BOZEMAN — Montana State has had a revolving door at all three of its true linebacker positions this fall. Regardless of what lineup rolls out on Saturdays, MSU linebackers coach and defensive coordinator Ty Gregorak has had one basic challenge to his still in progress group all season.
Read, react, run and hit.
“That seems to be my challenge every week,” Gregorak said. “We have to come downhill and smack some people. We have to get more production out of our second level of defense. We have to go produce. This is a production based business.”
That production will be challenged full force on Saturday at Bobcat Stadium. Cal Poly, the leading rushing team in the Big Sky every season except last season since joining the league in 2012, brings its vaunted triple option attack to Bozeman to challenge a Bobcat defense with a linebacker unit that looks more like a medical ward.
Following last season, the Bobcats knew they would have to replace All-American captain Mac Bignell at Sam linebacker. During the spring, Troy Andersen played Sam next to Mike linebacker Josh Hill and Chad Kanow, a rising sophomore playing Will linebacker with junior Brayden Konkol out recovering from off-season surgery.
By fall camp in August, Konkol was playing safety and Andersen quarterback. Hill had a nagging back issue that eventually required surgery, costing him the 2018 season. And Grant Collins, an 11-game starter at Mike linebacker as a redshirt freshman in 2015, a starter at Buck end as a sophomore and part of his junior year and MSU’s Mike for a month before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury last fall, was still working his way back from the surgery that cost him the second half of last season.
Leading up to MSU’s season opener, Kanow secured the Will spot only to suffer a sprain to his knee less than a week before the Bobcats played their first contest against Western Illinois. Junior Walker Cozzie slid up the depth chart to start against WIU at Will.
Sophomore Jacob Hadley, who was coming off an ACL tear in the spring of 2017, officially “won” the starting spot at Sam linebacker but Gregorak and MSU head coach Jeff Choate said they both expected to share reps with sophomore Balue Chapman. But Chapman suffered a knee injury in the opener that cost him all of September and October. He returned to the starting lineup last week in a 24-17 loss at Idaho State.
Meanwhile, with Hill out and Collins working his way back, sophomore Michael Jobman won the starting job at Mike linebacker. He started there against WIU and at No. 3 South Dakota State. Collins returned in MSU’s final non-conference game to start against Wagner and Jobman bumped to Will, replacing Cozzie. Jobman started MSU’s Big SKy Conference opener at Portland State, a 43-23 win, but Kanow returned to action that game and played most of the snaps. Kanow started the next three games against Eastern Washington, Idaho and ISU. Collins has started six straight games at Mike.
Kanow suffered another setback in a 34-24 loss at Weber State. So did Hadley, although Konkol moved up one level in the Bobcat defense, starting at Sam against Idaho and WSU. Chapman started against Idaho State but played limited snaps as MSU played a ton of nickel against the Bengals’ prolific offense.
Choate said Kanow and Hadley are both out indefinitely, meaning Collins and Jobman will be Montana State’s primary inside linebacker.
‘The inside linebacker spot, you are going to see Grant getting spelled by his cousin Cal (Callahan O’Reilly) and a combination of Michael Jobman, (redshirt freshman) Tadan Gilman and Walker Cozzie as the Will,” Choate said. “Every one of those guys will have to be ready to go.”
Cal Poly’s triple option is no different than the standard if not increasingly rare attack. One of the main differences is the physicality, durability and explosiveness senior fullback Joe Protheroe brings to the table. The two-time All-American led the Big Sky in rushing with 1,334 yards and 14 touchdowns as a junior in 2016. He suffered a season-ending knee injury in Cal Poly’s season-opener last season, taking a redshirt instead.
This season, he has been a physical marvel. He has carried the ball at least 33 times in six straight games, including 39 times in a 38-28 win last week against Northern Arizona and a season-high 43 times for a career-high 228 yards and three touchdowns in Cal Poly’s first win, a 44-15 victory over Brown. Protheroe has rushed for at last 100 yards in six straight, surpassing 200 twice, including notching 217 yards last week against NAU.
Cal Poly is rushing for 323.6 yards per contest, including 379 against Big Sky competition. CP has surpassed 400 yards rushing twice, including a season-high 462 yards on the ground in a 41-27 win over Sac State. He will be the primary responsibility of MSU’s inside linebackers this week.
“They are going to run the ball 90 percent of the time or more,” said Gregorak, referring to a Cal Poly offense that is running 81 plays per game but has thrown the ball just 82 total times in eight games. “Grant is the perfect guy because he does love to come downhill, he does love to go tackle to tackle, hit guards and running backs and fullbacks but he does have to be able to bend and play off cuts because it’s nothing short of chaos for four quarters.
“And Michael, he hasn’t played much against it so he’ll have to be ready.”
Unorthodox nature of MSU’s defensive challenge this week aside, Collins has been solid this season while the rest of Montana State’s linebacker unit has largely struggled.
The week MSU expected Kanow to return, Choate went as far as saying “Chad dragging one leg around the field was better than what we’ve been putting out.”
“We have not done a good job aligning for success,” Choate said last month. ‘That’s such an underrated part of being a good defensive football player is in a pre-snap position, being able to get yourself in position to execute your assignment. I think we have had some pretty serious errors in that areas.”
“And a lot of it is playing a lot of linebackers that haven’t played a lot of football. That’s the one level where we are having all the issues. Michael played a bunch of football for us last year but it was on the edge (at Buck). Being in the middle of the defense is a much different animal. We haven’t had Josh (Hill) or Grant, who are the stabilizing factors in there. And without Chad, I think he’s the other guy who had mastered some of that stuff. We were kind of shooting in the dark and it was not good.”
Kanow never looked totally healthy during his three starts. Hadley has struggles with mobility and lateral movement since his devastating knee injury. But Collins has hit his stride in his fifth and final season.
The 6-foot-4, 245-pound Bozeman native has 43 tackles and three tackles for loss, the former the second-most on the Bobcats despite missing two starts. He’s played particularly well against power run teams, notching 10 tackles in a 24-23 win over Idaho, 11 tackles and a tackle for loss in a 34-24 loss at No. 7 Weber State and piling up 13 tackles and two tackles for loss as the primary hammer in holding Idaho State to 173 yards rushing, nearly 100 yards less than their season average.
“It’s been nice having Grant back because he gives us a fifth year senior, come down hill and smack you element,” Gregorak said.
Jobman also played well against the Bengals, notching seven tackles and a tackle for loss and looking a lot more comfortable with his assignments in the process.
“He knows what he is seeing and he reacts appropriately,” Choate said. “I don’t think he had any idea what he was looking at initially from the edge to the inside. And he played inside in high school. But going from (Class B) Huntley Project to Montana State, there’s a lot more stuff to look at for him. Think he also really learned how to prepare. That’s the biggest difference I’ve seen in him.”
“I’ve seen Michael up there in the film room, taking notes, asking the right questions and not just watching to see who their good players are but watching film to see what the keys are, what their formation tendencies are. I think his preparation is the biggest difference.
“I think quite honestly, he was a little bit embarrassed with how he played early in the season. He’s a prideful young man who wanted to do better and the work he’s put in has allowed him to do that. You can see him playing faster, playing more confident, triggering at the line of scrimmage, all the things that good linebackers do.”
Montana State sits at 2-3 in Big Sky Conference play, in a logjam in the middle of the league with Cal Poly, Montana and Northern Arizona, each half a game clear of Idaho and Northern Colorado. The Bobcats are 4-4, meaning they will have to win out and likely receive some help to get into the FCS playoffs.
For that to happen, the continued progress of a linebacker unit thin because of position moves and decimated because of injury will have to continue.
“When you don’t have Chad out there, you don’t have Josh Hill, Brayden is playing safety, Troy is playing quarterback, I think all of them need to be better and I think I need to do a better job with them,” Gregorak said in October.
“I always joke if you don’t produce, you can stand by me on the sideline and help signal. These guys are competitive enough to not want that.”
