Montana State wasn’t the only Big Sky Conference football team to lose a four-year starter at quarterback when Tommy Mellott used up his eligibility. The Bobcats’ main rival in 2024, UC Davis, saw their star signal-caller Miles Hastings run out of time, too.
Mellott capped off his career with a Walter Payton Award season and a trip to his second national title game. Hastings took UC Davis to its first Football Championship Subdivision quarterfinals appearance in school history and a school D1-record 11 wins.
The duo was the first and second-team All-BSC quarterbacks at the end of the regular season. Hastings led the league in yards passing per game and touchdown passes, while Mellott had the top pass efficiency rating and led all quarterbacks in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.
UC Davis head coach Tim Plough is known around the West as a quarterback whisperer for his ability to develop players at several stops into top players at the position.
As the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Northern Arizona, Plough developed Case Cookus into the FCS Freshman Player of the Year in 2015. NAU led the nation in pass efficiency that season and Plough returned to UC Davis as an assistant before trips to Boise State (offensive coordinator) and Cal (tight ends). In 2024, he was named the UC Davis head coach. In his first year he led the Aggies to a No. 5 ranking in both polls and the No. 5 seed in the FCS playoffs – the highest FCS ranking in school history.
Plough had what he said was “about seven players to pick from” during spring ball and fall camp that he considered to be able to lead the Aggies in 2025 before settling on athletic freshman Caden Pinnick, who has burst onto not only the BSC scene but the FCS scene as he has quickly become one of the top quarterbacks in the nation.
Pinnick’s style is nothing like Hasting’s, who was a pure drop back passer that didn’t run with the ball unless he was under duress. Pinnick is much more mobile, but he typically uses that evasiveness to continue to look for receivers and the strategy has been a good one as he leads the BSC in pass efficiency and has the most passing yards in league play. Still, he’s able to get downfield using his legs and speed at times and is good for about 30 yards per game and has three rushing touchdowns.
Despite the difference in styles, Davis wide receiver Samuel Gbatu, Jr. hasn’t seen a big change in terms of production and effort.
“I wouldn’t say it’s been a huge adjustment, honestly,” Gbatu, Jr. said. “They’re obviously a different player but the thing that has stood out to me more is the work ethic. Miles is a workaholic, and I think being in that QB room, Caden saw that and the kind of person Caden is, he puts in that work.
“As a player, they’re different. Caden’s getting his legs involved – Miles wasn’t the best on his legs. I think they’re both really smart, they make good decisions. Caden can extend drives with his legs, but Miles can extend drives with his arm and by how smart he is, but just on film, the biggest difference is probably Caden’s legs but other than that Caden learned a lot from Miles. Caden’s a workaholic so he put in the work, and he earned his spot.”
Plough has a long history in the BSC, and he sees a lot in Pinnick that’s he’s had to face over the years from BSC quarterbacks.
“He reminds me of the guys in this conference, the (Eastern Washington stars) Vernon Adams, (Eric) Barriere, (Montana State star) (Dakota) Prukop’s,” Plough said. “Guys who can run around and do plays with their legs but also be accurate and their tough. He just looks like a Big Sky quarterback out there making plays. I always was sick of going against those guys so it’s nice to have someone that can run around and make your life miserable.”
Pinnick’s numbers alone have him in the hunt for this year’s Jerry Rice Award given to the FCS’s top freshman player in the nation. He is throwing for 304 yards per game and has UC Davis at 7-2 and ranked No. 9 in the country despite losing 15 players to season-ending injuries.
“He’s still getting better, and his best football is ahead of him,” Plough said. “What stood out to me in fall camp was his accuracy. Even though he’s a young guy he was completing the ball at a high clip. He’s continued that this season. His ability to make plays with his legs and extend plays and be a threat as a runner – something we haven’t had here in a long time.
“He’s just a great competitor, man, the guy loves to win, he competes, no one out works him and he cares a lot. We knew that there were going to be some bumps along the way, you can’t argue with that experience and the more he plays the better he’s gonna get. If we can stay in it and win enough games, then maybe by the end of this we have a guy that’s playing his best football.”
Players that burst onto the scene like Pinnick, then build legacies like Hastings has, are nothing new to the Big Sky, something Plough is well-aware of. It’s the biggest argument for going with a young quarterback early on. UC Davis saw it by starting Hastings for four+ years as did Montana State with Mellott. Cam Miller, the Walter Payton Award runner-up last year, was a four-year starter at North Dakota State while Mark Gronowski, a two-time national championship winner, was a four-year starter at South Dakota State.
“You always get the new faces, the new great players,” Plough said. “This conference always has so many great players. You have these big names for awhile then they move on, and you get these new names. These new names are probably gonna be guys you hear about for the next 2-3-4 years. That’s the fun part of being in a conference for a long time, you get to see teams kind of grow with those players. Which teams are gonna rise and which teams are gonna take step back.”
The transition from Hastings to Pinnick has been simple, yet stark.
“The biggest thing you’ve seen is our run game,” Plough said. “As of recently, we were in the top 25 in passing and rushing. That hasn’t been us (in recent years). We’ve always been a top 10, top 5 passing team and our rushing’s been solid, but I can’t remember a time we were top 25 rushing team. Having a guy that’s athletic like that just adds to the dynamic of the run game. (Defenses) gotta honor him in regard to his running the football.
“Sometimes you call a pass play, it’s not open, he runs for 15 yards. I think the biggest adjustment has been we’ve been able to lean on the run game more and only throwing the time like 25-30 times a game. That makes us a team that play longer when you can lean on your run game a little bit more.”
Football isn’t the only sport Pinnick excels in as he’s making a name for himself on the UC Davis baseball team. Plough, himself, was a two-sport athlete in football and baseball during his playing days at UC Davis.
“He’s got a chance to be a big-time baseball player at Davis,” Plough said. “He redshirted last year and coach (Tommy) Nicholson, our head baseball coach, and I are really close. When spring comes around, he’ll be trying to make the starting roster as an outfielder, trying to crack the lineup. Everything I’ve been told by those guys is that they’re not going to be shocked if he’s doing that. I expect him to be playing baseball in the spring, and we’ll work around his schedule with spring football. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t let him do it because that’s what I came to Davis to do is play both baseball and football. If he’s athletic enough and the coaches think he’s good enough, then I’m all for it.”
Like most of his teammates, Gbatu, Jr. is amazed at Pinnick’s ability to not only excel at two sports but manage the everyday workload when combined with college life, but at the same time he isn’t surprised.
“He’s handling it well,” Gbatu, Jr. said. “I think it’s crazy, but I was talking to one of my coaches and after the season he’s going to go to baseball. That’s kinda crazy. Like I say, he works hard for it, he knows how to manage schedule well, he’s a dedicated person, so I’m sure it’s going to work out for him.”
Plough believes that there’s a strong relationship between baseball and playing quarterback citing several examples of players that have played on the diamond that became some of the greats of all time.
“I’ve always looked for quarterbacks and whether or not they’ve played baseball,” Plough said. “It might be something that maybe I’m biased because I played but I think the best quarterbacks to ever play, most of them were really good baseball players. Tom Brady was drafted, John Elway was drafted in baseball, Patrick Mahomes. You look at these guys, they were all great baseball players. It’s just throwing the ball off different platforms, throwing it off-balance, the ability to have great hand-eye coordination, the ability to read plays before they happen, situations. There’s just a lot of things that carry over to quarterback play. Me, personally, when I recruit players, if they don’t play baseball, it definitely hurts how I score them in regard to recruiting.”
Pinnick will likely get his biggest test this week when the Aggies go to Bozeman in search of getting back into the BSC title chase. At 5-1 in the Big Sky, the Aggies trail MSU and Montana, who are both 6-0. A win over MSU and an MSU win over UM could lead to a three-way tie for regular season championship. In that scenario, UC Davis would win the league’s auto-bid via the tiebreaker.
“Pinnick has that kind of combo where you better corral him, some way, some how,” Montana State head coach Brent Vigen said. “You better cover guys because if he sees open guys, he will be able to connect with them. Some of his most impressive plays have been these “how did he get out of that position” scrambles. When guys on the perimeter think they have him dead to rights, he can run around them but he’s a pass-first guy at the same time. And that’s how Barriere was. He’s not there. That was a long-time coming for Barriere to establish who he was, but Pinnick is coming.”
The Bobcats come into the game with the BSC’s highest rated pass defense, along with the top total defense and rush defense. The game will be telecast on ESPNU with a late-night start at 8:30 locally.
