MISSOULA, Montana — The first two months of Bobby Kennedy’s tenure as the head coach at the University of Montana have been filled with plenty of history.
The first month of the season saw Griz running back Eli Gillman basically rewrite the record books for runners in UM and Big Sky Conference history. From breaking Yohance Humphery’s single-game rushing record with 275 yards and four touchdowns on the way to FCS National Player of the Week honors in a 40-point runaway at UC Davis, to becoming the first Big Sky player since Cooper Kupp (and the second ever) to surpass 70 career touchdowns, to breaking Dan Carpenter’s Montana career scoring record — with a variety of UM career rushing records sandwiched in between — Griz football received plenty of praise early on.
The last two weeks have been historic as well, albeit for completely different reasons.
Montana dropped Saturday’s anniversary celebration rivalry game to Idaho 42-35. The Griz gave up 31 first downs on 72 Idaho offensive snaps. Idaho converted 11 of 14 third downs and one of one fourth downs. And the Griz got one true stop in a game that was supposed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Washington-Grizzly Stadium, an afternoon that drew more than 175 former Griz lettermen back to the Cathedral of the Treasure State, only for Montana to fall flat for the second week in a row.
It’s a rare occasion when the Griz lose consecutive games — a 49-44 loss at Northern Arizona and Saturday’s defeat in the Battle for the Little Brown Stein marked the first time since 2022 that’s happened — but the fashion in which Montana lost the last two weeks is not only rare; it’s historic and unique.
For the first time in the history of Griz football — a timeframe that goes all the way back to 1897 and spans 1,213 games — Montana lost consecutive games when scoring at least 35 points.
During the last two games, Montana has faced 17 offensive possessions. NAU and Idaho each scored six times. Of the five possessions that did not end in touchdowns, two were end-of-half intentional run-outs, one was an intentional safety taken by NAU and one was Idaho taking a knee to burn the remaining clock to sew up just its fourth win over Montana since 1991, and the other was Montana’s lone true stop.
Montana’s defense gave up 84 points, 911 yards and a third-down conversion rate of over 70 percent. The Griz forced Idaho into third and long three times. The Vandals converted those three situations into one first down and two touchdowns.
Northern Arizona quarterback Ty Pennington won FCS National Player of the Week after throwing for 322 yards and a touchdown, rushing for four touchdowns and catching a touchdown to help NAU to one of the signature wins of third-year head coach Brian Wright’s career.
Idaho quarterback Joshua Wood was 30-of-38 for 335 yards and three touchdowns while also rushing for 85 yards as Idaho moved the ball at will against the Griz defense.
“I think their quarterback is really efficient. They’ve got good players. They showed some physicality up front, that I actually thought our guys up front were — you know, were up for that challenge,” Kennedy said. “And yeah, we just have to do a better job of getting off the field on third down, maybe playing a little tighter coverage. But they’ve moved the ball on a lot of people, and they’ve come up short a couple times. There were a bunch of games that they could have won. Just like I really believe that we could have won these last two games and we came up short.
“I’ve got to do a better job. And like I said, I don’t blame our players, because we had opportunities. We have to put them in better situations and help them.”
All those defensive failings have helped push Montana’s season to the brink. The Idaho loss was humiliating not only because of the alums on hand and the celebration taking place — UM was gunning for its 250th win at Washington-Grizzly Stadium and instead lost for just the 39th time in 40 years at the hallowed venue — but also because it marked the first time since 2022 that the Griz have dropped consecutive games.
Some point to injuries as the culprit in Montana’s defensive shortcomings. Senior defensive end Hayden Schwartz suffered an injury that’s kept him out all season. Senior defensive tackle Jake Mason broke his leg in a win over Utah Tech.
The secondary has been hit the hardest. Senior safety Kade Cutler has missed the entire season so far with a shoulder injury. Senior safety Tanner Huff has been battling an injury for most of the last month. Senior safety Braeden Orlandi has been trying to play through an ankle injury but was very limited against Idaho. Sophomore defensive backs Brock and Brady Beaner have both been hurt. And junior cornerback Chris Johnson II, perhaps Montana’s most talented DB, suffered a knee injury on Idaho’s first possession last week after snaring an interception that he then fumbled. Johnson’s injury will keep him out indefinitely.
Elijah Brady, a veteran backup, is out indefinitely after getting run over by Northern Colorado quarterback Kenny Lueth. Reserve defensive tackles Manase Tupou and Braydon Bailey have also missed time. And cornerback DeAntre Gentry, a talented player who tore his ACL as a true freshman last October, has yet to return to the lineup.
To add to the thin ranks, captain edge Solomon Tuliapupu quit the team less than a month into the season.
Montana is in the middle of its bye week, which, according to Kennedy, is coming at a good time.
“My priorities are to get healthy. You know, I’ve never used, and I never will use, injuries as an excuse. We’ve got a lot of guys on scholarship and a lot of guys that we are training,” Kennedy said. “We played with some guys that are still coming along, that aren’t finished products. But yeah, it’s practice. It’s getting healthy.
“The thing that I feel confident with this team is that — and I think it comes from me — we have to stay together as a team, and we can’t moan and complain about what we didn’t do, right? We’ve got to fix what we didn’t do and get better. There’s still a lot of season left.
“I told these guys this week — whether it be Oregon State or whether it be last week against NAU — that this is the team I want. This is the staff I want. So I don’t want any questions about that, because the thing is, if you see these guys every day and you see our staff, the way they work, I’m very comfortable with doing things my way and tweaking things in the future.”
The staff questions Kennedy raised unprompted — and in turn deflected — center on the defensive staff. After the abrupt “retirement” of Bobby Hauck in February, UM athletics had to scramble, hastily promoting Kennedy internally after he served as the wide receivers coach in 2025, his only previous season at Montana.
Hauck came out of retirement in less than a week and pillaged Montana’s defensive staff on the way out the door. Co-defensive coordinator Tim Hauck retired, while co-defensive coordinator Roger Cooper followed Bobby Hauck to Illinois. Defensive line coach Mike Linehan also headed to Champaign. Former Griz DC Ronnie Bradford and former Griz player Robby Hauck also reunited on Bret Bielema’s staff.
Montana retained its offensive staff — offensive coordinator Brent Pease and tight ends coach Rob Phenicie have been at UM on and off for years — and even the new hires — running backs coach Dom Daste, offensive line coach Brent Myers and wide receivers coach Eric Price — all decided they wanted to work for Kennedy.
Defensively, Kennedy retained cornerbacks coach Kim McLoud and filled the rest of the staff by importing a trio from Eastern Washington. Defensive coordinator Eric Sanders, defensive line coach Jaylon Johnson and safeties coach Wes Nurse joined the staff shortly after Kennedy was hired.
Sanders went to work installing a multiple defense that plays a variety of fronts and appears to have shifting priorities. Sometimes the Griz play four down linemen, and other times they use a stand-up Buck end. They also sometimes employ two down linemen with two stand-up edges. And almost always, they play five defensive backs with heavy usage of three safeties.
To make matters more complicated, the Griz lost all 11 of their defensive starters ahead of last season, and entering this season, only Tuliapupu and all-conference linebacker Peyton Wing returned.
And to make things even MORE complicated, UM ran a “voodoo” defense under Hauck, a 3-3-5 stack built on exotic, constant pressure that treated common defensive principles like run fits and gap soundness as taboo.
And to complicate things to the maximum, since Montana’s run to the 2023 national championship game, UM has leaned on the transfer portal as heavily as any team in the Big Sky Conference.
Montana signed 19 transfers ahead of the 2025 season, including 12 on the defensive side. UM hit the portal even harder this last offseason, signing 24 transfers, including 13 on the defensive side of the ball.
The failures of 2024 — UM went 9-5 a season after winning 10 straight, claiming its first Big Sky title since 2009 and going 13-2 — were certainly at least partially influenced by a variety of swings and misses on defensive transfers.
Last season, a hodgepodge of transfers proved functional enough to help the Griz run the table other than two losses to archrival Montana State. But cornerback Kyon Loud (Duke), safety Micah Harper (Iowa State), linebacker Caleb Otlewski (Colorado State), safety Diezel Wilkinson (UAB) and defensive tackle Jareb Ramos (Iowa State) were among the eight players to bail from the Griz defense before Hauck stepped away.
All the players who left the Griz in the offseason left before Hauck did. All the players who signed as transfers signed to play for Hauck. In other words, they were all recruited to play in the 3-3-5, not Sanders’ multiple, complex scheme.
Those circumstances don’t go very far toward mitigating the criticism of the defensive performance over the last month, though. Talent disparity aside, Montana looked out of sorts in a 52-17 loss at Oregon State where communication was clearly lacking.
UM seemed to simplify some things defensively in a 62-22 win over UC Davis that remains the bright spot of Kennedy’s otherwise tumultuous first season. The last two weeks, not only have the Griz been conservative and constantly out of position, but they’ve also operated horrendously post-snap, missing 37 tackles over the last two weeks and 47 over the last three.
The bye week will certainly help players like Orlandi and Huff heal their nicks and should help players like Cutler take another step toward returning.
But UM faces an absolute must-win in Cheney, Washington, on Halloween. Sanders’ defense will have to figure out a way to slow down Nate Bell and the Eastern Washington offense as the Griz defensive staff returns to its former home to face an EWU team that has won only two games (2-6, 1-4 Big Sky) despite averaging 27 points and 407.1 yards per contest. In a 56-20 loss to Montana State last week, EWU ran 105 offensive plays and Bell completed 35 of 53 passes for 282 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions while rushing 23 times for 36 yards.
Bell has had some monster games this season, including throwing for 413 yards on 39-of-58 passing with three touchdowns and rushing for 107 yards and a touchdown in Eastern’s 49-38 loss at UC Davis.
That’s all to say that if Montana hopes to keep its playoff streak alive (the last time UM missed the playoffs came in 2018, Hauck’s first season of his second stint leading his alma mater), the next time out will be a must-win, as will home games the first two Saturdays of November against Portland State and Idaho State.
And Kennedy knows it.
“Overall evaluation is we have to get better as coaches, and we have to get better as players, and we have to go back to work,” Kennedy said after the Idaho loss.
“When we were sitting there at 5-1 and everybody said, oh, you’re doing a great job… this game can change quick. Like I said, I’ve been around a long time. And you think you have the right answers, and when those answers aren’t right, then you gotta go back to the drawing board. And you have to tweak some things and get them fixed, because that’s my responsibility, the chair that I sit in.”
