Top Gun shows some quacks, Griz roar

Joe Matheson built his offense during the 2020 shutdown and named it Top Gun, only to see the movie’s release delayed two years. So it was Saturday in Missoula: the Drake Ducks showed up with an incomplete script and tried to shoot the entire movie anyway. Third snap, they buzzed the tower: a 67-yard bomb to Willis Nofsinger that Bobby 3.0 later admitted gave him “a little bit of a heart flutter.” That was some of the best flying anyone had seen to this point. Then the lecture about the ego writing checks the body can’t cash: eleven trips inside the danger zone, the ten-yard line, and the tower kept waving them off. Minus two yards. Two pilots in one cockpit, Riley Warzynski and Chase Spellman, and still nobody could set it down.

Shot down in the red zone, as advertised

One writer last week predicted Griz 49, Drake 13, missing the final margin by one and the total by 7.

That same writer said the Ducks (he could not keep Bulldogs separate from Drakes, so they are Ducks now) would fly in the open and get shot down in the red zone. That dude nailed it. Five Drake trips inside the Griz 40 produced ten points. Four of those drives went inside the 10 and ended as a 22-yard field goal, a strip-sack, a turnover on downs, and the fourth-quarter touchdown against some new names to see the field. The columnist, slightly clearer headed and crisper eyed, sat smugly on high, pacing his spritzes, and knowing he’d never live up to this moment again.

I expected we’d dominate the line of scrimmage, and we did. We didn’t pick off an outside curl, because the yellow hat crew saw the same tape and smartly lined up the safeties at 8 yards and never let the curl become an option. I said there would be rain and fog, and we got 68 and sunny, which was something I was entirely happy to have wrong.

Tempo is the part the Top Gun literature gets wrong. More plays is supposed to wear a defense out. What it actually does is hand the other team the same opportunity. The Ducks ran 86. Montana ran 83. That is not an advantage. That is two offenses taking turns.

And the one prediction I cut before it ran, because I am a coward. My only real concern for Saturday was that “it is an outside possibility Eli ties Reynolds Saturday for career TDs.” I took it out. Eli ended the Chase chase in week one anyway.

Neither Jameson nor Bender played, and Griffin Kollhoff kicked everything, sober, and hooked a 45-yard field goal anyway. Silver’s 50-yard field goal was his career long, and Everett O’Donnell’s 68-yard punt tied for the sixteenth-longest in school history. The Bad: a blocked field goal to end the first half.

Brother Index: Will Hendricks started on the line, Wyatt did not play. Confirmed 0, suspected 1, and one of the suspects played. Dave Applegate, Drake Minister of Culture, recorded no statistics, which is how you know the culture held.

Colonel Mustard and the Mustardettes deny takeoff

Colonel Mustard and the Mustardettes worked the control tower. That is the yellow hat crew, dubbed at last. The Top Gun Ducks radioed in 11 requests to land inside the ten. Negative, Ghost Rider. The pattern is full. The landing gear never came down.

Drake HC Matt Walker said at the podium: “It felt like from the 15 to the 15 the game was a little more even than the score indicated.” Still no points for yards, but I’ll keep checking.

Fifty-eight of Drake’s 86 snaps came more than forty yards out. They stayed on schedule on only 19 of those, a 32.7 percent success rate, and averaged 3.6 yards a snap. Success rate is just whether you gained enough to stay on schedule given the down and distance. 32.7 percent is not staying on schedule. 3.6 yards a snap is not moving it. They moved it some. They did not move it well.

The 67-yard pass came out of a quads formation they didn’t show last week. Then, third quarter, ball at our 4, too close for missiles, so they switched to guns. The other pilot took the stick: three straight Spellman keepers, 2 yards, 0 yards, 1 yard, and still couldn’t land it. Then the failed fourth-down pass after a false start by the QB, which I have not seen too many times. I did it once as a seventh-grade QB. You are the one who gives the snap count in the huddle, and then you forget it by the time you get to the line. It is not a good look.

I wrote Friday that if our four could not get home against their line I would start worrying about this season. The four got home, and they had help. We were a lot more multiple than the vanilla week-zero look, and we blitzed more, to good effect. Colonel Mustard mixed it up. Warzynski, who I think moves extremely well in the pocket, was limited to eight keepers for 27 yards, with the rush discipline intact all afternoon.

I was asking for more Styles Goodman last week, and I’m glad to learn Colonel Mustard is taking requests. Goodman and Tyler King announced their arrival to Grizzly football in Style, with three combined sacks and two forced fumbles, a touchdown drive coming off each. Tyler King put Riley Warzynski into a flat spin at our 19 and Zekiel Seumalo caught what came out; Styles Goodman did the same at the Drake 30 and Clay Oven hopped on it. An all-name team masterpiece in the backfield.

Talk to me, Goose.

Forty carries, not a single negative rush, and Gillman standing alone

The Griz had forty true rush attempts for 208 yards, 5.2 a carry, not one of them for more than thirteen yards, and not a single one of them lost a yard. The line got the push I was predicting and then some, posting 4.0 line yards a carry, a 95th percentile performance based on last season. Line yards are just the yards the offensive line is credited with creating before the back does anything on his own. 4.0 means they were moving people. What didn’t show up was the long carry I expected. That 5.2 was a steady push forward all day long.

The “Eli doesn’t get enough touches” chorus went quiet, for at least this week. Nineteen carries for 105 and three touchdowns, two catches with the 4th TD. Twenty-one touches on about 60 plays through three quarters, which is where his day ended. Right on pace with his 33%ish usage rate from last week. Nothing changed but the total play count. Will Pease get any apologies?

Ah Yat was great, and left a few throws out there

Ah Yat went 27 of 40 for 282, two touchdowns, no interceptions, no sacks, and was both very good and also left throws on the field.

There was no Ah Yat play-action bomb. His longest completion went 37 yards to Landon Ransom-Goelz, and the shot of the day was the 26-yard corner route to Brooks Davis for a touchdown, a dime, but no bomb. Four Montana drives started in Drake territory, and nobody throws it 60 yards from the 36.

The third touchdown should have been his. Paine owes Birdno a beer, or a Jameson Bender, depending on whether Tanner Huff is invited too. Put it back on the sheet and Ah Yat’s day is 28 of 40, 70 percent, three touchdowns.

Then the other half. Thirteen incompletions. A number of these were just off, typically low or a step behind. He threw to Davis on fourth-and-5 twice, the first an underthrow that Davis slid and caught anyway. The second, a slant in the fourth, was well behind and hit the grass.

The numbers say the same thing. 6.9 net yards a dropback, above the FCS single-game median of 6.1. 10.4 yards a completion, below the median of 11.9. Net yards a dropback is what you get per pass play after sacks. Yards a completion is how far the completed ones travel. He was well protected. He was efficient. He will only get better. Better than 70 percent and 3 TDs. Do we hear ourselves?

Zebras run wild

Sixteen penalties, 138 yards. The most flags and the most penalty yards in any Montana game I can find back to 2010, and the previous high in yards was 135, against Southern Utah in 2018. @ASchmidtacular asked Saturday night what year fills the blank after “the most for a Montana team since.” At least 2010, and I would bet longer.

By Sunday morning the word was undisciplined. It was everywhere. A penalty count is a box score, and box-score analysis is the worst kind, reductionist. I’ll sort the sixteen. But not today.

Here’s what I’ll say now. Should our guys be jumping offsides on third down when Drake did the same hard counts on film last week? No. Were the other flags all called right on Saturday? Debatable. Would they all be called by every crew in the conference? Unequivocally no. There are real and measurable differences between officiating crews in the Big Sky when it comes to judgment call penalties like pass interference and personal fouls. But that’s never been publicly tabulated and certainly doesn’t enter the “undisciplined” discourse.

I have been tabulating it. Five years of Big Sky crews, game by game, and the short version is that there are consistent differences, especially for the Griz. That is a feature for later, on its own.

False starts on Drake certainly were not being called, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Quite a few eGriz commenters were saying #77 was false starting all day. That’s tackle Drew Heiss, who drew only one false start call, at his own 1. I thought he false started the very next play too, and many others. A giant seven(forty)seven taxiing early over and over, along with receivers and tight ends jumping the snap more than a few times. A different officiating crew might and should have caught these, and if they had, the throngs may well be referring to Drake as the undisciplined team.

Rent-Free Bobcat of the Week

Montana State was asked to beat a Pioneer League team by 45.5 in the sportsbook and won by 27, 18.5 short. Butler, which beat an NAIA school 27-23 the week before, scored 24. Montana was asked to beat a Pioneer League team by 35.5 and won by 35. They scored 10.

While we are holding people to account: Southern Utah beat Weber State 47-42 in Cedar City, and Will Burns had himself a day, 10 of 18 for 146 and two touchdowns with one interception, thirteen carries for 148 and two more, one of them from 75 yards out. That week-zero win keeps looking better. Utah Tech, the week-zero win for Bozeman, lost 63-7 at BYU and comes to Missoula Saturday. I was not the one calling those two wins equal. I am just keeping score.

This week’s winner is @BobFrapplesMT, who spent Sunday morning, hours after his own team allowed 24 to Butler, in a Griz fan’s thread, self-declared “as a fan of an opposing team,” explaining that our 35-point win “was closer than the score indicated” because “Drake got into scoring position multiple times but rarely capitalized on it.” Yes, Bob, read the column, and you’d know that you only get points for scoring scores, not for getting close to scoring scores, which is what we predicted would happen.

It gets better, because he later let me know that to the contrary, the Cats’ own score was not as close as the numbers themselves indicated. So let me score that for you at home, per Bob: scores scored make for a score that’s not reflective of the score, but scores not scored make for a score closer than the scored score. One man, two scoreboards, both of which apparently tell him everything except the score.

Runner-up: I must admit I threw up a troll tuna tweet this Sunday to try and lure in a kitty or two, and it worked. Is this PEDs for the Rent-Free section? Perhaps.

I’m really going to have to do a better job figuring out what rent-free means. You come to my comments, on a post about things you said, and I owe you rent? Everything is rent-free these days. Here’s what I do know: one school sings about the other every week, so if we can’t collect rent, we’ll start collecting royalties. And the royalties are in arrears. Please deliver your check to the rev share: 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812.

Restore the Six, Entry No. 3

The other side has conceded. A Cat on eGriz during the Gold Rush game (I’m detecting a theme here), tallying the Brawl series and reaching 2011: “we’ll give you the vacated win as well or there will be a lot of crying going on if we don’t.” A Griz poster corrected the rest of his arithmetic, and he conceded that too: “the search engine I was using was probably built in missoula but UM students.” Bozeman counts it. Bozeman, unprompted, on our board, during its own game, counts it. When the team that lost the game counts the game, the only party still refusing is the NCAA. Give us the six back.

Most Unhinged eGriz Comment of the Week

A landslide, posted with the score 35-3: “Jesus man… KAY isn’t even All-Little Griz material right now. Straight up if it wasn’t for Eli Gillman the score would be 7-3 right now. This is why I wait to post in Monday because I’m not as angry.” Same poster, about twenty minutes earlier: “I have been SO ANGRY watching this game the dogs are hiding, the grandkids are hiding.” It was 35-3. Somebody let the dogs out.

The FTC Tally

Griz, after two home games: zero. Bozeman has not reported its Gold Rush numbers and will not, so I am crediting the Cats with three for the night on presumption, which is conservative, that our name was belted out loud to the melodic notes of that certain Billy Idol song. For our purposes, we are considering ESGGCG = FTG. Cats 3, Griz 0. Mony Mony.

That Guy Rocked, a double feature

The brief for this feature is guys history forgot. Week one, I am leading with two of the best players who ever put on the uniform. Way to go, Schuyler.

One. A Kalispell kid, Flathead High, three-time all-state. The school records he set there: 3,419 rushing yards, 4,410 all-purpose, 44 touchdowns. Notre Dame, Oregon State and Cal recruited him. He stayed, because he wanted to stay in Montana.

An absolute manchild, standing 5’11” and carrying 235 pounds, with long legs and a galloping running style that chewed up grass. He wasn’t just bigger than you, he was faster too. He played as a true freshman in 2003 and gained 590 yards, then 972 as a sophomore, with seventeen touchdowns, most in the league.

His junior year was 1,322 and a Walter Payton finalist nod, with 237 on 34 carries against Cal Poly, still the third-biggest rushing day of all time. Then a non-contact drill in August 2006 and his Achilles ruptured. He was still on the Payton watch list the next summer and he came back and ran for 1,132 and sixteen more TDs.

Nobody has carried it more for Montana, 806 carries. 4,018 yards. 50 rushing touchdowns, second in program history until early in the first quarter Saturday.

He was drafted in the 6th round and spent 6 seasons in the NFL. He is not in the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame, yet. He was my favorite player growing up, and the best back in program history until Mr. Gillman showed up. I definitely still have an autograph or two of his squirreled away in my parents’ basement. Yes, he is a legend. Somehow he got lost just a little too much along the way.

Lex Hilliard. That guy rocked.

Two. I ran into a giant of a man at halftime on Saturday. Another Flathead kid, four years ahead of Lex, six-foot-six, left tackle, a three-year starter from 2001 to 2003 on teams that went 35-8 and won the 2001 national championship. First-team All-Big Sky in 2002 and 2003, All-American both years, and the 2003 Steve Carlson team MVP, the only offensive lineman who has ever won it. Buffalo took him in the seventh round in 2004, and no Montana offensive lineman has been drafted since. In 2003, his last season and Lex’s first, he was opening the holes.

I told him he is the kind of lineman we measure this program against and that we need more of his types on our line. He mentioned his sons. I don’t quote a man I ran into at halftime, so I will say only that this column hopes the McFarland boys rock the maroon and silver one day, and soon. I didn’t mention it to him but there’s surely an autograph of his at my parents’ too. This legend, not really forgotten at all, went into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame in 2024, which is a fine place for a man who blocked for Lex to wait for him to join.

Dylan McFarland. That guy rocked.

Last Call

Three matters of stadium business.

First, the chant. A lot of you said it Saturday and you are absolutely correct: we cannot be starting the Montana–Grizzlies chant while our offense is on the field.

Second, am I losing it or has it been two games with nary a note played from our stadium mainstay: Cotton Eyed Joe? The Department tried phasing it out a couple years ago. Kent, do you really want to start getting weekly emails from me again about Swedish novelty Eurodance? Play the song.

Third, third quarter late return, we have to admit we have a problem. Hi, my name is Schuyler, and I did not make it back into the stadium on time when Drake was moving the ball after half. Three pass interference flags in eight snaps, Drake at our 25, then at our 4, then at our 1, and our school’s own game story describing the building as “the quiet stadium.” I was part of the quiet. I had a lecture drafted for you on this subject. It is now a confession. The first step is admitting we have a problem, and the second step is Saturday, first series of the second half. I will be in my seat. I will save yours.

And a programming note for the hundreds of Missoula QB Club members who have never used Zoom: this week’s meeting is virtual only. The mute button is the one with the microphone on it. Make sure there’s a line through it. I’m sure only about six of you will get it wrong. That’s ok, last week we got to learn what one member’s options were for dinner. What were they? I can’t tell you. What happens at QB Club stays at QB Club.

Go Griz.