it. With the evolution of one-back offense, the guys are in a collision of some sort, generally speaking, every play they’re in the game. Whether it’s protection or carrying the ball, they’re in a physical battle.
“So I think it’s really become a highly volatile position. A lot of the players are smaller. You think back to the Earl Campbells, Walter Paytons, those were big men. I mean, Earl Campbell’s a giant back, 250 pounds, maybe 260.
“I believe you have to have depth at that position to hold up. And especially early in the season, the goal is not to play your best football in September. It’s to play it in November.
“In order to do that, you have to have your players too, and that’s where, if you can stay healthy, you get a better chance of winning at the end of the year. Having depth at the running back position, I think it’s highly productive.”
