Shawn Johnson takes off in motion out of the slot, faking a handoff from Dakota Prukop before continuing to the sideline. Prukop fakes another handoff to Chad Newell out of the backfield before rolling to his right. The cobra-like sophomore looks like he might try to find the edge and use his substantial speed. Instead, still running, he flicks his wrist and fires a dart to a streaking Johnson, who’s continued his fake into a wheel route up the Eastern Washington sidelines.
Tim Cramsey celebrates Tanner Roderick touchdown enthusiastically in 2014
The perfectly thrown pass results in an explosive catch and run. The 19,377 fans at Bobcat Stadium erupt as Johnson scores a 46-yard touchdown to even the score in the second quarter in a matchup between two of the top teams in the Big Sky.
On the Montana State sidelines, Tim Cramsey is going ballistic. His passion, his competitive fire are fully on display as his headset shakes from his ears and his visor is all of a sudden crooked from his raucous celebration. Four-letter words pour from his lips as he bounds up and down the sidelines, he’s celebrating one of many explosive touchdowns the offensive coordinator has called in his career, but you’d never know it by watching him. Cramsey coaches with this sort of intensity almost all the time.
“Cramsey, he brings intensity like none other,” Montana State junior All-America offensive guard J.P. Flynn said. “His intensity, I can’t even describe it. The guy is off the walls. He makes you want to lay your life down for him. You want nothing more than to win for him, to play for him and to give everything you’ve got for him.”
Tim Cramsey hugs Gunnar Brekke after a touchdown in 2014
“When we score a touchdown and he starts running up and down the sidelines and the stuff he says, I can’t even say,” junior running back Gunnar Brekke added with a laugh. “He gets you fired up just by watching him.”
Since Cramsey returned to the Football Championship Subdivision — he spent the 2012 season as the offensive coordinator of Mario Cristobal’s staff at Florida International — he’s helped the Bobcats set the Big Sky Conference on fire. With the emergence of Prukop, a preseason All-America entering 2015, and an embarrassment of offensive riches at his disposal, Cramsey’s up-tempo spread offense filled with zone-read option elements is again expected to be one of the most explosive in the entire country.
In his first season in 2013, Cramsey had to scale back his attack and add elements that aren’t necessarily part of his typical strategy in an effort to ease the transition for veterans like quarterback DeNarius McGhee, running back Cody Kirk and wide receiver Tanner Bleskin, each among the top players in program history at their positions. Last season, with the proper personnel in place, Cramsey and the Bobcats at times looked unstoppable.
MSU ended up losing the Eastern Washington showdown 52-51 but the Bobcats proved they could go blow for blow with the top offense in the country. The outing sparked Montana State on a hot streak that put Cramsey and Prukop on the national map. During MSU’s first road trip of Big Sky play, the Bobcats piled up 136 points and 1,356 yards of total offense during a two-week spree through California. MSU’s 77 points and 737 yards in a 40-point win over UC Davis shattered program records against Division I opponents. Prukop proved to be a dual-threat to rival any in the country. He threw for 348 yards and five touchdowns and ran for 140 yards and three touchdowns in a 59-56 win over Sacramento State. In Davis, he ran for 148 yards and two scores and threw for 361 yards and four more scores.
Tim Cramsey and Dakota Prukop scheming the play call
Montana State ended up scoring 496 points, the most ever by a Bobcat offense. MSU averaged nearly 500 yards a game as Prukop was among the FCS leaders in total offense in his first year as a starter.
“He’s an aggressor, he’s an attacker, he’s a predator,” Prukop said. “That trickles down to our offense. When we step on the field, we look at defenses with a hunger. There is a task at hand and we are going to achieve it.”
Cramsey’s style involves diversity, risk-taking and a predication on causing the defense to hesitate, whether it’s with pre-snap smoke and mirrors or fundamental fakes after the ball is in play. It’s a style he’s honed as a player for Bill Bowes at New Hampshire, later in Durham as an assistant under former UNH offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and as the OC for longtime New Hampshire head coach Sean McDonnell. Cramsey also credits McDonnell, who he calls his “second father” and Kelly for instilling the take no prisoners attitude he coaches and leads his life with.
Tim Cramsey
The Allentown, Pennsylvania native has always had a gambler’s mentality, willing to take risks in an effort to feed his competitive hunger. Each time he calls a play, it’s a gamble and when one hits the jackpot, his internal energy overflows.
“It’s a natural high, man,” Cramsey said as he sat in his office at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in late August. “It’s something you can’t replicate or duplicate. When you have something drawn on the board and you watch it and you practice it and you go in there Saturday and it actually works exactly how you had it drawn up and everything is perfect, that’s the best feeling in the world.”
Growing up in Allentown — at one time an industrial epicenter known for its silk and textile production — Cramsey and his two brothers were competitive from an early age. Their father, William, was a standout basketball player at Central Catholic High who went on to star at Dayton, where he helped lead the Flyers to the Final Four of the NIT in 1961. William served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War before returning to Allentown to work as the primary purchasing agent for General Electric. He coached his three sons in basketball as kids.
Tim Cramsey joking at practice
By the early 1990s, Tim was a standout athlete, helping lead Central Catholic to a district title in basketball and a state title in football. The 1993 Central Catholic football team finished the season ranked among the top 10 teams in the nation.
McDonnell, at the time the quarterbacks’ coach at UNH who would take over as the OC in 1994, remembers driving the six hours from Durham to Allentown with former UNH linebackers coach Randy Bates to watch Cramsey play basketball. Upon first impression, he could already see the competitiveness that still burns within Cramsey.
“The kid has had a fire in his belly, a determination to win ever since I met him,” McDonnell said. “I went and watched him play a high school basketball game. He was by far — he’ll try to tell you differently — he was not the best athlete on that court but he was the most competitive with the will to win. His instincts, his compassion, his burning desire to be successful, it comes across to everyone and it’s why he’s been successful and had a great influence on why we are successful.”
Cramsey’s leadership was apparent to McDonnell when he first stepped onto campus. As a redshirt freshman, he earned the right to travel with varsity. The next spring, the Wildcats abruptly shifted him to linebacker. In 1996, his father died of a heart attack at the age of 56. McDonnell never saw Cramsey miss a beat despite the tragedy and the uncertainty of his playing career.
Tim Cramsey celebrates with Dakota Prukop
By his junior year, Cramsey was back under center. In 1997 and 1998, Cramsey completed 53 percent of his passes for 1,712 yards and 11 touchdowns. The next spring, he earned a business degree.
He took a job in Philadelphia working in financial services for nursing homes in the area, a gig he held for three years. But each day, he missed the rush of athletics. Cramsey found himself painfully bored with the doldrums of Monday through Friday at a desk. In 2001, he found himself at a crossroads. He could take a job with New York Life selling life insurance in the Big Apple or a job with John Hancock in Boston.
“If I would’ve chose John Hancock in Boston, I probably never would’ve gotten into coaching but I got into New York Life insurance and I hated it so much, I wanted to go back to coaching,” Cramsey said.
Cramsey’s brother, Billy, has always had a huge influence in his life. He assured Tim he would find something that compared to the rush of football. After six months at New York Life, Tim still felt empty. He moved back to Allentown and began working for Joe Bottiglier at Central Catholic. In 2002, he moved to Emaus High School. In 2003, McDonnell offered Cramsey a job for $8,000 a year to coach fullbacks and tight ends at his alma mater.
Tim Cramsey with MSU quarterback group
“When he left, I told him he should get into coaching. He went into the business world, he hated it,” said McDonnell, who took over as head coach in 1999. “He took a leap of faith and came up here to work for me for minimal money. I’m telling you, pennies to come up here and work.”
In 2004, the Wildcats began a string of success that’s continued to this day. UNH has made the FCS playoffs for 11 straight seasons, advancing to the quarterfinals and finishing in the top 10 every year from 2004 until 2010. Kelly was the offensive coordinator from 1999 until 2006, when he left to serve in the same role at Oregon, a launch point that sparked his meteoric rise to the NFL.
With Cramsey as the primary play caller between 2009 and 2011, UNH posted a 26-12 record as the Wildcats averaged 371 yards and nearly 30 points per game. In 2010, Cramsey’s sister, Denise, a Hollywood producer most famous for her role producing “Extreme Makeover”, died suddenly at the age of 41 from a brain aneurysm. Once again, Cramsey’s mettle was tested but McDonnell doesn’t remember him ever letting the tragedy affect his coaching.
Tim Cramsey coaches wide receiver Cam Sutton
In 2011, Cramsey helped mentor Kevin Decker to Colonial Athletic Association Offensive Player of the Year honors as UNH advanced to the FCS playoffs. In the second round of the postseason that year, Cramsey made his first trip to Bozeman. UNH lost on a blocked extra point, 26-25, to the Bobcats.
“I remember that preparing for his offense was very difficult because it was so balanced and so diverse, very unpredictable and explosive,” MSU head coach Rob Ash said when Cramsey was hired at Montana State.
Following the 2011 season, Cramsey received four offers. He elected to join Cristobal’s staff on South Beach in Miami. After one year and a 3-9 record, the entire staff was fired. Meanwhile, Ash needed a new offensive play caller after Kevin McGiven’s defection to Utah State.
When Cramsey first told his wife, Amy, that the couple was moving to Montana, Amy grabbed a map and started to search. She is from New Hampshire. Since moving to Bozeman in 2013, the couple and their two sons, Brock (3) and Bryce (1), have learned to love the Gallatin Valley.
Tim Cramsey walks the Bobcat Prowl with his son Brock
“It was hard to leave Coach Mac but it was the right move at the time,” Cramsey said. “We were doing well offensively at New Hampshire. I chose to go with Cristobal at FIU and it didn’t work out down there. But everything works out for a reason. We love where we at right now.”
Montana State gets a shot at revenge in Cheney, Washington this weekend as the No. 11 Bobcats take on the No. 14 Eagles of EWU. MSU has lost three straight to Eastern, including two with Cramsey on the staff.
For Cramsey, Prukop and MSU, the expectations are sky-high. National college football writer Bruce Feldman paid a visit in the off-season. The narrative of Cramsey as a Kelly disciple has gained steam with Kelly’s rise to renowned offensive guru. MSU has had but one test thus far this season — a 45-14 win over Division II Fort Lewis — so the book is still out. But the Bobcats appear to be flush. Prukop is behind a veteran offensive line, the team has a stable of capable running backs and a collection of skilled receivers and tight ends. On Saturday, Cramsey’s offense will get another chance to prove it belongs the national elite.
“I would hate to say now or never because we have some young guys in this program who can carry past these years but this year is huge.” Cramsey said. “I think we have 16 seniors. You can coach for a long time and not have 16 seniors. Pieces are there for this year. There’s excitement, there’s buzz. But if we don’t go take care of the little things — the throwing, the catching, the running, the blocking, the execution — potential never won anything for anybody. We have to prove we can live up to these expectations. That’s what keeps me going.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
