Although quarterback Tyler Bruggman and four other offensive players made their first college starts and a quartet of talented true freshman promptly burned their redshirts, Montana State’s old reliable tailback stole all the headlines in Moscow.
With senior running back Gunnar Brekke out battling pneumonia and the Bobcats employing a power run offense predicated on controlling the clock, Chad Newell took center stage. The powerful 6-foot-1, 220-pound captain carried the football 25 times for 105 yards and scored a touchdown to cut Idaho’s lead to 20-17 early in the second half. The margin would hold for the duration of the game, but Newell’s toughness and grit helped Montana State go toe-to-toe in Jeff Choate’s head coaching debut at the Kibbie Dome against an FBS foe.
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“He’s exactly who I thought he was and he exemplifies what we want in this program,” Choate said following his team’s 20-17 loss in his debut last Thursday. “I would go to war with that kid any day. He was not feeling good in the second half and I do think we probably should’ve leaned on Nick a little more. Having a little juice in the second half, Gunnar might’ve gotten that but it is what it is.”
On Tuesday in Bozeman, it appeared Newell was still not feeling good. The Billings Senior product did not practice and walked off the field with a coat draped over a heavily wrapped left wrist. Following a crushing hit on a screen play late in the Idaho game, Newell hustled to the sideline and instantly met up with MSU trainer Rob Higgs, displaying clear discomfort and pain.
On Monday, Choate said Newell “was just fine.” On Tuesday, Brekke, who is back at practice after sitting out for about a week, echoed his head coach, saying he expects Newell to play in Saturday’s game against Bryant in Bozeman.
“Chad played outstanding but that is to be expected,” Brekke added, praising his roommate, friend and co-captain. “Chad’s a warrior. You can’t find one bad aspect of Chad’s game. He can pass block, he can catch, he can run the football. On top of that, he plays with more heart than anybody. That’s what gets him as far as he has gotten is that heart alone, that determination that when he’s between the white lines, no one is going to out-compete him.”
With Newell as the workhorse, Montana State controlled the line of scrimmage and the clock. The Bobcats occasionally mixed tempos but mostly operated at a deliberate pace, a far cry from the breakneck speed employed by former offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey during three record-setting years statistically that ultimately resulted in a 20-16 record.
Montana State possessed the ball for 36 minutes and change against Idaho thanks to nearly 20 minutes of possession before halftime, five third down and two fourth-down conversions. Montana State managed just 110 rushing yards and averaged just 2.9 yards per carry but earned 20 first downs and ran 17 more plays than Idaho’s 57 in the narrow loss.
“I think it was pretty cool with how we were able to switch up tempo, come out of a huddle, slow things down, ID everything and then make a call,” said sophomore center Alex Neale, a UNLV transfer making his first career start at his new school. “Then you go at them with high tempo, so we have the best of both worlds and that really helps us out.”
“The offense is different but for me, it’s just like high school again except we aren’t running Wing-T, but the pace is the same,” added Brekke, who watched the game with a few other injured teammates from Bozeman last week while recovering. “If anything, I think for the guys within our offense, it should be easier to run it that way. It gives you more time to think. You are not as tired. I think we’ve done a great job adjusting to it. If you do it affectively, you see what it does to teams. We had more possession than they did and that’s the goal: have the ball longer and play defense.”
Neale, junior right guard Monte Folsom and redshirt freshman right tackle Mitch Brott all made their first career starts on an offensive line replacing four senior starters, including All-Big Sky center Joel Horn and All-America left tackle John Weidenaar. John D’Agostino, a sophomore former walk-on from Bozeman who earned a partial scholarship in the off-season, caught a team-high six passes for 47 yards in his first career start at slot receiver.
“The entire offensive line played well – Monte Folsom played a really, really good game,” Choate said during his Monday morning meeting with the media. “Alex Neale handling our protection checks, IDing the fronts, communicating with those guys up front, those guys playing together, I thought that was a very positive thing. I thought they rolled off the ball. They didn’t play sideways or lateral. We played downhill and that’s the style we want to play.”
Neale and senior left guard J.P. Flynn were particularly formidable while blasting holes for Newell. On one series, Newell gained 33 yards on four consecutive inside zone plays right behind the duo.
“Those guys are coming off the ball hard like they have been all camp, all spring,” a battered Newell said following the loss. “Those guys just play with such good intensity, they play so hard that defenses have a hard time getting ready for their tenacity.”
Bruggman, a well-traveled junior who made stops at Washington State, Louisville and Scottsdale Community College before landing at Montana State, completed 19-of-35 passes for 186 yards and a touchdown in his first college start.
“I think Tyler did a good job of executing the game plan going in,” Choate said on Monday. “When you look at the opponent has 57 plays and we hold the ball as long as we did, that wasn’t by accident. We probably should’ve used some tempo in the second half. We got a little conservative and that was my fault primarily because of the field position.”
In Courtney Messingham’s first game calling the plays as MSU’s offensive coordinator, the ball control style was by design. Choate wanted to keep Idaho’s experienced offense led by All-Sun Belt quarterback Matt Linehan and explosive flex tight end Deon Watson on the sideline as much as possible.
“We didn’t want to allow them to get into a rhythm,” Choate said after the loss. “One of the ways to frustrate a very talented offense is to keep them on the sideline and one of the ways to do that is to move the chains.
“I thought Courtney really called an excellent game mixing tempos, going fast at times,” Choate said. “It’s hard to call a game at times when I’m the guy who’s saying, ‘Hey, we are putting Murray in, hey we have to go to that script.’ I thought Courtney called a really good game.
Murray is Chris Murray, Montana State’s raw but ultra talented true freshman quarterback. The 6-foot-3, 180-pounder played nine offensive snaps in a special package filled with zone read option elements. He rushed for 13 yards on five carries with a long of 14 yards and completed his only pass for four yards.
“Since about the second time he touched the ball in fall camp,” Choate said when asked when he knew Murray would play in the opener. “He’s special. There’s some decisions he has to make better but he’s going to learn from this experience but he is going to add a dimension to us that is going to make us very difficult to defend.”
After his initial long gain, Murray kept the ball on three different occasions on option plays where he should’ve given the ball to the running back. He was swallowed up all three times.
“There’s your immediate learning curve: most great athletes in high school football, when things go south, they go outside because they can out-run almost everybody,” Choate said on Monday. “Against a secondary that played faster and better — Idaho’s secondary is vastly improved — and when he bounced the ball, you could see the difference in speed. At Lawndale, he’d bounce that thing and he’d be gone. Here, he bounced that thing and he had two guys waiting for him. He’s got to learn based on the situation when to get north and south. He’s going to learn a ton. He’s going to play.
“Let me make one thing clear: Tyler Bruggman is our quarterback. I feel very strongly that he can win a lot of games here and I think he did very well in his first Division I start. But Chris does give us an added dimension.”
True freshman wide receivers Karl Tucker and Kevin Kassis each burned their redshirts for the MSU offense, as did safety Jacob Hadley for the MSU defense. Tucker, a 6-foot-1, 210-pounder out of Great Falls, played 16 snaps, including 13 on special teams. Kassis, a 5-foot-10, 178-pounder from El Dorado, California, played one offensive snap and no other plays. Hadley, a 6-foot-6, 205-pounder from Billings, played four snaps, all on special teams.
True freshmen running back Anthony Pegues, offensive lineman Taylor Tuiasosopo, outside linebacker Balue Chapman, defensive linemen Derek Marks, Michael Jobman and Lewis Kidd and cornerback Damien Washington all traveled to Idaho but did not play.
Montana State takes on Bryant for its annual “Gold Rush” home opener at Bobcat Stadium at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
[/restrict]Photos by Colter Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
