Montana State added two players to its roster earlier this week but bid three others farewell, the football team announced in a press release on Tuesday.
Senior defensive end Zach Hutchins and junior linebacker Wyatt Christensen each announced their retirement from the MSU program. Redshirt freshman linebacker Sam Plucker was granted his release from the program. Junior college defensive tackles Brandon Hayashi and Fou Polataivao signed financial aid agreements with MSU earlier this week.
“Zach and Wyatt both decided their time as football players is at an end,” first-year Montana State head coach Jeff Choate said in a press release. “They’ve each had a number of injuries, but I’m very happy for each young man that they’ll finish at Montana State academically and graduate. Sam decided that he wants to pursue other options, perhaps closer to home, and we wish him the best.”
Hutchins, a product of national power Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas, contributed each of the last two seasons along Montana State’s defensive line. He notched 1.5 sacks in 2014, including a sack against rival Montana. Last season, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound rangy athlete started in five games and played in 11, logging 21 tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss and three sacks. His sack total was second on a Bobcat defense that struggled during a 5-6 campaign.
Hutchins had an up and down career at Montana State. He was deemed academically ineligible for the 2013 season after trying to switch his major and not having enough credits earned toward his new degree. During the off-season before the 2014 and 2015 seasons, the Bobcats toyed with the idea of moving the hybrid player to linebacker. He dropped his weight for the change, only to be moved back to edge rusher each of the last two seasons.
This spring, Hutchins played Buck end for the first few weeks. The new MSU coaching staff moved senior Jessie Clark, the team’s leader in sacks, and sophomore Grant Collins, the team’s starting middle linebacker in 2015, to the position. Hutchins did not attend any practice the last three weeks of spring drills.
Christensen came to Montana State from Fountain Valley, California. He broke into the lineup as a special teams player and saw repetitions in a five games as a true freshman in 2013. In 2014, he blew out his knee covering a kickoff against North Dakota and never regained full healthy. He missed the final seven games of 2014 and all of 2015 because of the injury.
The 6-foot-1, 230-pound Plucker came to Montana State as a highly regarded middle linebacker from Kimberly High in Appleton, Wisconsin. As a senior, he led his team to a second straight Wisconsin Division I state title. He chose Montana State over Central Michigan, Drake, Holy Cross and North Dakota State, although MSU was his only solid scholarship offer. This spring, Plucker shifted to outside linebacker and played sparingly, mostly getting repetitions with the third-team defense.
