Last week, Montana State offered little resistance as Eastern Washington flew up and down the field, using a passing attack predicated on big plays to notch a 55-50 victory. This week, the opponent employs a starkly different offense but the challenge doesn’t get any easier.
Cal Poly comes to Bozeman today for homecoming with a triple option offense that has led the country in rushing each of the last two seasons. Quarterback Chris Brown has proven to be one of the most durable and dangerous players in the Big Sky. The triggerman can hand it to Joe Protheroe or Jared Mohamed, the Mustangs’ two bruising fullback, or he can keep the football himself. If that doesn’t work, he can pitch it to Kori Garcia, a shift, speedy junior who led the Big Sky by averaging almost seven yards per carry last fall. And this year, Cal Poly actually has size up front. The Mustangs start seniors in the form of Stephen Sippel at center and Weston Walker at guard on a unit averaging 6-foot-4 and 282 pounds.
Cal Poly Mustangs with their triple option front
“They are easily the most diverse team we will face. Cal Poly has so many things they can go to,” Montana State head coach Rob Ash said earlier this week as he and his staff prepared to open up their ninth Big Sky Conference season. “They have a lot of different plays and formations. They are unbalanced. They have so many things they can go to if you start to stop them in their base looks.”
“We have to stop the dive, tackle the quarterback, tackle the pitch guy,” added MSU first-year defensive coordinator Kane Ioane said. “We have to play option football and we have to play physical up front. These guys take pride on getting four yards on first down, four yards on second down, four yards on third down and they are rolling. We have to do everything in our power to limit them on first and second down.”
Cal Poly enters the game averaging 321 rushing yards on 71 rushes per contest. The numbers have come against three straight stout defenses during the Mustangs’ 1-2 start. Cal Poly sprung a 20-19 upset in its opener in Missoula against Montana, a team fresh off an upset win of its own, a 38-35 defeat of four-time defending national champion North Dakota State to kick off the college football season. The Mustangs hung tough against Arizona State — the score was tied 21-21 with less than eight minutes to play — before the Sun Devils buried Cal Poly with a few big plays in a 35-21 win. Last week, two early turnovers and a defensive game plan that did not quite mesh caused the Mustangs to fall behind 21-0 to Northern Iowa. The triple option is not conducive to comebacks and Cal Poly showed it, trying to rally but falling 34-20.
Last week, Montana State gave up 667 yards of total offense, eight touchdowns and 16 plays of more than 29 yards as the Eagles marched up and down the field. Jordan West did not throw an incompletion after the first quarter, finished with 410 yards, six touchdowns and averaged 19.5 yards per completion. On the other side of the ball, MSU quarterback Dakota Prukop and his charges never quit, running 104 plays to the tune of 718 yards, 40 first downs, 50 points and a time of possession that exceeded 38 minutes. But it wasn’t enough.
Dakota Prukop escapes the pocket against Eastern Washington
When Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh watched the film, he couldn’t help but think just how challenging the Big Sky has become.
“I’m not sure how good or bad Montana State’s defense is because I know Eastern Washington is that good on offense and I don’t know how bad Eastern Washington’s defense because I know Montana State is that good on offense,” said Walsh, who’s in his seventh year at CP after spending 1993 until 20006 as the head coach at Portland State. “It’s really an interesting dynamic when you look at it, how much the game has changed and how it’s played and the amount of plays, the amount of formations you are dealing with, the speed of the game. It makes it tough on all the defenses. I don’t think in any way their performance against Eastern Washington is an indication of who (the Bobcats) are on defense. They are very active, very physical and I think that’s the way they will play against us.”
To combat the constant pounding and the physical nature of Cal Poly’s offense, Montana State will employ a varied defensive front. Senior tackle Taylor Sheridan will bump out to end for most of the game, the captain said following practice on Tuesday. Ninth-year defensive line coach Bo Beck said junior Jessie Clark, a 6-foot-2, 245-pound transfer from Los Angeles Harbor College who has played sparingly thus far, will see an elevated role over junior Zach Hutchins, the normal Bandit end starter. Beck said he also expects more reps for transfer end Shiloh LaBoy (6-4, 255) and tackle Joe Naotala (6-2, 280) because of their size and strength. Senior tackles Connor Thomas and Nate Bignell will rotate heavily, but Beck said redshirt freshman Tucker Yates, a 6-foot, 305-pound ball of strength, will see his most elevated playing time as a Bobcat.
“You have to read fast, be fast off the ball and watch out for those cuts,” Thomas said. “It can get frustrating. They can get a little dirty sometimes. But it’s a good, powerful offense. It’s just not seen very often. It’s a nice change of pace to learn something new. It’s definitely hard-nosed. We have to be tough this week.”
Cal Poly sets the line-of-scrimmage with cut-blocking style
“In the middle, we have to tackle that dive, get that fullback down every time. You have to beat the guy in front of us and tackle the fullback. Every play.”
Tackling the fullback has been a challenging proposition this season for Cal Poly opponents. Protheroe is a 6-foot-1, 227-pounder with tailback speed and vision. He rushed for 112 yards on Montana without having a carry for more than eight yards. He followed it up with another 130 yards against Arizona State.
“But your corners cannot go to sleep because eventually it’s going to come over the top of them,” Beck said. “Our rule was you cannot come off the field and say, ‘I thought I saw this.’ You have to beat the man in front of you. That’s what we have to do.”
On the other side of the ball, Cal Poly’s defense will try to look more like the fast, hard-hitting unit that kept Montana and Arizona State’s explosive offenses at bay rather than the unit that couldn’t stop Northern Iowa’s zone-read option running game last week.
“They are a really good defense,” MSU third-year offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey said. “We have to win our one-on-one battles. We have to find the open spots in the zone that they have. Most importantly, we have to be able to adjust to what they do because their defensive coordinator is a game plan defensive coordinator who makes a new plan each week.”
Tu’Uta Inoke
The unit is led by junior All-Big Sky nose tackle Marcus Paige-Allen and senior linebackers Burton De Koning and Tu’Uta Inoke.
When Walsh watches Montana State, two things stand out to the veteran head coach. First, Walsh said Prukop “might be the best player in the entire FCS this year” and that at some point, “he’s going to win the Walter Payton Award” given to the top offensive player in the subdivision. Walsh said Cal Poly knows Prukop will get his yards and use his prominent speed and athleticism to his advantage.
The second thing Walsh sees is an offensive line that can maul opponents. Last week, MSU started slow in the run game but gained steam as the afternoon wore on. By the end of the day, the Bobcats had 365 yards rushing, including 196 for Prukop and 95 more for junior captain Chad Newell.
“Those five guys up front are legitimate players for Montana State. They do a great job of doing things that help them be successful,” Walsh said. “It starts up front. All the formations and all the things they do, really those five guys do a great job of blocking their base plays which makes some of the other things they do that much difficult to defend.”
“Looking at Montana State, not looking very fun. They are a very good football team who is definitely more explosive than Northern Iowa on offense, which is even scarier.”
Saturday marks the beginning of a second season for almost everyone around the league. Portland State, Idaho State, Southern Utah and Northern Colorado all opened Big Sky play a week or two early but Saturday marks the official opener of the full schedule with five league games on the slate.
Cal Poly and Montana State shared the Big Sky crown in 2012, the first year of the newly expanded league and Cal Poly’s first in the conference. Since then, both programs have been trying to regain championship form.
Last season, Montana State burst out to a 5-0 start in league play before faltering down the stretch, losing three of five including its final two. The Mustangs ripped off back-to-back wins over Montana (41-21) and Montana State (35-27) in San Luis Obispo to put themselves in the driver’s seat for the league title momentarily. But a 30-28 loss at Idaho State in which Brown carried the ball 39 times derailed the title dreams and a 48-30 loss at rival UC Davis with Brown battered kept Cal Poly out of the playoffs.
“First conference game, this is the team that took the trophy from us last year in my opinion so we better be fired up,” Prukop said. “It will be really easy to get up for this game. There’s not going to be a lull. It’s homecoming. We better be ready.”
