BOZEMAN — Jeff Choate frequently emphasizes he believes recruiting is all about relationships. The previous associations with three prospects helped Montana State sign three transfers with FBS credentials during the first early signing period last week.
Choate came to Montana State after spending two seasons as the defensive line coach at Washington. He recruited defensive end Bryce Sterk to the Huskies from Lynden, Washington before taking MSU’s head coaching position later in 2015. MSU recruiting coordinator Michael Pitre first met Travis (Waller) Jonsen when the star quarterback was a freshman at Servite High in Anaheim, California. Running back Tyler Natee played quarterback at Euless Trinity High outside Dallas, the alma mater of a slew of great Bobcats including former Big Sky Conference MVP quarterback DeNarius McGhee, MSU’s current quarterbacks coach.
On Wednesday, the Bobcat coaching staff signed the trio of transfers along with Coffeyville College kicker Tristan Bailey, a quartet expected to add depth and competition to four key position groups.
Jonsen, a former four-star recruit who spent two years at Oregon and last season at Riverside Community College, will directly push sophomore quarterback Chris Murray. Natee, an Indiana transfer who earned All-Freshmen Big Ten honors two years ago, will give MSU the big back it loses with the graduation of Nick LaSane. Sterk, who will join the Bobcats as a third-year sophomore, addresses a pass rush that has been largely dormant since the graduation of Brad Daly in 2013. And Bailey will give MSU a weapon on both kickoffs and as a placekicker as the Bobcats try to snap a streak of three straight losing seasons next fall.
“That’s a lot of clarity for us,” Choate said during his press conference on December 20, the first day of a new 72-hour signing period.
“If Indiana is in a bowl game, this probably doesn’t happen. If I didn’t have the relationship that I have with some of the coaches at the University of Washington, say ‘This is how we are going to piece this thing together so he can be a part of that program, experience the Fiesta Bowl and know how we are going to transition it.’ If Michael doesn’t’ know Travis for years, that probably doesn’t happen. Relationships played a huge, huge key in this.”
From the outside, MSU appeared set under center with Murray returning for his third year as a starter and touted freshman Tucker Rovig coming off a redshirt. But the quarterback room has been under constant turmoil since Dakota Prukop first won the starting job and the ask of succeeding McGhee in the fall of 2014.
Prukop beat out Jake Bleskin, Tanner Roderick and Quinn McQueary. He earned All-Big Sky honors in 2014 and led MSU to its fourth playoff appearance in five seasons. But he missed Montana State’s final two league games. Bleskin had a signature performance, throwing for 301 yards and two touchdowns in a 44-39 win over Idaho State. The following week, the Great Falls product endured a nightmare, throwing five interceptions and getting hit relentlessly by Montana’s defensive line in MSU’s 34-7 loss to its fierce rival in Missoula.
Entering the first round of the playoffs, former head coach Rob Ash and offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey prepared McQueary, a redshirt freshman from Manhattan, as the starter before eventually going with a hobbled Prukop in a 47-40 home loss to South Dakota State.
With Bleskin nursing his mental wounds, Roderick struggling with off-field issues and his transition to wide receiver and Prukop returning for his junior season, McQueary abruptly transferred to Montana Tech, the first domino in MSU’s fall from an impossibly deep group to one with almost no depth at all.
Then, after a 5-6 season that cost Ash and most of his staff their jobs, Prukop unexpectedly transferred to Oregon for his senior season. Bleskin graduated, as did Roderick. Choate brought in Tyler Bruggman, a former four-star recruit who had made previous stops at Washington State, Louisville and Scottsdale Community College.
In the spring of 2016 — before Murray’s arrival on campus — Bruggman beat out redshirt freshman Jordan Hoy for the No. 1 spot on the depth chart. Hoy transferred to Fullerton Community College before landing at Old Dominion. Hoy declared earlier this year that he is transferring again.
Bruggman started the first six games of Choate’s first season but struggled mightily. The strong-armed journeyman struggled with his accuracy like he had at all three of his previous stops. He completed just 48 percent of his passes and threw six interceptions. Murray, a 6-foot-2, 180-pounder from Inglewood, California, played spot snaps at first before a 187-yard rushing performance against Sacramento State. A few weeks later, he took over the starting job and never looked back.
After beating out Bruggman in the spring of 2017, Bruggman earned his business degree and transferred to Texas A&M. MSU played last season with Rovig technically as the backup despite his redshirt status and sophomore walk-on Brady McChesney officially as the backup if Murray had to leave the game for a snap or two.
With Bruggman no longer in the fold, Choate and McGhee wanted to bring in a talented player to provide competition for Murray.
“The quarterback room — there’s been a couple of rooms we’ve looked at and it’s really been hard for us to fix them,” Choate said. “One of them is quarterback.
“Bang, bang, bang and we have a little problem. That’s not a good place to have a problem. Really, Chris has become the starter here by default.”
Enter Jonsen, a 6-foot-4, 210-pounder who earned the designation as the No. 3 dual-threat prep quarterback in the country his senior year of high school. Jonsen, a stellar student who has a 3.9 grade-point average his first three years of college, graduated high school early and enrolled at Oregon in the spring of 2015. He seemed like the front-runner to start for the Ducks before his suffered a toe injury that hindered him for months.
The Ducks eventually went with Vernon Adams, a graduate transfer from Eastern Washington, as the starter under center in 2015. The following spring, Jonsen again seemed like the leading candidate to start. When Prukop joined the Ducks, the former Bobcat and the future Bobcat battled during spring drills and fall camp.
“It went right down to the wire in fall camp,” Choate said. “I talked to their former offensive coordinator (Matt Lubick) and it was basically a flip of a coin. They went with Dakota, things didn’t end up working out right, insert some guy named (Justin) Herbert and Travis is looking for another opportunity to restart his career.”
At Riverside, another curveball derailed Jonsen’s ascension. Victor Viramontes, a top California recruit who originally committed to Jim Harbaugh and Michigan, eventually landed at Cal. When Sonny Dykes was fired in Berkeley, Viramontes transferred to Riverside. He and Jonsen split time for the first three weeks of the season before the explosive athlete from Norco eventually won the job.
He sees this as an opportunity to be in a position where his skill set is valued,” Choate said. “He’s very similar in terms of his athletic ability to what Chris has. We see it as an opportunity for a young man like Chris to be challenged and pushed. That’s what we need to be our best in this program. If we get championship level quarterback play, look out.
Jonsen will come to MSU and challenge an incumbent in Murray who rushed for 860 yards and 12 touchdowns in earning Big Sky Freshman of the Year honors two years ago and ranked second in the Big Sky with 1,135 rushing yards last season. But Murray has struggled to throw the ball, completing about 49 percent of his passes over the last two seasons total.
“What we have to do is increase the competition in that room because if Chris ends up being our starter, that’s good for the Bobcats because we brought in guys who were really good players,” Choate said. “If it’s Tucker or Travis or somebody else, that’s good for the Bobcats too. We need to create competition in that room and this was a huge step toward doing that for us.
“At the end of the day, I think we are going to be able to put a team out there that is going to be good enough to compete for a championship if and only if we have championship level quarterback play. Travis will elevate that room.”
After ranking as one of the top pass rushing teams in the FCS for four straight seasons thanks to the dominant play of Daly, fellow Buck Buchanan Award winner Caleb Schreibeis and defensive tackle Zach Minter, the Bobcats have struggled to pressure the passer most of the last four seasons.
The Bobcats notched just 17 sacks last season, 11th in the 13-team Big Sky. Grant Collins, a converted middle linebacker from Bozeman, played Buck end for six games before a shoulder injury ended his junior season. He finished with one sack. True sophomore Derek Marks, another local product who grew up in Belgrade, led the team with four sacks. Six of MSU’s 17 sacks came from non-defensive lineman. Defensive tackle Zach Wrigth was the only Bobcat defensive lineman who had more than one sack.
The 6-foot-4, 256-pound Sterk not only helped Lynden High to three Washington 2A state titles in football but also won multiple state track championships as a standout hurdler. The long, lean athlete will have three years of eligibility remaining.
“He is a big dude who can run,” Choate said. “He is all of 6-4, all of 256 pounds and he’s a guy who we got there (to Washington) and the next year, we signed a 4-star guy and the next year, we signed a 5-star guy right in front of his position.”
“I know this young man’s character, I know what he’s all about and I know what his family is all about. This guy has everything it takes to be a great player physically. Now we have to give him the support to say, ‘Go be a guy. Go trust in yourself and believe in yourself as much as we believe in you.’ He will do some spectacular things here.”
During the Thanksgiving break, Choate, defensive coordinator Ty Gregorak, wide receivers coach Matt Miller and defensive line coach Byron Hout went to Seattle to watch Sterk practice with the Huskies. Greograk said Sterk was “one of the better looking dudes on the entire field” in terms of his physical gifts.
Sterk has been buried on the depth chart for one of the premier defensive lines in the country. Choate negotiated to have him on a mid-week official visit and, if he signed, allow him to return to the Huskies to prepare for UW’s Fiesta Bowl game against Penn State on New Year’s Day. He will join MSU for the first day of the spring semester on January 10.
“When you meet this kid, he will look like the Montana boy,” Gregorak said. “He has the camouflage, the green. I thought he looked like he was from Cutbank rather than Lynden.
“I’m fired up about him because he’s long and he can run. We need dudes who can flat run and hit and love football. A guy like him and another dude behind in the second level on the back end, I’m feeling good, better about where this thing can go.”
Natee graduated from Trinity High as the school’s 7th all-time leading rusher after gaining more than 3,000 yards on 337 attempts (8.9 yards per carry) and scoring 25 touchdowns playing primarily Wildcat quarterback. He replicated the role as a true freshman at Indiana in a win over Maryland, taking shotgun snaps and running for 111 yards and a touchdown to earn Big Ten Player of the Week honor sin 2016.
Natee comes to MSU the latest in a long line of successful Trojans to play for the Bobcats. McGhee, MSU’s current quarterbacks coach, won two Big Sky Offensive MVPs and quarterbacked the Bobcats to three straight Big Sky titles (2010-2012). Other former Bobcats turned Trojans include running back Tray Robinson, linebacker Na’a Moeakiola and the late Eryon Barnett, a safety who transferred from Texas. MSU sophomore defensive tackle Elu Leota also prepped at Trinity.
Natee fell to the bottom of the depth chart at Indiana because of a coaching change. After playing prevalently as a true freshman, he was relegated to the scout team last season.
“He got caught in the wash,” Choate said. “He had a position change to fullback. He really wanted to be a ball carrier. And if you look out the window today, I hope we play in some games where somebody has to tackle this guy because they are not going to enjoy it.”
The 6-foot, 265-pounder with the nickname “Big Bacon” has a running style to legendary NFL bruiser Craig “Iron Head” Heyward, Choate said. The addition of Natee not only solidifies MSU’s need for a power back but also allows MSU to play Troy Andersen, last season’s Big Sky Freshman of the Year after standing out at both tailback and linebacker, primarily on defense.
“(Natee) is going to be a huge asset for us with our style, in the fourth quarter of games when we are trying to grind the clock out and in short yardage and goal line situations,” Choate said.
MSU’s kicking situation has been in flux since former standout Luke Daly tore his ACL during winter conditioning in January of 2016. Gabe Peppenger, a walk-on from Missoula Sentinel, drilled nine of his 13 field goal attempts in Choate’s first season. Daly returned last season to earn starting kicker and punter duties only to quit the team a month into last season.
Peppenger took over and hit 5-of-8 field goals in 2017. He was 1-of-4 from more than 40 yards. He averaged 58.3 yards per kickoff, notching 13 touchbacks in 13 tries.
“When we were examining the mid-year, there were several things we thought were important,” Choate said. “One of them was providing some depth and some competition at the placekicking position.
“With our situation at kicker, we felt we needed a guy who could be a weapon for us on kick offs. At those times when you have to keep the ball away from a dynamic returner and you have a guy that can bang the ball out of the back of the end-zone, that’s something you don’t think about until you need to have it.”
Bailey, a Colorado Springs native who started his career at Wyoming, kicked 85 percent of his kickoffs for touchdowns and made his final nine field goals at Coffeyville before signing with MSU.
“You can see the pop on the ball he has but he gets great elevation on his place kicks as well,” Choate said. “…Those that had to live through the painful things that happened to us last year, you’d like to have three or three or three here and there and if we did, we might have bee a little happier with the final record we had.
“Tristan is a big, physical kid. He does not look like a kicker. When he walks in the door, he looks like he could play linebacker. Those are the guys I like at the kicking position, guys who are truly athletes.”
Choate’s success with FBS transfers has not been stellar thus far. Bruggman was mediocre at best. Cornerback transfers Naijiel Hale and Darren Gardenhire played a total of two games before being arrested on felony drug distribution charges last spring. Boise State running back Jake Roper missed all last season with a foot injury and is yet to take a snap for the Bobcats.
The solid additions have included Colorado graduate transfer cornerback John Walker, an All-Big Sky cornerback for the ‘Cats in Choate’s first season and Patrick Carroll, a graduate transfer offensive lineman from UNLV who started a handful of games in 2016.
“In my short time here, the guys who have been successful in making that step are not the guys who come in pounding their chest and talking about ‘I played at X, Y, or Z, look at me,’” Choate said. “It’s the guys who are hungry and humble. They are excited for their opportunity to really be the every down guy they thought they would be when they went to whatever university they went to. The correct mindset is what is important for these guys. There are dadgum good players everywhere you go. A lot of those guys realize that and they don’t just think, ‘Hey, I’m going to the Big Sky.’”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez and attributed. All Rights Reserved.
