Monte against Louie the Lumberjack, three rounds.

Round one. Louie was named in 1988 after the song "Louie Louie," which NAU's own history page credits to "The Kingman." The Kingsmen recorded it. Kingman is a town. Their #23 Kruz Yocum is from the town, maybe they think he wrote it. Monte was named after the state, and the state has never been confused with a town.

Round two. There are two 25-foot Louie statues donated to NAU in 1973 and moved to the Skydome in 1979 right after somebody stole one of the axes. The indoor one was decapitated in October 2018, while it was in storage, and NAU said it was "very disappointed that the Louie statue was disturbed." The Park Service puts an adult grizzly at 8 feet upright, 17 short of the statues but well within reach of a head in storage. I’m not accusing anyone, but Monte, remember, you have the right to remain silent.

Round three. Louie's job description, NAU's mascot appearance policy, says he "may not be in the suit for more than 45 consecutive minutes" and gets "a 15 minute break every 45 minutes in a private area." By his own rules Louie is in the private area by the mid second quarter, suit off, taking his break. NAU's student-records portal is also named LOUIE, and goes down Sundays from 4 to 8 a.m., so every Louie in Flagstaff is taking breaks. Monte stays in the suit. Win by default.

Grades are PFN's through Oct. 3; everything else is six games of play-by-play and the official books.

Sports Bet Montana has Montana by 6.5 with a total of 57.5, as of Thursday, and Kalshi, which is the national line in effect, has 4.7.

The Bobby Alert is the weekly sweep of the other roster and staff for anyone named Bob, with an alert level at the end. No Bob on the roster, no Bob on the staff, and the nearest misses are a tight end, #85 Jaxen and Ben, a wide receiver and an equipment GA, last name Robinson, which is a Rob with a son attached.

Head coach Brian Wright's bio says he won "two Big Sky titles in 2010 and 2011" as Montana State's offensive coordinator, under a head coach named Robert W. Ash. The second of those was a share with Montana, which the bio does not mention. Give us those 6 games back!

We continue the transitive Bobby with Aman Anand, their special teams coordinator, who began under Bobby Wilder at Old Dominion. And from the census below, NAU's #2 Donivan Dixon's father played quarterback for the Billings Outlaws in 2005, splitting time with a man named Bob Bees. Say it out loud. The bylaws are written for one Bobby at a time, and Billings had a one-man plural in 2005. I'm not sure how to rate a multi-Bobby man.

Level zero on the roster. Residue in Des Moines, at Old Dominion and in Bozeman, and the one-man-many-Bobby concern.

Bill Connelly's five factors are the frame this column runs every matchup through. Success rate is staying on schedule: half the yards you need on first down, seven-tenths on second, all of it on third or fourth. Explosive rate is how often a snap goes for a chunk. Finishing drives is points per trip once you cross the opponent's 40. Field position is where the drives start. Turnovers are turnovers, with the fumbles discounted, because who lands on the ball is luck.

NAU's defense allows a success on 52.1 percent of snaps, which is worse than 97 percent of FCS. Montana's offense succeeds on 49.1, better than 95 percent. Nothing else on the chart matters as much as those two bars standing next to each other. Their only column is turnovers. Sixteen takeaways in total. Seven of the ten are fumbles that bounced their way, two more than you’d expect. Nine interceptions, which is impressive, but six of the sixteen takeaways came in one game. Ah Yat threw one on the first snap of the season and has apparently decided that was enough. Four rows are maroon. The fifth is mostly luck.

The all-name team, which is the roster read for sound instead of for football. Shoes Brinkley, free safety. Rocky Jack, a Lumberjack named Jack. Noble Young-Blackgoat, the one Flagstaff kid on the roster. Jeter Purdy, a receiver and punter in high school. #11 Deuce Zimmerman, receiver, and also #11 Ziggy Loa, defensive line. A Deuce Ziggy on 11. I don't know what that means, but it sounds provocative. Kino Lorona, from Winkelman, AZ. Cannon Garday and Gunnar Parra, the Lumberjack artillery room. Joey Stout, standing a brutish 5'9" and the man they throw to most. Mattis Karrasch, left tackle, Hamburg, Germany, gets his "last name: rolled 'r'," and he’s allowed nine pressures so far, so Tyler King will be rolling too.

Jayden Baer, defensive line, so we won't be the only ones on the field. The roster's 9 reads "Retired in Honor of Archie Amerson," position RB, class "Redshirt," so Archie can still dust off the 9 and come back for one more.

The staff page carries two pass game coordinators, DiMinno's "Passing Game Coordinator" and Brown's "Pass Game Coordinator," so when the throw game breaks down there is a meeting. Brown's bio still says he still reports to "current NAU defensive coordinator Adam Clark," who is not on the staff. Should be a short meeting.

Montanans on the other roster. One, the aforementioned #2 Donivan Dixon, a true freshman who went to high school in Scottsdale, co-No. 2 quarterback, and since Monday the listed backup holder. His also mentioned father Chris Dixon threw his 500th career touchdown pass in 2012 and won three championships with the Outlaws, and coached Billings Senior in 2006 and 2007. Two more by way of Rocky Mountain College in Billings: #1 Darius Haskin, a First Team All-Frontier receiver and #36 Trey Smith, a corner.

#6 Ty Pennington is 63.5 percent, 9 touchdowns and 3 interceptions, a D2 transfer who followed Wright from Pittsburg State, and he has never played against Montana; PJ London, now their assistant quarterbacks coach, started the 2024 game. The offense is Pennington in a way the box score undersells. Six of every ten snaps end with him throwing it or carrying it. He has run it 46 times, and on third down the run is his more than anybody's, 11 of their 23. On third down they go to the quarterback, the slot and the tight end. That is a staff that trusts one man on the down that decides drives, and it has been right to.

Of 182 throws, 148 were tagged short, with 13 mid and 21 deep. The short ones go to #3 Joey Stout more than anyone, 49 targets, and the targets have been worth 5.8 yards apiece without a touchdown among them. #89 Jeter Purdy, tight end, gets the long yards, 12.3 per target. Seven of his catches have gone 20 or more. PFN has him the sixth-best tight end in FCS, and he is the one Lumberjack pass catcher deserving extra attention.

Third-and-long is where the plan breaks, because a short throw does not get you to the sticks. On third-and-long against FCS, their pass has stayed on schedule three times in 25, 12%. A hurry-up offense did show up at Montana State and Idaho State and nowhere before, two games is not a tendency, but we should be ready for it.

#10 Quran Gossett has 89 carries. He is at 4.4 a carry with three fumbles, and he gets stuffed on one carry in five. CFBD's expected points put every one of his carries in the red, −0.097 a play. So every time he's carried the ball its been reducing their expected total score. They hand it to him anyway, more than anybody.

#7 Kenveon Stone is at +0.392 and 59.5 percent on half the work, 7.2 a carry, with six touchdowns. No fumbles. Stuffed on one carry in ten. Then the fourth quarter arrives and the staff remembers who he is: 19 of Stone's 42 carries have come in the fourth.

Wright, after Idaho State: "We want to eat clock and run the football when we need to and finish the drive in the end zone." Get a lead, give it to Stone, go for it on fourth-and-short, never see the kicker. They are 4-2 doing it. The plan has one moving part, and the moving part is the lead.

Colonel Mustard and the Mustardettes are the new defensive staff in the yellow hats and the defense they coach, and the Colonel is the man calling it, Eric Sanders, our D coordinator. With the starters in, his group has allowed a success on 41.5 percent of snaps. A big play gets through about one snap in nineteen. Tyler King gets pressure on 13.8 percent of his rushes and has five sacks, and nobody else on the front is close to him. Their tackles have given up 25 of the 40 pressures PFN charges to their linemen. We could see a lot of the King in Pennington’s court.

But I mean pressure, not necessarily sacks. Pennington has been sacked only about one dropback in twenty. He gets the ball out fast on first and second down and runs a lot on third. The job for our team is rush lane discipline. An end who gets upfield on third-and-3 is the end who gets to watch Pennington run past him. Keep the lanes, tackle him at the sticks, and put a body on Purdy the instant the ball arrives, because YAC has been his game. We can live with Stout going short all day (definitely not a 5’9” joke). He hasn’t scored on a throw to him yet. My one concern is our deep middle, as it has been all year. Where Pennington throws is on the grid below, and the one zone where our starters have leaked is the one he likes best, deep down the middle.

Our front has been getting guys back and performing well. This Saturday, our concern will be the back end; it’s unclear how many of the guys who have gone down the last couple of weeks will be available. More than likely we’ll be relying on some young guys to step in and step up.

I made Colonel Mustard a Cheat Sheet

#5 Deliyon Freeman, in September, after six takeaways against Incarnate Word: "Coach (Trenton) Greene has brought a very violent mentality to our defense and he reiterates that takeaways are the number one thing… No matter how many yards they get, we're not going to let them score." They’ve taken my thesis to heart: you don’t get points for yards. But how I mean it, is your defense bows up in the fringe and red zone, forcing a third or fourth down stop. How they mean it is forcing a takeaway. One of those is durable, and the other relies more on luck.

The whole matchup is one row on the PFN team page: they take the ball away on one drive in five, and nothing else on their defensive page is good. Opponents convert 45 percent of their third and fourth downs. The yards are real. The front gives up 3.83 line yards a carry, worse than 97 percent of FCS. With the sacks pulled out, opponents run for 6.01 a carry on them. Montana State ran for 287 on it at 8.7 a carry.

Two-thirds of the red-zone trips against them become touchdowns, so the stopping them inside the twenty piece of the thesis hasn’t held up. They are allowing the yards because they can’t stop anyone, relying on turnover luck to get stops. Against the line we bring, and with #10 behind it, the yards will come fast. Eli has lost two fumbles in his career, and Keali’i has thrown one interception all season, with only 0.5% of his throws interception-worthy. Relying on turnovers for a victory on Saturday is a low-likelihood strategy.

Shoes Brinkley, in August: "The first thing they're going to notice is a damn good D-line." Six games in, it has 11 sacks. PFN grades the line 103rd of 122 FCS fronts. #35 Devin Murphy is the only regular who gets pressure on more than one rush in ten. #8 Jaiden Letua, the blitzing linebacker who got home most, has been off the depth chart and out of the box score since Sept. 19, and NAU has not said why. I am not going to say why either, because I don't know.

Across from that is a Montana line that has allowed five sacks all year. Jack D'Ambra has allowed one pressure in 347 snaps. PFN grades the whole line fourth in FCS, four of the five starters sit in the top seven at their position in the country, and it allows pressure half as often as NAU's line does. Sam Herder called it “the best Montana offensive line we've seen in quite some time.” Griz Nation can agree on that.

#3 Jahaad Fort is the one to leave alone. He is a captain with three interceptions, and quarterbacks who throw at him come away with a rating that would get them benched. Rating allowed is the passer rating one man gives up when the ball comes his way, and 90 is neutral. Fort is well under it, and everyone else on the back end is over it. #21 Jaelen Collins has allowed 12 catches on 13 targets, which is a completion percentage and also an invitation. #4 Michael Beresford is the other corner we should see a lot of. #22 Bryson Torrie, when he is the one in coverage, owns the worst line on the defense. #28 Malaki Te'o at linebacker misses 15 percent of his tackles. Freeman is out for the season, per the Arizona Daily Sun. #2 Ammon Allen is back from a knee at linebacker, and the grades like him, 10th among FCS linebackers on 65 snaps.

This should be a similar game plan to what we did to UC Davis, honestly. Run at a front that gets moved, throw at the backup corner and the linebackers, and let the line keep the pocket clean. That one ended 62-22.

First down is ours. The run there has been the best thing about this offense all season, and Saturday it meets a porous front. I’ll repeat myself here, as it’s the metric of the week: on standard downs, the downs where the whole playbook is open, their defense allows success 58.2 percent of the time, worse than 97 percent of FCS, and our offense succeeds on 58.5, better than 98 percent. Eli Gillman is at 7.4 a carry. Eleven touchdowns. The No. 1 back in FCS by grade, with a line in front of him that is near the top in line yards per rush, 3.49, better than 93 percent of FCS. That just means they’re opening holes and on average he’s not getting hit until he’s into the second level. Third-and-short is the same story. The one down this offense loses is third-and-long, and the way to never see it is to win first down.

Keep throwing to Brooks Davis. Nobody has covered him. He has 73 targets, more than a third of the entire team, for 772 yards. Ah Yat is at 1,595 yards with 14 touchdowns and a clean pocket, and Saturday he gets the clean pocket again. The grid below says where: short right is where we already throw most, and it is the short zone they defend worst. Deep left has paid us the most all year.

Then hold the ball. Seven of the ten fumbles in their games have gone to them. Montana has given it away five times all season. A team that lives on the other guy's mistakes needs the other guy to make some. Don't.

A cheat sheet where to attack for Coach Pease

NAU's own notes say Wright is "not afraid to go for it on fourth down," and count 63 attempts since he took over, first in the Big Sky. Inside the 40 on fourth-and-3 or less he has never kicked. #99 Francisco Orduno Jr. is a true freshman who has made the long one and missed the short ones, and you can see why his coach stopped asking him to try. He has put 31 of 32 kickoffs in the end zone, which is what happens at 7,000 feet. Jo Silver is 4 of 7, and his misses are the long ones.

The fake field goal. Fourth-and-5 at the Idaho State 30, first play of the fourth quarter, field-goal unit on the field. The holder, who is a quarterback, threw it to Purdy for 21. Dixon is now the listed backup holder. The bylaws on fakes are the bylaws on everything else: watch the one guy on the field who has no reason to be there.

#13 Lindsey Graves, another true freshman, averages 29.36 a kickoff return and took his second career touch 100 yards. #91 Sebastian Miles was promoted at punter this week and is at 45.20 on 15 punts. Our Everett O'Donnell is at 43.2 and has dropped nine inside the 20. Cover Graves, protect the kicks, and let their coach go for it, because he will. Between the 40 and the 20 has been our defense’s most successful area of the field.

The Brother Index counts the brothers on each roster, under rules I make up, in which twins count double. NAU carries two Singletons at safety, #7 Braylon, a sophomore, and #17 Myles, a redshirt freshman, both from Culver City, and their bios carry the same sentence word for word, but don’t mention each other. Suspected, but unconfirmed. Gardners, #83 Braylon and #64 Jace, both from Peoria and the same high school, suspected, which also makes two Braylons on one roster. The bylaws don’t supply bonus points for cross-brother repeated Christian names. The staff has four pairs with the roster, none confirmed: Gabe and Dom Sema, Nason and Kendall Coleman, Travis and Claire Gutierrez, Jaxen and Ben Robinson. Noble Young-Blackgoat's brother Prayer is a linebacker at Arizona State, noted and not counted, because the Sun Devils won’t be on the field.

Week 6 Brother Index: Northern Arizona 0 confirmed, 2 suspected, one in Tempe. Griz 4 confirmed and 3 suspected. Culver City can appeal.

The portal target is a player on the other team I’d like to see in maroon and silver next season, and this week it is the one his own staff keeps on the bench until the fourth quarter. #7 Kenveon Stone, running back, Kansas City, Mo., Staley High, where he ran for 1,300 yards as a senior. He goes by KV.

He is the back on their roster that the numbers like and the play sheet doesn't. He does not fumble, he does not get stuffed, and he scores, and he gets the ball once his coaches have run out of other ideas, which is usually only around the time they have a lead.

Here's the deal, KV: our back is the best in FCS and carries it like it, and whoever is next in that room will get fed. Four of the linemen on our top-rated line will be back next year. We don't wait for the fourth quarter to find out who our best back is.

Sixteen takeaways, second in all of D1, behind only New Mexico. The nine interceptions are spread across six defenders. The secondary was doing this before Greene arrived; it had 15 in 2024. A pair of our corners have been thrown at for ratings of 128.8 and 124.8, and Pennington's short game is built to find exactly that. He needs a cushion, we have been giving them out, and our secondary may be short-handed Saturday.

They hold the ball. NAU holds it 31:10 a game. The drive that ended the Idaho State game was twelve runs and 7:06 off the clock. A team that can do that with a lead does not need the lead to be big, and it does not need the lead to be earned.

They win at home. Wright is 11-2 in the Skydome. Nine straight home wins last year, a program record, and Saturday is their first home game since Sept. 12, a month of waiting for a crowd that has not had much to do.

Their defensive coordinator Trenton Greene coached Montana State's corners in both of last year's wins over us, and across those two games Ah Yat averaged 5.9 an attempt with as many interceptions as touchdowns. But 3 of those corners are now playing for Power 4 teams. He has the film, but not the personnel.

NAU covers, 3-0 against the number as an underdog and 5-1 overall. Montana is 2-4. The last word goes to Wright, this week: "There's one team in the league right now … that doesn't have any Big Sky losses and that's the team coming here that we're about to play."

Players play. Coaches coach. Ah Yat has thrown one interception since the national anthem of the opener, and the secondary that catches everything has not yet faced an offense like Montana's, the offensive line especially, outside of the Big 12’s Arizona.

NAU's own trends sheet says Wright is 10-0 when the Lumberjacks do not turn it over. It also says he is 0-6 when they allow 200 rushing yards. I will be surprised if the Griz do not exceed that number. We are built to exploit a defense like NAU. Bobby 3.0, which is what this column calls head coach Bobby Kennedy, the fourth Bob[by] to run the program (Hauck counts twice and we don’t talk about Bob-who-must-not-be-named), said after Northern Colorado that "good teams win on the road, and that will be my message this week." It was the message in Davis too.

My prediction: something weird happens early, because it always does there. A short field off a shanked punt, or a Purdy catch that goes 40 after a missed tackle, and they lead. Pennington throws short all afternoon and the Griz mostly keep them wrapped up. I’ve been predicting the other team throws us an interception in every game and it has only happened twice, so this week I have learned my lesson and I absolutely definitely predict we do not get any interceptions whatsoever from the quarterback who has averaged more than one turnover-worthy throw a game.

Wright goes for it three times inside our 40 and gets stymied twice. Orduno misses one from inside 40 and is not asked again. Eli runs through, over, and around them on first, second and third down, behind our line that is blowing them off the ball. Davis continues his 100-yard game streak, accruing catches whenever Collins and Beresford are near. Ah Yat has a clean pocket all day, and delivers another dialed in and efficient performance, including a couple long ones. I am also predicting no quarterbacks are ejected for targeting.

A coin that comes up heads seven times in ten through September is still a coin in October. The more you flip it, the more it regresses to the mean. The house always wins in the long run. Saturday the luck runs out.

Good Guys 48, Northern Arizona 31.

Go Griz.