> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.bobbyball406.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Take a deep breath - URL: https://www.bobbyball406.com/take-a-deep-breath/ - Published: 2026-09-22T06:57:17.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T17:24:08.000Z - Description: Oregon State 52, Montana 17. Debuting the Ah Yacht Club, a message board from 2023, and a day of hunting. - Author: Schuyler Watt - Tags: Sunday Reaction Sunday reactionWa-Griz # Take a deep *breath* Oregon State 52, Montana 17\. Debuting the Ah Yacht Club, a message board from 2023, and a day of hunting. MONTANA, POINTS PER TRIP INSIDE THE 40**3.40**Five trips, 17 points. OREGON STATE, SAME MEASURE**5.78**Nine trips, eight scores, 52 points, five for five in the red zone. We lost by 35\. They outgained us 510 to 338 and did it on fewer snaps, 68 to our 72\. We held the ball for 30:53 of a game we never led and lost the turnovers 2 to 1\. Montana is 3-1\. We won the clock and the snap count, and it turns out there are no points for those either. I was out hunting all day Sunday, enjoying life and taking a deep breath, which I am prescribing to a good many of you in Griz Nation, on eGriz, on X and otherwise. Here is where I was at 12:52 a.m. > @schuylerwatt on X[https://x.com/schuylerwatt/status/2101565090147545094](https://x.com/schuylerwatt/status/2101565090147545094?ref=bobbyball406.com) [Subscribe free](#/portal/signup) 01 ## The early shots were there, and every one of them hit the grass Four deep balls in the first half, three of them in the first three drives, none of them caught. This column spent three games asking for exactly that. Saturday we took them, and they hit the grass. Five trips inside the Oregon State 40 produced 17 points. In the fringe (40-20 yard line) we ran 19 snaps before Oregon State emptied its bench, at a .211 success rate and −0.457 expected points a play. Expected points is just what a snap from that spot is worth on average. Last year's FCS median in the fringe was .419 success and −0.072\. Nineteen snaps in scoring range, and we came out of them poorer than we went in. That was the ballgame. The fringe, Saturday against last year Montana offense from the 21 to the 40 · bars run from zero · Saturday is 19 snaps, before the fourth-quarter substitutions SaturdayMontana 20252025 FCS median SUCCESS RATE.211.4830.15.30.45.60.419better ▶EXPECTED POINTS PER PLAY\-0.457+0.162\-0.60\-0.40\-0.200+0.20+0.40\-0.072better ▶ Montana's own fringe last season was .483 and +0.162\. Saturday came in under the 2025 FCS median on both. Our boys up front did well: 3.53 line yards a carry, between the 75th and 90th percentiles, and we were stuffed on only 2 of 24 carries. Bobby 3.0's only unqualified praise of the night went to that group, "especially the offensive line." On the rest of it: "We just didn't hit some of those early plays that maybe could have kept us in it." Agreed. Where the tendency broke, and where it did not Left: share of Montana's first-and-ten calls that were runs (official play-by-play). Right: Ah Yat's first-half attempts by the official depth tag. 0255075%71.4%First quarter5 of 764.3%First half9 of 1447.2%Season51 of 1080510152013 of 18Short18 att0 of 4Deep4 attFirst-half attemptsCompleteIncomplete 71.4 percent of first-and-tens were runs in the first quarter and 64.3 in the first half, against 47.2 for the season. 02 ## The Ah Yacht Club New standing feature, after one too many negative comments. We'll spend each week evaluating the leather seats, fine finishes, and cherry accents of our premiere QB. At 10:08 Saturday night, with the first half still going, a thread opened on eGriz under the title "QB change." Its first line: "It may be time to give someone else a shot. Something is not right with KAY. Can't throw. Won't scramble." Elsewhere on the board that night: "Ah Yat is going from star to tar." "I honestly hope dad is pissed." "Ah-yat is turned into captain check down. He's about as mobile as Kirk Cousins!" [Brint asked after the game](https://bwahlberg.substack.com/p/post-game-beat-down-by-the-beavs), "Time to hit the Ah Yat panic button?" I'll write it again: "We gotta seriously stop with the Ah Yat slander it's embarrassing." Ah Yat is first in the Big Sky in passing yards, 1,008\. You don't get points for yards, but it still means something. Keali'i makes it look so easy that people critique the handful of times he does something they don't like. He gets the ball out smooth, he rips through progressions, and he dots up things accurately. I can only attribute the hate to a fundamental lack of understanding that arises in people who have never tried to play the position. I was a mediocre high school quarterback, and all that qualifies me to say is he is not even close to bad. Saturday he went 27 of 40 for 215, two touchdowns, no interceptions, one sack, a 129.2 rating. 65 percent completions this year, 69 last year, 68 against Oregon State. The first four games, 2025 against 2026\. Then: 78 of 113 for 1,086, seven touchdowns, four interceptions. Now: 94 of 143 for 1,008, seven touchdowns, one interception. He's throwing much more often this year, but turning it over less, with a negligible decline in completion percentage despite higher usage. Ah Yat through four games, then and now First four games of each season 202620252025 FCS median 143113Attempts65.7%69.0%Completion pct7.059.61Yards per attempt77Touchdown passes14Interceptions139.7163.1Passer ratingbetter ▶better ▶better ▶◀ betterbetter ▶61.55%7.30133.57 Above the 2025 median on completions and rating, under it on yards per attempt, 7.05 against 7.30. Montana's sack rate allowed is .026, among the lowest in FCS, so it's not a line issue. On standard downs, this offense stays on schedule at .581, the 97th percentile, so it's not an execution issue. On passing downs it is .226, the 14th percentile. Elite when it is on schedule, near the bottom of the country once it is behind, and that's what the metrics look like when you can't generate a big play. Ah Yat's decreased YPA is a symptom of the offense as a whole. We sit at the 87th percentile in success rate and the 20th in explosive play rate. We move the ball slowly and surgically, do not break any big ones, which is a much higher degree of difficulty. In short: we haven't replaced Michael Wortham. QB1 has been accurate, careful, and efficient. All else equal, YPA and passer rating flow from the same variable: explosive plays. A medium pass is completed, a tackle broken, then off to the races. Our lack of them is my largest concern going forward, bigger than anything that happened in Corvallis, and it is not one man's to fix. Your eyes are seeing an offense perform worse, not a quarterback. You are still invited to join the Ah Yacht Club. Leather seats included. 03 ## Hand up: Oregon State was better, and I had it completely wrong One writer, who admitted on eGriz Friday evening that he has picked Montana 16-0 three years straight, told you the gap between these teams was not 17.5 points. He was right: it was 35\. The same writer put Good Guys 37, Oregon State 31 on the card and announced he was fading the public, baby. The public was right. Hand up. I had it completely wrong, and they torched us over and over. I said Atkinson was the least mobile quarterback we had faced and that he would put two in our hands. He went 22 of 30 for 333 and five touchdowns to five different receivers, was not sacked, was hurried three times, and put nothing in our hands. The way he got the ball downfield and into tight windows, pressured or not, was remarkable. Oregon State's 10.17 net yards a dropback is past the 90th percentile of last season's FCS team-games. OSU was faster than I appreciated, and we won't see receivers like that the rest of the year. However, I am concerned about our susceptibility to the pass being an ongoing problem. Ten yards a dropback Saturday's two offenses marked MontanaOregon State2025 FCS median 024681012Net yards per dropback, sacks taken out2025 FCS medianp90p95Oregon State 10.17Montana 4.26better ▶ A gap of 5.91 on the same field, against a 6.12 median. Seven explosive plays to our two. Colonel Mustard and the Mustardettes produced one disruptive event in 67 snaps. Disruption is just sacks, runs stopped for a loss, interceptions and fumbles the defense fell on, added up and divided by the other team's snaps. One in 67 is 1.5 percent, and the fifth percentile of last season's FCS team-games is 3.2\. Peyton Wing was ejected for targeting at 11:16 of the second quarter, and [Shaun Rainey](https://x.com/ShaunRainey/status/2101548941955494378?ref=bobbyball406.com) had him coaching from the sideline the rest of the night. He is available at UC Davis, thanks to one positive change to a very maddening rule. I said their run game would be stymied and that the plan was to give up the yards and not the touchdown. Once they decided to run it, they ran it: 19 carries for 91 in the second half and not one of them stuffed. Their run share went from 28.6 percent in the first quarter to 69.2 in the fourth, which is what a team does up 32 when you can't stop that either. Nine trips inside our 40, eight scores, 52 points, 5.78 a trip, five for five in the red zone, six of their first seven possessions. We gave up the yards and the touchdown. Our defense got out-athleted. The Beav showed up ready, they knew where their advantages were and they pressed them, and the Mustardettes are carrying serious depth issues on the defensive front. Bobby 3.0 said afterward: "There was another team last year that lost to a really good FBS opponent and they stayed together as a team, they bounced back, they went on a tremendous run." Montana State lost 59-13 at Oregon to open last year, followed that with a home loss to an SDSU team the Griz blew away in the playoffs, and then reeled off 14 straight wins, winning the national championship on a missed extra point. By the end of the year they were a machine that did not resemble the early. The beautiful thing, and perhaps the maddening thing about building a team with 18 to 26 year olds (shout out Solo, please come back) is that teams vary week to week, and performances improve. 04 ## The negative nellies, diagnosed, with a prescription Sept. 23, 2023\. Northern Arizona 28, Montana 14\. eGriz that evening: "Hauck 2.0 is over. This team is really really bad guys." "Win the conference. Nope / Win a national championship. Nope / Beat the cats. Nope / Bobby experiment is coming to an end….not soon enough!" "We have regressed, I'll consider it a miracle if we reach the playoffs this season." "I smell 4-7…." "This might be the worst game I've ever seen the griz play." "this is going to be a lost season" "We are going to be the laughing stock of the Big Sky" [Brint Wahlberg](https://egriz.com/posts/1607801/?ref=bobbyball406.com), on the five games left against Davis, Sac State, Idaho, Portland State and Montana State: "right now I see 0 wins in that slate." Montana went 5-0 in that slate, 13-2 for the year, and played for the national championship. September 19, 2026, eGriz: "We gotta get comfortable with this team going 7-5" "This is the worst loss in Montana history" "different Bobby, same mediocre lackluster shitty coaching!!" "After 3.5 weeks, Coach Kennedy has made a football team into a punching bag." "Should not be even in top 10 next week and be underdogs at Davis." On X the same night: "Griz look like an early playoff exit." "Team, program, stadium, everything is going to shit." Same complaints, same complainers, no lessons learned. I fundamentally don't understand how people could enjoy hating the team they support, so I went looking for the psychological explanations. In 1974 a group of psychologists called students at a big football school and asked one question: can you tell me the outcome of that game? After a win, 32 percent said some version of "we." After a loss, only 18 percent. "We got beat" was scored the same as "we were awful." The test was whether you were still in the sentence. As the paper points out, the chant is always "We're number one," never "They're number one." There is also a name for filing the doom in advance: cutting off future failure. You cannot distance yourself from a loss that has not happened yet, so you get out ahead of it, announce in September that this is a 6-5 outfit, and stand off to the side when it lands. "We gotta get comfortable with this team going 7-5," typed at 10:15 on Saturday night. Read it twice. The people are a we. The team is a this. You cut yourself off from the team to make yourself feel better. When researchers stopped fans on the way out of an arena after a loss, the ones who backed away hardest were among the most committed. They backed away to feel better. The belittling posts that made me want to throw my phone are just misplaced negativity to off-load uncomfortable emotions. The same researchers published an equally valid outlet: boosting rather than belittling. When you are stuck with an association you cannot drop, you build it up instead of cutting it off. It works just as well. At 10:13 Saturday night, down 28-3, [somebody on that board typed](https://egriz.com/posts/1834351/?ref=bobbyball406.com) "We've got them right where we want them." Dumbest post of the night. Also the healthiest. 05 ## Rent-Free Bobcat of the Week Montana State beat Central Connecticut 35-30 at home Saturday afternoon, and @DoneCovid spent his evening in a Griz thread. [At 7:42](https://x.com/DoneCovid/status/2101487039757828154?ref=bobbyball406.com), before we had kicked off: "since we currently own the Big Sky conference it notifies us of whiny fans who can't beat us." [At 8:31](https://x.com/DoneCovid/status/2101499466603958698?ref=bobbyball406.com) he typed the whole song out for us: "Glad to see the chant hurts your feelings so much, it shows that it really is getting under your skin. We will keep singing it then, Eat Shit Grizzlies Go Cats Go!" Honorable mention to [@AnOwlMT](https://x.com/AnOwlMT/status/2101417435635347877?ref=bobbyball406.com), who at 3:05 in the afternoon, mid-game against Central Connecticut, posted thirteen words: "please wake up cats I can't face griz fans if we lose this." And to [@kieck33](https://x.com/kieck33/status/2101814188071104544?ref=bobbyball406.com), who let me know: "Couldn't fit your football knowledge on the tip of a pin. Remember it is a football and not a basketball...FYI." I'm flattered he thinks so highly of my basketball acumen. A man's team wins by five at home and he spends the hours before our kickoff in our thread, typing out lyrics. A man's team is in a game with Central Connecticut and the thing he is worried about is us. There is a phrase for that. Rent-free. The rev share is still at 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812, and now that the chant comes with a written transcript, we're billing for the lyrics too. 06 ## The FTC Tally Griz 0, on the road. Bozeman was another story. I heard FTG chants over the TV broadcast when the Cats scored the go-ahead touchdown against Central Connecticut, which was odd, since our team was in Corvallis waiting to get waxed. That is the whole point of this count. It happens every week at Bobcat Stadium, and if you're celebrating your win over Central Connecticut by chanting about us, are you celebrating your team or just hating ours? Two more on the record. Cats 9, Griz 0\. Mony Mony. 07 ## Most Unhinged eGriz Comment of the Week I think we covered this above, take your pick. 08 ## Restore the Six, Entry No. 5 Oregon State shared about $4 million with its football players this year, and in February its athletic director told a reporter the number "needs to get to $7 million." Good for them. I mean that. The cap is $20.5 million, the Beavers are paying a fraction of it, and they put 52 on us with a quarterback they are paying openly and legally. Montana's 2011 crime was about $3,000, and it was bail money and a lawyer. The penalty was a $3,000 donation to charity and six games taken off the books. Nobody is vacating Saturday, and nobody should. Give us the six back, and if the check has to come from somewhere, our tenants in Bozeman are a few months behind on the rent. 09 ## That Guy Rocked The last time Montana played in Corvallis was Sept. 7, 1996, Montana 35, Oregon State 14, and an Ah Yat threw two touchdown passes. Both went to the same man, a Salem kid out of South Salem High who had started his college career at Oregon State and transferred to Missoula. "It obviously was the best move I ever made," he told the Missoulian years later. That fall he caught 82 passes for 1,469 yards and 18 touchdowns, and thirty seasons later the 18 is still the single-season record. As a junior in 1995 he caught 63 passes for 832 yards, went for 127 and a 33-yard Dickenson touchdown in the semifinal, and then led Montana with eight catches for 102 yards in the 22-20 title game. Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame, class of 2011\. Nine or ten years of pro ball followed, an ArenaBowl title in Orlando in 2000, and a season catching passes from Kurt Warner in Amsterdam. In 1995, he was a receiver with a running back number, #23. Joe Douglass. That guy rocked. ![Joe Douglass, No. 23, in the 1995 national title game](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/ravallirepublic.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/a8/3a8c8850-9baf-5074-b089-b940cabf9cd2/55cbd74601474.image.jpg) Joe Douglass in the 1995 title game. Photo by Tom Bauer, Missoulian. 10 ## Last Call Next week is at UC Davis, Saturday, 8 p.m. Mountain, the second late road kickoff in a row, and I owe an apology for the last one. Nine o'clock games have to be banned, because after a few spritzes and not enough sleep, by 1 a.m. I end up fighting with Griz fans about how we aren't terrible and our awesome quarterback is actually awesome. At 1:24 I threatened to sentence Andrew Schmidt to two weeks hard labor, which I defined as two hours a day reading eGriz. I apologize to everyone. Mostly I apologize to my sleep. Eight o'clock this coming Saturday buys us all an hour. Spend it on the deep breath. I'll be cheering and believing this season ends in Nashville. If I'm wrong, my hand will go up again. I would rather be wrong about Nashville than right about 7-5. Go Griz. Bobby Ball · Griz football by Schuyler Watt · Numbers from the official Oregon State play-by-play and box score, the house postgame packet, and the 2025 FCS baselines built for this column. Four games is four games; every rate above is read against a stated 2025 sample and says which.