BOZEMAN — What began as an experiment turned into a stopgap. What turned into a stopgap has helped Montana State navigate the first half of its season to enter the 2018 stretch run in position for a playoff push.
When news hit that quarterback Chris Murray would sit out the 2018 season to concentrate on his academics, Travis Jonsen was still in a walking boot, Tucker Rovig was searching for his confidence and Casey Bauman and Ruben Beltran had not arrived on campus yet.
In order to ensure player-run summer practices went smoothly, Montana State head coach Jeff Choate told do-everything sophomore Troy Andersen to dust off the rust of his quarterback skills and lead the troops in the months leading up to fall camp.
The 2017 Big Sky Freshman of the Year (playing running back and linebacker) improved enough to be a part of the quarterback competition with Jonsen, a former 4-star recruit who spent time at Oregon and Riverside Community College before landing at Montana State, along with Rovig, a 6-foot-5 former 3-star recruit from Boise in August. By the end of August, Andersen won the job for MSU’s opener against Western Illinois.
For two games, Rovig took the reigns with Andersen unable to play quarterback because of an injury to his non-throwing hand. But Andersen returned to rush for 211 yards in a win at Portland State to open up Big Sky Conference play.
Internally, sources say — Montana State’s practices have been closed since the first week of September — the MSU staff continued to push Rovig and see if there was a way the redshirt freshman could fit into the mix, giving Andersen the ability to return to tailback or play linebacker or both.
Rovig did not play in MSU’s 34-17 loss to Eastern Washington entering MSU’s bye week. Then during the bye, Choate said Rovig got stepped on during practice, suffering a foot injury that will effectively end his season.
With Jonsen playing wide receiver full time, the quarterback room is down to Andersen, Bauman and Beltran, the latter two redshirts at least for now.
“We have two true freshman and a converted linebacker so I’ve probably felt better about depth at that position,” Choate said with a laugh during his weekly press conference on Monday. “I think Bob (Cole) has done a nice job of working with those guys and getting them where they need to be. If we had Tucker, I’d feel much better about things.”
Because of the injury to Rovig, it’s likely that Andersen will make his fifth start at quarterback this season when Montana State takes on No. 7 Weber State in Ogden, Utah on Saturday.
“This is another game that can be a measuring stick game for us,” Andersen said. “They were the conference co-champions last year. They are a really solid team this year. If we could go down there and get a win, it would do a lot for our program and our confidence going forward.”
Andersen is 3-1 as MSU’s starting quarterback, the lone loss to EWU, the No. 4 team in the country at the time. Despite missing most of the 45-14 loss at No. 2 South Dakota State and most of MSU’s 47-24 win over Wagner, Andersne is fourth in the Big Sky Conference with 676 rushing yards. He is averaging 112.7 yards per game and 7.7 yards per carry. His nine rushing touchdowns rank behind just Idaho State’s James Madison, who has a league-leading 10 scores on the ground.
“He’s unique, for sure,” Weber State head coach Jay Hill said on Wednesday. “Last year, he was their starting tailback and it’s really rare you see a guy go from tailback to starting quarterback the next year. But he possesses the ability to throw the ball too. That’s what makes him so unique.”
Although Andersen struggled throwing the ball in last week’s 24-23 win over Idaho — on Tuesday, the quarterback himself chuckled at the thought of his errant short throws, saying, “I know I wasn’t any good” — he did hit a shot down the field for a 37-yard gain that set up Isaiah Ifanse’s short touchdown run to cut into a 17-7 Idaho lead.
This season, he is completing 56 percent of his passes for 435 yards and has one passing touchdown. He has thrown three interceptions, all on deep shots down the field.
“You can tell he’s intelligent,” Hill said. “He doesn’t make a lot of bad decisions throwing it or running it. When he gets out in space and he hits the jets, he’s straight line really fast. And he can be physical because he’s a converted tailback. He poses a lot of threats.”
The Dillon product showed that straight-line speed last week, taking a broken pass play that looked for a second that it might result in an Idaho strip and instead, ripping off a 60-yard touchdown to give Montana State a 21-17 lead. The long scoring burst came one play after Idaho’s failed fourth down attempt and flipped the momentum in the favor of the Bobcats for good.
“You look at it on film and it looks like he is going to get the ball stripped out of his hand,’ Choate said. “No. 18 had beat Mitch around the edge. He was rising up and you are waiting for that tomahawk to come down. Then Troy is gone.
“I’d love to take credit. I told him it’s always the boundary B gap if you want to escape and that’s where he hit. But I don’t think I can. He is just playing ball and it opened up and he didn’t see anybody and he made it look like one of the easier runs he had that day.”
Despite his almost mythical exploits just a season and a half into his football career, Andersen has already missed time because of injury each of the last two seasons. Regardless of if Rovig was going to emerge from the bye week as the starter, he provided a more proven security blanket than what is now backing up Andersen.
But Choate is confident in Bauman, a 6-foot-6, 235-pounder with a rocket arm that his fellow Bobcats call “Big Ben”, an homage to Pittsburgh Steelers future Hall of Famer Ben Roethlisberger and in Beltran, a 6-foot, 180-pounder who Choate calls a “football junky” who throws accurately and has shown savvy operating MSU’s scout team this fall.
“Those freshmen will be ready to go,” Choate said. “We are not going to ask them to do everything in the world. That’s one thing I always ask them: what are the plays that you like? If we do get into a situation where we have to play them, we have a situation where they are comfortable with what we are doing.”
Choate said Rovig, even before his injury, served as a mentor for Bauman, correcting him on similar mistakes he might’ve made as a freshman. Andersen has seen good returns from both freshmen this fall.
“Every day in practice, they show what they are capable of,” Andersen said. “In the event they had to come in, I think they’d be able to handle the offense and run it. Our coaches have everybody prepared because everyone prepares like you are going to play because you never know when you are. I think they would both be fine.”
Andersen finished the Idaho win with 159 yards rushing and two touchdowns. He has rushed for 464 yards and six touchdowns in three Big Sky games this season.
Weber State has earned a reputation as the most consistent and salty defense in the Big Sky over the last two seasons under Hill’s guidance. The Wildcats led the league in scoring and total defense en rout to a share of the conference title a year ago. WSU enters Saturday’s game leading the conference in total and scoring defense again while also ranking among the national leaders in takeaways with 20.
Murray made his first start at Weber State in 2016. He was part of a turnover barrage that sunk MSU in a 42-7 hole in an eventual 45-27 loss. But Murray rushed for 131 yards that afternoon.
In last season’s slugfest between two of the league’s most physical teams in Bozeman, Murray rushed for 123 yards on 14 carries in a 25-17 Bobcat loss.
“Chris Murray was so scary because when he got out in the open field, he could make you miss and he was really fast,” Hill said. “What they are doing with (Andersen) is working for them right now the way they are using him. It’s kind of a cool deal to watch.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
