BOZEMAN – The bare (bear?) facts are pretty plain: in a game very few expected them to win, the Montana Grizzlies acquitted themselves well in plenty of areas against the juggernaut Montana State Bobcats on Saturday.
There was plenty working against the Griz – the recent string of home-team blowouts in the fiercest rivalry in the West…The 16.5-point pregame spread in MSU’s favor… The fact that Montana State is an indisputably better football team.
Even the wind that blew in at the end of the third quarter started initially at the Grizzlies’ back before shifting disadvantageously when the teams switched sides, forcing Montana to battle against it for the whole fourth quarter
Given all that, the Griz still put up some positive things to take away from Saturday’s lopsided 34-11 loss. Yet a four-loss season is a four-loss season and when it happens in Missoula a year after a run to the FCS national title game, plenty of criticism will rear its head about the Griz fotball program.
Against a team that routinely – routinely! – put up six touchdowns on its first six drives before pulling its starters this season, Montana held Montana State to just two touchdowns on the Bobcats’ first eight drives. That run included multiple three-and-outs, multiple red-zone stands to force field goals and a sensational stop midway through the third quarter that featured No. 37 Trevin Gradney decking MSU’s Walter Payton Award candidate quarterback Tommy Mellott out of bounds on fourth down to get the Griz the ball back.
The Grizzlies’ Montana-made senior defensive core – Gradney of Billings plus Missoula’s Ryan Tirrell, Phillipsburg’s Jaxon Lee and Fairfield’s Ryder Meyer – rose to the occasion in the game that means more to Treasure State natives than anyone else.
Tirrell, Lee and Meyer led the team in tackles. Lee might have had the Griz highlight of the game when he hawked MSU’s scintillating freshman running back Adam Jones the full length of the field, knocking him out of bounds to turn a potential 95-yard touchdown run into…well, still into an 88-yard gain that Jones converted into a short touchdown a few plays later, but 23-point rivalry losses require some digging for positive takeaways.
On offense – well, again, small wins, but Montana playing Logan Fife for the entire game was a step forward for a staff that’s pinballed back and forth between the Fresno State transfer and redshirt freshman Keali’i Ah Yat all season.
But the Griz struggled to hold up against Montana State’s pass rush and Fife had only a few clean pockets on his 34 passing attempts. He was credited with seven rushing attempts but three of those were sacks and three more were on scrambles when plays broke down.
None of those positives, rightly, placated Bobby Hauck, who fell to 2-4 against the eternal rival in his second stint at Montana and hasn’t won in Bozeman since 2009.
“I’d prefer to be 6-0,” Hauck said when asked about his mark against Montana State since returning ahead of the 2018 season. “What am I supposed to say, well, that’s pretty good? Goddamnit.”
Hauck was feeling the effects of an uncompetitive rivalry loss. Worse still will be the knowledge of how much his team has grown in recent weeks, all the steps taken that still failed to put them on the same level as the Bobcats, or UC Davis two weeks earler for that matter.
Montana is certainly a better team, at least defensively, than it was in late September and early October, when the Griz gave up 49 points to Eastern Washington and 55 to Weber State in back-to-back weeks.
The defense is a long way away from that now, and Saturday may have been their best performance of the season despite giving up 34 points.
The Griz are even a better team than they were in the first half a week ago against Portland State, when they were shut out with Ah Yat at quarterback. Starting and sticking with Fife even though the offense struggled on Saturday assuaged the fanbase’s biggest season-long complaint even if the offensive play calling – filled with horizontal swing passes and completely devoid of down-field throws — will certainly ignite armchair quarterbacks from Hamilton to Hardin.
Despite adjusting the defensive scheme to fit more limited personnel and despite deciding upon a single quarterback, Montana still got blown out on Saturday, and now face a season with an expiration date.
At 8-4, Montana takes the No. 14 seed into FCS Playoffs bracket. The Griz will host Tennessee State on Saturday night in Missoula.
But the vibes are a complete 180 from a year ago, when the Griz smoked Montana State in the rivalry game in Missoula and then carried that momentum all the way through a magical playoff run that ended in a title-game loss in Frisco.
This time around, they’ll have to pick up the pieces and create that momentum themselves – and do it with the knowledge that even the steps they’ve taken over the course of the last three months have them lagging far behind their now No. 1-ranked rivalr
“Our guys prepared really well this week,” Hauck said. “Played hard. We didn’t execute cleanly enough or make enough plays to come in here and knock them off. Good by them, not good enough by us.
“I still love our team. … I’m glad we’ve got some football in front of us. We’re hopeful that maybe we’ll get a chance to play them again. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
