MISSOULA – There are very few places in the world as optimistic as a college football stadium watching a winning team on one of the last few days of summer, when the late-afternoon light slants through the stadium and all things seem possible.
There will be harder times, certainly, for Montana in the months ahead, when the Grizzlies have to go on the road, when the wind gets cold and starts whipping through Hellgate Canyon.
But after watching the Grizzlies handle South Dakota, a playoff team from a year ago, so handily on a beautiful 80-degree day that even Bobby Hauck said “I never really felt uncomfortable at any point” after a 24-7 win – Griz fans leaving the stadium on Saturday must be growing steadily more confident in two things: one, that they have an infallible defense, and two, that their quarterback just might have eyes in the back of his head.
Of course, they’ll wish that Lucas Johnson paid more attention to what the eyes in the front of his head were telling him after watching him scramble to his left on one play and run into the wall on the home sideline so hard that it’s a surprise he didn’t leave a quarterback-shaped hole like Wile E. Coyote.
But after a brief moment, Montana’s newest sensation popped right back up and went right back to calmly, efficiently controlling the game. In his second-ever start for the Griz after throwing for four touchdowns against an overmatched Northwestern State squad a week ago, Johnson was just as good against a much tougher opponent.
He ran for touchdowns on two of Montana’s first three drives, added a third-quarter touchdown throw to Junior Bergen, completed 22 of 28 passes for 180 yards and led the team in rushing for the second week with 75 yards on 13 carries. More importantly, he never once looked troubled doing it.
Before the snap, Johnson rocks back and forth lightly on his heels. He’ll bring his hands together to his chest like a yoga instructor – gridiron asana. That sense of poise carries over after the snap. If he has to get rid of the ball, he does, as he did on his touchdown throw to Bergen or earlier, when he delivered a strike just a half-second ahead of the arrival of a backside corner blitzer he couldn’t possibly have seen. If he needs to run, he does it, breaking the pocket an instant before it crumbles.
Baseball scouts call this an “internal clock” – a shortstop who knows precisely when he needs to throw the ball to beat the runner by a half-step at first. Johnson, in the post-game press conference, called it a great performance by his offensive line.
Bobby Hauck came closer to the truth.
“He’s got a great feel for the game,” Hauck said about Johnson durng his weekly Coach’s Show with Riley Corcoran the Voice of the Griz. (Offensive coordinator Timm) Rosenbach and I were talking about it today at lunch, some guys have a feel for it, some guys don’t, just feeling the pressure, sliding in the pocket or taking off. You can’t really teach it, you try to, but some guys have it and some don’t, and it was really fun to see him in a live game and know that he’s got that.”
And when Montana’s quarterback hands the Grizzlies’ defense an early lead, as he did Saturday, that basically means game over.
“They’re not a team you want to fall behind against,” South Dakota coach Bob Nielson said at the post-game press conference, stating the obvious.”
After leading the team with 11 tackles and two tackles for loss, Patrick O’Connell had a harder job than Nielson at the presser. It’s becoming more and more difficult to take whichever player represents the Griz defense seriously when they say that they still have plenty to work on.
On Saturday, they held South Dakota to 209 yards on 3.5 yards per play, sacked Coyotes quarterback Carson Camp five times – their second straight week hitting that mark – and didn’t allow any points until Travis Theis’ 25-yard touchdown run with six minutes, 27 seconds left snapped a scoreless streak of 113:33 to start the season. Braxton Hill chased Camp down in the end zone with under a minute left for a safety to stamp the dominating effort.
“We gave up a couple things that we shouldn’t have, but I think it was a good game for us,” O’Connell said. “There’s a lot that we can improve on, especially, I know, on the defense. … I know we have to clean up a lot of things.”
He means it. Griz fans, though, won’t remember that. They have Lucas Johnson, smooth as clockwork, and a defense that can’t be scored on, and they’ll remember sitting in the late-summer sun with no worries at all.
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
