BOZEMAN — It wasn’t that long ago that Braden Zimmer was dunking basketballs, throwing fastballs and wondering when he would stop growing taller.
Over the last 24 months, however, Zimmer has been growing in a much different direction. And the result of a categorical science experiment pulled off by the Montana State third-year offensive lineman, Bobcat strength and conditioning coach Sean Herrin and the nutritionists at MSU has resulted in one of the craziest girth spurts you’ll find in college football.
Back in May 2024, Zimmer estimated that he was still growing, reaching 6-foot-7 in height. He was by no means a twig, but still remembers tipping the scales back then at about 220 or 225 pounds. He was a finalist for the Midland Roundtable Male Athlete of the Year, given annually to the top boy and girl high school athlete in the city of Billings. He was in the midst of making the decision to play in the Montana East-West Shrine football game instead of the Montana-Wyoming Midland All-Star Basketball Classic. And he’d only recently walked away from a burgeoning baseball career that saw him show flashes of dominance on the pitching mound.
Since fully leaning into football — he chose to play in the Shrine Game instead of the all-star basketball weekend, which happened to overlap a few years back — Zimmer has also fully dedicated himself to packing on the pounds. That gain in weight and strength, combined with being unexpectedly thrust into Montana State’s starting lineup last season to begin the year, has Zimmer rapidly climbing in reputation as one of the hottest offensive line prospects in all of college football.
Zimmer checked in as a freshman in the fall of 2024 at 240 pounds. That first redshirt year, Zimmer tried to eat at least 5,500 calories a day but said he did not track his food because “if I go over, it’s a good thing. So I just try to eat every two hours I’m awake.” During one stretch, he got sick while living in the dorms on campus and lost 20 pounds. But he stayed diligent, and the strategy ultimately paid off. By the time the fall of 2025 rolled around, he was up to 282 pounds.
“It came on quicker the second time,” Zimmer said with a chuckle back last fall. “Sometimes, you have to wake up super early just so you can get a meal in before your first meal. I’ll wake up, have a breakfast burrito and then whatever they serve (at the Bobcat Athletic Complex). Then I go to the Rendezvous dining hall for lunch. When we have two hours off, I snack then. Then we have meetings, then we go back to Rendezvous for dinner, try to eat as much there, too. Then I eat a snack after the night meetings. Then I go home and make more food. Last night, I had mac & cheese (laughs).”
And as the Freshman All-American prepares for his second season anchoring the left side of Montana State’s offensive line, he’s tipping the scales at nearly 300 pounds. He checked into camp at 296.
The physical transformation has been a product of diligence, genetics and loyalty as well. After putting on that much weight and still being able to move, Zimmer went from an unknown name who was thrust into MSU’s starting lineup before a season-opening 59-13 drubbing suffered at the hands of the Oregon Ducks to a rising young star and one of the most coveted offensive line prospects in college football.
One source close to the situation confirmed that Zimmer had multiple six-figure and perhaps even one seven-figure offer to enter the NCAA transfer portal and jump to a Power 4 school. Almost every freshman or sophomore offensive lineman in the FCS who lands on an All-American team transfers these days, mostly because offensive line is one of the positions most coveted by power-conference teams.
The Billings product remained loyal to the Bobcats. The preseason All-Big Sky selection is expected to be one of the best players in the league during his third season of college football. And at 6-foot-7, 296 pounds, with the footwork of a former all-state basketball player and a flexibility that he says is simply a natural gift, those offers are sure to keep rolling in. Especially considering how naturally it comes.
“I would like to say the mobility and flexibility I still have is because of me, but mostly it’s just my genetics,” Zimmer said with a chuckle. “I got really lucky.”
MSU offensive line coach Matt Smith remembers the first time he saw Zimmer. “Who’s that guy? I thought, and when I realized he was in my position group, I was very pleased,” Smith said last fall — and he also remembers how raw Zimmer was during his first spring ball.
“I tease him all the time that if he doesn’t have food in his hands, he’s wrong and I’ll be upset with him,” said Smith, who went from walk-on to starting center on a Mountain West championship team at Fresno State during his relatively recent playing career from 2016-21.
“He’s a physical specimen. He’s athletic. He plays hard. We just have to continue to develop him at that position. And hopefully, the game speed and knowledge will continue to grow as we go throughout the weeks and get into important football later on.”
That developmental path proved to be nearly perfect for Zimmer last year. Burke Mastel broke his hand during fall camp, causing a reshuffling of the MSU offensive line that resulted in Titan Fleishmann moving from right tackle to right guard, Cedrick Jefferson moving from left tackle to right tackle, and Zimmer getting thrown into the fire on the blind side.
His first career start came in Autzen Stadium, one of the hallowed venues in all of college football, against the preseason No. 5 team in the FBS. The Ducks were the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff in 2024. Zimmer’s first matchup of his college career came against Matayo Uiagalelei, a 6-foot-5, 275-pound former five-star recruit who was ranked the No. 19 recruit in the entire class of 2023 and a future NFL draft pick.
The first-team All-Big Ten selection had two of his six sacks in Oregon’s season-opening win. But Zimmer got invaluable reps against the best player he would see all season, and perhaps one of the most talented players he’ll see at the college level.
“I went into that game thinking, ‘I’m a freshman, I have nothing to lose, first game, I can’t really do wrong, I can only do right,’” Zimmer said. “And I remember, I went in there, and our scouting report said they were all like 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5, and we get out there on the first play and I’m looking up to all of them, it felt like.”
“No. 10, Matayo, I think he was bigger than me all the way around. It was crazy.
“They always talk about how the sharpest swords get thrown into the hottest fire, and that’s about as hot of a fire as you can get for your first game.”
That was just an extension of Zimmer’s 2024. That fall, he took his lumps going against Kenneth Eiden IV, an eventual first-team All-Big Sky performer, as well as Zac Crews, who landed on the preseason all-conference team last month heading into his fifth and final season with the Bobcats.
“Even by the end of the year last year, I was still learning something new every day and trying to get better,” Zimmer said. “I was just talking to Titan (Fleishmann) about this. Thinking about it, I didn’t think I got better, then we were watching some film from the first couple of games and it was embarrassing to watch the first couple.
“Coach Smith just did such a great job. Every single one of us got so much better.”
Mastel’s return a month into last season combined with Zimmer’s emergence gave the Bobcats all-league talents at four of the five offensive line positions, including left tackle .
Zimmer was only a fringe prospect on the football field following his junior year of high school at Billings West. He thought his future probably was on the basketball court. Then he had “a really good senior year,” according to MSU head coach Brent Vigen, which caused the Bobcats to come in and offer him a scholarship.
Then during Zimmer’s redshirt year, he got a chance to observe Conner Moore on a day-to-day basis. Moore went from lightly recruited offensive tackle who redshirted to a starter as a redshirt freshman to an All-American in his third season. He was one of the most highly coveted (and highly paid) offensive line transfers in all of college football in the offseason following MSU’s 35-32 loss to North Dakota State in the 2024 FCS national title game, ultimately accepting a seven-figure offer to transfer to Michigan State.
“As a true freshman, Zimmer got to see Conner Moore up close and personal every single day and we could kind of paint the picture of Conner’s progression, and they were very similar in that regard,” Vigen said. “He could also look up to Paul Brott and Marcus Wehr, both from Billings, too, who had in their own right taken on these big physical transformations. I think having some examples in front of him was part of it, listening to those guys and maybe hearing them say, ‘Hey, I wish I would’ve done this when I was a true freshman.’
“I know Conner was on a very similar trajectory as a true freshman and he was there to make a pretty good influence on Braden, on a guy who was brand new. There’s some other guys who are coming up the chain right now that will be doing the same thing, observing Braden. And that’s what you want. Young guys like to learn how to do things from old guys. And you hope it takes sooner than later and you have these great stories of development. And I don’t know if there’s a better one when it comes to physical development than what Braden has taken on the last two years.”
Vigen had a front-row seat to watch some of the best offensive line recruiting and development in all of college football during his two decades as either a player or a coach at North Dakota State. The Bison set the gold standard for offensive line play and NFL prospects among the FCS, certainly, and had a consistent string of pros coming out of their pipeline that matches any college football program in the country.
NDSU had nine offensive linemen drafted over the last 20 years. At one point two seasons ago, a total of six former Bison were starting offensive linemen for various NFL teams. Grey Zabel was a first-round draft pick in 2025 and the starting center for the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks last season. Jalen Sundell, an undrafted free agent in 2024, also won a ring last February with Seattle.
They are two of six former Bison with Super Bowl rings. Of those half-dozen, four are modern-day offensive linemen.
That’s all to say, Vigen has seen this girth experiment in action before. And he is very impressed with what he’s seen out of Zimmer’s development along with his mass additions.
“We did it the right way, and there’s no shortcuts necessarily if you want to do it the right way,” Vigen said. “True story here. Braden plays in the state basketball tournament, Missoula, in mid-March of 2024 as a senior, plays on a Saturday, is here on campus the next Monday figuring out, ‘OK, what can I do’ in the short term from mid-March through mid-June to at least be in position when he got here as a freshman at the end of June to be able to take that proper step.
“I think if you break it down in quarters of the year, I think each and every step along the way you’ve been able to see a noticeable difference to him, but it’s been gradual. He’s put on close to 70 pounds, but at the same time, it’s happened in stages. It hasn’t all of a sudden happened. So he’s been real dedicated, and I think he is definitely blessed. But it’s something he’s gone after, I think, between Sean Herrin in the weight room and Cheyenne Kramer on the nutrition side. I think they’ve done a really good job of helping him along.
“What he looks like now compared to not that long ago is quite amazing. While still being this athlete that can move and bend. Shoot, he’s one of those guys that what he’s going to look like this year compared to last year, I think is going to be something to behold.”
