Monte against Joe Vandal, three rounds.

Round one. The Big Sky ran a Mascot Challenge in August, a fan vote, and Joe Vandal beat Monte in the semifinal, 53.1 to 46.9. Monte had won the first three of these. Joe then beat Champ of Montana State in the final for his second straight title, which makes Idaho two for two against Bozeman this fall. The league's release says Joe "once again captured the hearts and minds of a nation." A nation. Round to Joe, by ballot.

Round two. Joe Vandal started as Bill Currie, a yell leader in the late 1950s, in a homemade mask his mother made in the art department. In the early 2000s Idaho replaced him with an inflatable suit, nobody could stand it, and the inflatable was "ceremonially deflated to reveal the classic Joe underneath." Monte’s never been deflated.

Round three, the name. In 1917 a student writer named Jazz McCarty wrote that the basketball team "vandalized" its opponents, and it stuck. The original Vandals sacked Rome in 455 AD. These Vandals haven’t sacked much, only eight in six games. Monte, winner.

Grades are PFN's through Oct. 3 and the charting is PFF's through Oct. 10; everything else is six or seven games of play-by-play and the official books.

Success rate, the first of Bill Connelly's five factors, is whether a snap kept you on schedule: half the distance on first down, seven-tenths of it on second, the sticks on third or fourth. Explosive rate is the share of snaps that go for a big gain. Finishing drives is how many points you get each time you cross the other team's 40. Field position is where the drives start. Turnovers are turnovers, with the fumbles marked down, because a bouncing ball has no allegiance.

Our offense stays on schedule on 50.0 percent of its snaps, better than 97 percent of FCS. Idaho's defense allows 49.8. Their drives also start 8.9 yards farther from the end zone than their opponents' do. The numbers are directional. The shape says our offense against their defense is the mismatch of the day.

No Bob on the roster, none on the staff. Idaho has #89 Ryan Jezioro, a receiver whose bio says "He is the son of Amy and Bob Sap." Thank God it's not Bob Sapp with 2 p’s and thank god Ryan doesn’t play D-line. It counts.

Transitive residue: Their offensive coordinator Ian Shoemaker's first job, Western Washington in 1998, was under a head coach named Rob Smith. Tyler Paopao and Loren Endsley, their receivers coach and their line coach, both worked for Bob Nielson at South Dakota, and Paopao was hired there the same day as a Rob. Idaho's 2011 head coach was Robb Akey, hired by athletic director Rob Spear, a Robb hired by a Rob, and Rob is Bob if you squint, the most Bob one hiring has produced.

Level one, on the strength of a transitive bio line.

Montanans on the Idaho roster: zero. Thirty-one Vandals are from Washington and twenty-three are from Idaho, so the University of Idaho recruits Washington better than it recruits Idaho, and Washington State, eight miles down the road, has noticed. Montana, for the record, has three Idahoans: Luke Flowers of Rigby, who backs up Keali'i, and Wyatt Sandford and Jace Eastlick of Coeur d'Alene.

#51 Shepard Fish, defensive line. I have nothing to add and neither do you. #16 Blitz McCarty is a freshman quarterback who hasn't played a snap, so Idaho is saving its only Blitz, and we'll get to that. #28 Ferrari Miller, running back. #37 Ocean Taufa. #98 Hikifo'Ou Maile and #55 Ma'ake Apo, 330 and 340 pounds, which is 670 pounds of apostrophe. #44 Cruz Hepburn, linebacker: half Tom, half Audrey. #91 Cameron Pope punts and holds, and three kicks sailed wide last weekend out of the Pope's own hands. I don't know who you pray to about that. They might give backup quarterback #5 Holden Bea a shot at the job. #58 Kingston Kerkhoff. #34 Geovoney Burks. #26 Tsiyown Lowery, pronounced however he tells you.

The staff. Lee Stalker runs the defense, which has one interception in six games, so the title is more of an aspiration. Ian Shoemaker runs the offense, and after 3.4 a carry the run game needs resoling. VJ Malo coaches a defensive line with eight sacks in six games. He had ten and a half by himself at Portland State in 2021, so the best pass rusher will be in a headset. Joe Begnal is listed as "Idaho's Special Team's Coordinator," which does make me wonder if he took a wrong turn heading to Pocatello.

#3 Joshua Wood is a senior by way of Fresno State, and he is the Idaho offense in both directions. He has thrown for 1,703 yards, a career-high 383 of them at Weber State last Saturday in a loss. Goal to go, the ball goes to the quarterback more often than not. Wood ran four of them in against Abilene Christian in one afternoon. We just watched Ty Pennington do that to us in Flagstaff, and Idaho watched it too. #1 Israel Carter is the package quarterback, and when he jogs on, the ball is going on the ground. The backs are an afterthought, and none of them is over 3.8 a carry.

Colonel Mustard is our D coordinator Eric Sanders and the Mustardettes are his defensive staff in yellow hats, and their first job Saturday is the one we flunked in Flagstaff: fit the quarterback before anybody else, keep the lanes, and tackle him at the sticks instead of two yards past them.

Wood is pressured as often as almost any quarterback in FCS, and the pressure takes 4.42 seconds to arrive, third-slowest in the country. A 4.42 is a great forty time and a very long time to hold a football. He holds it, slides, and throws late to #4 Tony Harste, who is averaging 18.2 a catch, or to #89 Ryan Jezioro, who went 75 yards on Idaho's first snap against Montana State. Our thinned secondary is going to be asked to cover for four and a half seconds, over and over, unless we are ready to bring more pressure, which I think should be the plan.

Their first-down run loses more often than it wins, and Shoemaker calls it on about half his first downs anyway. So a lot of Vandal drives open second-and-long, and from there they get to third-and-long and turn into the best version of themselves, nearly always a pass, on schedule more often than 85 percent of FCS offenses. Third-and-short is the down they can't solve, so on third-and-2 they would honestly rather have third-and-8.

The fourth quarter is a throwing quarter for them, and the no-huddle went from one snap in seven last year to seven in ten this year without the pace changing at all. Idaho has had the lead for nine offensive snaps all season, so nobody knows what the Vandals do with one, including the Vandals.

We wreck 6.9 percent of opponent snaps, and that is worse than 89 percent of FCS. Disruption rate is just the share of the other guy's snaps we ruin: a sack, a run for a loss, an interception, a fumble we land on. One game in seven got to the FCS median, and it was Utah Tech. Tyler King is our star, with 18 pressures and five and a half sacks.

Idaho's offense is at its best on passing downs (a down following an unsuccessful play), and so, it turns out, are we: on passing downs we allow a success less often than two-thirds of FCS does. Where we leak is first-and-10, where throws on us work more than half the time with the starters in. That is a strange defense, fine once it's in trouble and in trouble when it's fine. I wrote Sunday that the shell is the scheme and the fix is variance, and Wood is the quarterback a shell was built to lose to, because he waits longer than the shell does. On their first third-and-7 of the day I want Tyler King over the right tackle with a linebacker walked down behind him, and I want Wood looking at both of them when the ball is snapped.

I made Colonel Mustard a Cheat Sheet

In the first quarter Idaho's defense is the worst in the country. The first snap of a drive against them is close to a free play, and a third of the big plays they have allowed came on one. After halftime they tighten up considerably, and the third quarter is their best, so the halftime speech works. It's just an hour late. Score early, and score on the first play.

Outside is where the yards come from. #45 Mitchel Jaskowiak and #98 Hikifo'Ou Maile are their two best run defenders and both of them live inside, so runs up the middle get stopped like a real defense is out there and runs around it don’t get stopped. Runs to the offense's right average 10.2 a carry against them, 7.4 if you take away the two Weber State runs that are still going. We run left on 17 percent of our carries, and the ones we do run go 9.3.

Eli Gillman is the top-graded back in FCS, and when the game is live he touches it on a third of our snaps. He is 87 all-purpose yards from Marc Mariani's record, and seven touchdowns tie Cooper Kupp's Big Sky career mark. Idaho has missed 83 tackles in six games, and Eli averages 12.9 yards after he catches a pass, so I'd like to see him catch some too. The Vandals can do their tackling drills on Sunday.

Nobody on Idaho's defense wins more than 7.1 percent of his rushes, and fifty-eight pressures in six games have become seven sacks. Their defensive coordinator is named Stalker, and his pressure arrives 3.58 seconds after the snap, slower than the FCS median, which is not stalking so much as following at a respectful distance. #45 Jaskowiak leads them with eleven pressures, seven of them in one night against Montana State and none at Weber State the week after, so he is either a big-game player or he just doesn't care for Bozeman. He lines up in the B-gap over our center and left guard on nearly every snap, and our center is Jack D'Ambra, who is PFN's second-rated center in the FCS. #44 Cruz Hepburn has rushed twenty times for one pressure, and I'd let him keep coming.

Blitz Keali'i Ah Yat and he throws touchdowns. Against the blitz he has ten of them and no interceptions, with the ball out in 2.48 seconds, which beats Stalker's rush to the spot by more than a second. Idaho blitzes about one dropback in five. Blitzing Keali'i has been a donation. Both of his interceptions came off play action, which is the one thing he does worse than the rest, and Idaho has given up five touchdowns to it. Every screen thrown at Idaho this year has been caught. That is a screen door, and we throw a good screen.

Slot receivers, tight ends and backs have caught twelve of the fifteen touchdown passes Idaho has allowed. The man standing in the door is #18 Deion Gunn, the nickel, with two touchdowns allowed and no breakups. Behind him, #44 Hepburn leads the team in tackles and has allowed a perfect passer rating in coverage. Every FCS team to play Idaho has lived over the short middle, and the intermediate middle behind Hepburn has been better still, 12 of 16. We throw there on fewer than one attempt in ten and are 13 of 18 when we do. Throw there more.

#3 Hysan Dalton has not been thrown at in three games, and I'd keep it that way. #7 Kinsey is the other one to leave alone. #5 Mika Roberson gave up nearly everything thrown at him in the first two games, and Idaho has since moved him into the box. Outside, #6 Tyrane Stewart gave up two touchdowns to Montana State and #21 Bivins has not been much better, so the outside is fine too. The inside is just better.

Brooks Davis takes nearly a third of our targets, and when Northern Arizona put two men on him at the Skydome, everyone else ate: the throws to the other guys worked 63 percent of the time. Reese Brooks has eleven targets, no drops, and a better rating when thrown to than anybody on the team not named Gillman. One more touchdown pass and Keali'i has fourth place on Montana's career list to himself, past Cole Bergquist, and I expect he collects it before the band plays at halftime.

Then take the shots. Deep balls against Idaho are 9 of 27, a one-in-three proposition, and four of the nine that landed were touchdowns. The deep ball has been the one thing left to fix on this offense all year, and a secondary that gives up half its passing yards after the catch is the place to fix it. On the short field, from the 20 in to the 11 we run two-thirds of the time, and that stretch of grass is where Idaho's pass defense is at its most generous. Inside the 10 they get stubborn.

After a first-down run we run again on second down 62.7 percent of the time, well above the FCS median. A failed first-down run and another run is two runs and a prayer, and it puts us on third-and-7, which is the one down Idaho actually defends. Third-and-4 to 6 is where drives live against them, and anything longer is where they go to die. The difference between those two downs is one good second-down call. And on third-and-long, the throws we've made short of the sticks have worked 2 of 22 times. Short of the sticks is a punt with extra steps. Throw it past them.

A cheat sheet where to attack for Coach Pease

Thomas Ford is a special teams coach by trade, and the last time Idaho won in Missoula he was running Idaho's special teams. In 2022 his unit forced a safety on a punt, blocked an extra point and recovered an onside kick to open the second half. Joe Begnal runs them now and was, in Ford's words, "my right-hand man in 2022." Ford is 1-2 against Montana on Idaho staffs, and the one win was his unit's. We just lost a football game to a kickoff. Kick it out of the end zone. I said it Sunday and I'll say it until it happens.

#48 Owen Forsman went to Ogden 8 for 9. Jo Silver has made both of his tries from 50 and nothing from farther, and nobody has asked him for one from the forties all season. Everett O'Donnell has dropped ten punts inside the 20 and Pope two, so the punting is ours, and Pope has his hands full holding anyway.

Idaho has #16 Javen Augustus, from Coastal Carolina, and #10 Jamarion Augustus, from Northern Iowa, both defensive ends, both seniors, both from Montgomery, Alabama, an inch and a pound apart. Neither bio mentions the other. Suspected, strongly, and if either Augustus wants to settle it my inbox is open. #19 Brayden Rice and #24 Jayden Rice-Claiborne have nothing on paper but the rhyme. Idaho's #43 Nikko Speer is from Camas, Washington, and our Garrett Speer is from Portland, a river apart: cross-roster, unconfirmed. Alex and Jermell Green are not brothers. Alex's bio says he has a sister, and her name is not Jermell.

Week 7 Brother Index: Idaho 0 confirmed, 1 suspected, 1 across the rosters. Griz 4 confirmed and 3 suspected, where it has stood. Advantage Griz.

The portal target is the one Vandal I'd steal, and this week it's #4 Tony Harste, junior receiver from Puyallup, Washington, who averages 18.2 a catch for a quarterback who spends every third down running for his life. Six catches for 151 against Abilene Christian. Six for 96 and two scores in the Ogden wind. He is the 13th-graded receiver in FCS and nobody outside Moscow knows it.

Tony, here's the pitch. Our quarterback has the cleanest pocket in the country, and the receiver across from Brooks Davis gets what Ransom-Goelz got in Flagstaff: single coverage and the football.

Two weeks ago Idaho beat the No. 1 team in the country. Down 34-20 in the fourth quarter at Montana State, it scored with one second on the clock and ran in the two-point conversion with zeros on it. Idaho was a 14.5-point underdog that day, and it was the program's first win over a top-ranked team.

Wood has thrown for 300 or more in four of six games. The offense is worth 7.51 net yards a dropback, better than 86 percent of FCS. He is pressured constantly and late, which has taught him to throw out of a collapsing pocket, and he has seven rushing touchdowns. We just watched Pennington throw for 322 and run for four scores on us. #4 Harste and #89 Jezioro each have a 75-yard catch this season, and they are running at a secondary that has started ten different players in seven games.

Our defense disrupts almost nothing, and a quarterback who holds the ball is exactly what a shell was built to lose to. Ford's special teams have won in this building. Idaho's four FCS losses were by four, six, two and eleven points, and Massey rates its schedule the third-hardest in FCS, so 1-5 undersells them.

Everything that has beaten us against an FCS team this year was a bounce: a kickoff return, a hook-and-ladder, a receiver throwing a touchdown pass, two of our scores wiped off the board. Call it variance. Idaho's defense doesn't produce any. A pass rush that arrives after the ball has left. A run defense Weber State ran through for 307.

My prediction: Wood gets his, somewhere in the 300s, most of it late in the down against a defense still sitting back more than I'd like, and he runs one in. Harste gets behind somebody once and I say a word I can't print. The Mustardettes send a fifth man more than they did in Flagstaff and get Wood on the ground three times, Tyler King in the frame on two. Eli goes over 150 before the fourth quarter starts and takes Mariani's record on a screen with nobody near him. Keali'i spends the first half attacking the slot and the second half over the middle, and Hepburn makes a great many tackles after allowing the catch. Reese Brooks catches a touchdown nobody covers, and when they roll two to Davis, Landon catches the next one. Silver finally gets asked for one from the forties and makes it. Ford tries an onside kick in the third quarter, down three scores, because he has to.

Idaho has spent all week thinking about us. Fair enough. I'll give them Saturday, from one o'clock until about four, and then I'll go back to thinking about Bozeman.

Good Guys 48, Idaho 27.

Go Griz.