One of the final things Cam Humphrey said in the postgame press conference, not too long after diving into the end zone for the winning score in Montana’s historic season-opening win over Washington, was about his offensive line.
“I don’t think you can play better than our O-line played tonight,” Humphrey said. “I mean, they were outstanding. Like coach (Bobby Hauck) said, that’s a damn good football team over there, and we held our own and they protected me all night.”
To be fair, a quarterback praising his offensive line after a big win is more predictable than a roll of thunder following shortly after a lightning strike.
But in the case of Humphrey and the Griz, it hasn’t been empty talk so far this season.
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Humphrey was sacked just once in that Washington game, and not at all the following week against Western Illinois. That’s one sack given up in 120 minutes of game time, a stat that’s maybe less eye-catching but no less important than the defense’s oft-cited streak of 115 minutes without surrendering any points.
That run is partially due to Humphrey’s pocket awareness and movement; each attribute has looked like one of the best parts of the new starting QB’s game. But the fat slice of the credit has to go to the five guys in front of Montana’s senior quarterback.
“As long as we’re all on the same page, we’re all doing our job, we’re all taking proper footwork, hand placement, head placement, we should be fine,” guard Hunter Mayginnes said, “and we should be kicking some butts.”
The offensive line has been a work in progress since Hauck returned to Montana in 2018. Despite steady improvement, the wise-guy take coming into the season was that Chad Germer’s unit was still the biggest question mark on the team.
Instead, it’s been the O-line making the answers easier for everybody else through two games, a five-man, 1,600-pound cheat sheet for the rest of the Griz offense.
Humphrey looking a little shaky as he shifts from backup to starter? No problem, the offensive line will keep the pressure off and give him time to dial up high-percentage but slow-developing play-action throws, like he hit multiple times for touchdowns against Western Illinois.
Top three running backs on the depth chart out? No problem, the offensive line will pave the way for Isiah Childs and Junior Bergen, neither of whom had so much as a touch in college coming into the season, to go for 75 yards apiece as the Griz ran for 242 yards against the Leathernecks.
“We don’t really know who’s back there,” Mayginnes said. “All we know is that we got to do our job, create the biggest hole that we possibly can and, you know, just create nice run lanes for the running backs. Isiah, Xavier (Harris), Junebug (Bergen), they’ve all been great so far this year, couldn’t have asked for a better trio.”
If there was a competition among the Montana position groups for the most unique career paths, the offensive line would win and it might be a bigger blowout than the Grizzlies’ 42-7 stomping of Western Illinois two weeks ago.
Mayginnes, massive and red-bearded like a ginger sasquatch, is the perfect avatar for the eclectic group. He was a 3-star recruit from Chandler, Arizona, who walked on at Washington State but played only sparingly over three years with the Cougars.
Center A.J. Forbes has a similar story, walking on at Nebraska but leaving after two years with the Huskers in which he didn’t see the field.
Left tackle Conlan Beaver, the only preseason all-conference pick in the group, signed with the Griz out of high school and has been with the team since 2016, but is hardly the typical Montana homegrown given that he’s from Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Senior captain right tackle Dylan Cook was a former high school and NAIA quarterback at Butte High and Montana State-Northern before coming to the Griz and switching to offensive line. And junior guard Colton Keintz, a 6-foot-8, 330-pound local product, was a former theater kid who didn’t play football for the first time until he was a high school sophomore and didn’t start until he was a senior at Missoula Big Sky.
Swing lineman Moses Mallory is at his third school, with one year at Dixie State and two at Eastern Arizona before coming to Missoula.
If you’re keeping track at home, that’s two Power 5 dropdowns, two JUCO transfers and two high school recruits. And that’s not to mention Kordell Pillans, who is also one of the Grizzlies’ 14 seniors and a former JC transfer himself.
That diversity is fascinating in a couple of ways.
First, it shows just how widely Hauck and Germer cast the net in an attempt to shore up the Grizzlies’ offensive line; since he’s been back at Montana, Hauck has also recruited offensive linemen who grew up in Alaska (Pillans) and Moldova (Dumitru Salagor, who’s no longer on the roster).
Second, it speaks to the chemistry the Griz have built on the offensive line. No offensive line is giving up just one sack in two games unless they’re all on the same page, and despite their disparate backgrounds, Montana’s linemen have plenty of shared experience to draw on as well.
At least four of the six have had to walk on at some point in their careers — Mayginnes and Forbes at their original schools, Keintz and Cook when they first came to Montana — while Beaver had to travel 2,000 miles and Mallory had to go to three schools to find the place that wanted them.
“When you look at the O-line, we all come from backgrounds where we had to work and we all had to kind of get it out of the mud a little bit,” Forbes said. “In my case, as a walk-on at Nebraska, you had to go in there every day, whatever minimal reps you had that day, you had to understand that might be your only run for the day. And you had to go and show the coaches what you’re capable of. We all kind of came from that kind of energy, you know, we all know how to work hard.”
So far, that’s been a pretty good recipe for chemistry and success among Montana’s most pleasantly surprising position group.
“I’ve heard this over and over again, but it’s better to work with one nickel instead of five pennies,” Mayginnes said. “So, that’s just kind of the way I see it. … We just have to go out there and compete. Make sure our heads are right, make sure our footwork, everything else is right.”
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Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
