MISSOULA — Three years and two college stops later, Dalton Sneed will finally get a chance to compete for the coaching staff he initially hoped for when he first graduated from Horizon High School.
The Phoenix native completed 70 percent of his passes for 3,740 yards and 44 touchdowns in leading his Huskies to the Arizona Division I playoffs. He received just one Division I offer.
The scholarship game from Bobby Hauck, Timm Rosenbach and UNLV. Hauck, UNLV’s head coach, and Rebels’ offensive coordinator Rosenbach saw the 6-foot-1, 195-pound dual-threat quarterback as a good fit for the OC’s run and shoot spread offense.
Hauck and his staff were forced out that November five months after Sneed committed. The competitive quarterback stuck with his commitment.
He started five games and notched two wins at UNLV as a redshirt freshman before being overtaken on the depth chart late in the season by Kurt Palandech. He voluntarily played wide receiver down the stretch, a move Sanchez wanted to make permanent after the Rebels finished with a 4-8 record. Instead, Sneed left the program.
The athletic signal caller spent last season at Fort Scott (Kansas) Community College hoping to put together enough film to earn a Division I offer. On December 1, Hauck was named the head coach at Montana for the second time. A few weeks later, Skyline Sports reported that Rosenbach will serve as Hauck’s offensive coordinator.
On Monday, Sneed accepted a scholarship offer to transfer to Montana. He will sign when the early signing period opens on Wednesday. He will have two years to play two seasons. He chose Montana over offers from Portland State, Southeast Missouri and Coastal Carolina.
“Coach Rosie always stayed in contact with me over my whole year at junior college,” Sneed said. “As soon as they got the job a week or a week and a half ago, they messaged me on Twitter and we got in contact and kind of hit it off like we had back in 2014 when they originally recruited me.”
Sneed made an official visit to Portland State last week. He has not been to Missoula and will not make his official visit until January 13. He will start classes for the spring semester at UM a week later. He felt “in a bind” because Portland State is on the quarters system and starts school January 6. He could commit to Portland State or commit to Montana sight unseen.
Even though he’s never been to the Garden City, Sneed is sold on the reputation of Hauck and the fit he sees in Rosenbach’s offense.
“When it comes down to it, Coach Hauck is a winner,” Sneed said. “We’ve seen that when he was at Montana before and took them to several national championship games. He’s a terrific coach and he knows exactly what he’s doing, he supports his guys and he runs a tight ship. That’s exactly what I look for in a head coach. He was a great fit for me.”
The first trip Sneed made to Sin City was to watch UNLV take on Nevada in the season finale for both teams. Although the Rebels lost the Battle for the Fremont Cannon 49-27, Sneed still felt satisified with his decision to move to Vegas. A week later, Rosenbach called him and told him Hauck and the staff would not return.
“It was difficult,” Sneed said. “…I thought everything was good. The next morning, Coach Rosenbach called me and said they had been let go and that I should probably start looking for another school. That kind of sucked.”
Two weeks later, new head coach Tony Sanchez called to indicate the Rebels still wanted Sneed. But he never felt comfortable with the coaching staff.
“Things just didn’t really work out with the coaching staff,” Sneed said. “Nothing against them but we just didn’t mesh very well. I decided I was leaving, which was a really, really tough decision for me but I decided it was right for my athletic career going forward.”
At UNLV, Sneed in 2015 and was the third-string quarterback on the depth chart Sanchez and offensive coordinator Barney Cotton. Because of injury, Sneed took over as the starter about a month into the season. He rushed for 141 yards and a touchdown, including a 91-yard touchdown run in a victory against Fresno State. In UNLV’s win against Hawaii, he completed 19 of 27 passes for 279 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
The following two weeks, Sneed struggled throwing the ball. He completed 9-of-23 passes against Colorado State and 2-of-9 for 24 yards against San Jose State before he was benched for the remainder of the season.
“Just how to handle adversity and no matter what, always be battling,” Sneed said of what he learned from the struggle. “It was a roller coaster. There were definitely highs and lows. But at the end of the day, the best guy plays. If you are playing well, you are going to play. If you are not, the next guy in line is going to get a shot. That’s just the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Last December, Sneed got his release and had offers from “five or six” junior colleges ready to go before he chose Fort Scott. Last season, he completed 136-of-219 passes (62 percent) for 1,257 yards, seven touchdowns and 11 interceptions in eight games of action.
“The offense plays a major role in the athlete’s development and the athlete’s success,” Sneed said. “You are not going to stick a 5-6 running back and run power football all day. For me as a quarterback, I think I’m more of a spread, dink and dunk, run and shoot kind of quarterback. We did a little bit of that at UNLV and I think that’s where some of my success came from but that wasn’t the system that truly fit me.
Sneed said the offense under Rosenbach will be a spread offense with “mostly 11 personnel” — single back, single tight end mostly lined up in the wing — with plenty of play-action and inside zone concepts in the run game. He said the Griz will likely also have the ability to “get under center, pound the rock, work to play-action and hit big plays with deep post routes.”
“You definitely aren’t going to see a Wing-T offense,” Sneed said with a laugh. “It’s going to be spread, throwing the ball around, moving the chains and putting a lot of points up.”
Sneed enters a Montana quarterback group that graduates senior Reese Phillips. Montana lost former Montana Gatorade Player of the Year Nate Dick last week after the redshirt freshman from Billings transferred to Rocky Mountain College. Sneed will compete with Freshman All-American Gresch Jensen for the starting job. Jensen took over as UM’s starter after Phillips suffered a gruesome injury.
Jensen threw for 2,531 yards and 20 touchdowns. He threw for 332.3 yards per game in his seven starts in former head coach Bob Stitt’s wide open spread offense. Sneed said he knows about Jensen’s presence as the incumbent starter and it did not affect his decision.
“I’m very aware of it and my mentality since I’ve been very young has been compete,” Sneed said. “I’m a competitor through and through. The best man is going to win the job whether that be him or that be me, Coach Hauck is going to put the guy he feels like he can win games with on the field.
“If it’s me, I will be ecstatic and I will lead the team to victories. If it’s him, then I will be 100 percent behind him and supporting him every day and pushing him to get better. That’s just the athlete that I am and the teammate I’m going to be.”
Sneed is excited to put his name to paper and finally play for the coaches he has wanted to play for all along.
“There’s nerves but I’m just super excited to get the next step in my career rolling,” Sneed said. “Going from a junior college, it was a town of 7,000 people. I’m just super excited to be taking the next step in my life and in my football career. I’m honestly ready to go anywhere and I couldn’t be happier coming to Missoula.”
Photos contributed by Sneed. All Rights Reserved.
