Week Zero for Everybody

My first dispatch of the season comes with a disclosure: the back half of Saturday night got a little fuzzy on me, courtesy of the new 9% huckleberry spritzes they’re now selling at Washington-Grizzly. Or perhaps the fuzziness was courtesy of a persistent wind that kept blowing directly into my eyes. Whatever the case, Daddy (shoutout to my 12-week-old daughter who attended her first game!) is going to have to recalibrate his pace on those spritzes relative to the 4% Arnie Palmies.

It was week zero for Griz fans too.

Week zero for the Griz team brought a lot of new. New head coach. New defensive staff (in yellow hats, which I don’t like — but at least they aren’t green, and if you know why, you lived through the Bobby Oh-No era too). New offensive and defensive lines. One new concept I liked: 300 pound defensive tackles.

The start of Bobby 3.0 was not awe-inspiring. It also wasn’t meaningfully different from the sluggish UND and Central Washington outings we survived last season, which we all recall ended up 13-2 and a No. 3 finish with losses only to the eventual champs. Many of us carry a sore taste about who that was, but absent the who, it was an excellent season. I’m objective about it, or at least I can say I am, because it’s my blog. Get your own.

A lackluster week zero game, after a reduced-contact camp, with a host of new guys that had me frequently reaching for my roster, against a team whose quarterback turned out to be a problem, is not cause for concern.

About that quarterback: Will Burns, the juco transfer (by way of Texas Tech and Golden West College), lived up to his name, burning us at will: 24 of 34 for 251, plus 15 carries for 119 on the ground. He was the biggest question mark SUU brought into Missoula and he answered it in the first quarter. Other Big Sky defenses are going to have their hands full with him, and I’ll be watching those box scores with the smugness of a man who told you first.

The box score was gaslighting you

Southern Utah ran 83 plays for 510 yards and held the ball for 43 and a half minutes, and Montana beat them by a touchdown. The Griz ran 46 offensive plays. Forty-six! And averaged 7.3 yards per play doing it, against SUU’s 6.1.

Last year’s 13-2 team, the one that averaged 41 points a game and finished third in the country, went 6,855 yards on 1,037 plays across fifteen games. That’s 6.6 a snap for a full season. Saturday’s sloppy, windblown, everybody-is-new opener beat it soundly.

We just didn’t get enough plays executed, and I don’t think Saturday’s particular mess is likely to recur.

The analytics people have been saying this for two decades: time of possession is a byproduct, and yards per play is the truth serum. Bobby Hauck could care less about time of possession, as he let Frank Gogola know a time or two.

Bill Connelly’s Five Factors research found the team that wins the explosiveness battle wins something like 86 percent of the time, and his framework doesn’t include possession time at all, because limited possession time is what happens to you when your touchdowns take 14 seconds.

Montana’s four scoring drives totaled 16 plays, 274 yards, and 5:28 of clock. Southern Utah’s three touchdown drives took 26 plays, 221 yards, and 15:24. Add their field goal and it’s 38 plays, 282 yards, and 22:38 to produce 21 points (yes, in Southern Utah 3 TD + 1 FG = 21; more on that later).

We lost the clock. We lost total yards. We lost the snap count 83 to 46. Those are losses, and I’m fine putting them on the ledger. The scoreboard is still the scoreboard. One of those teams was better on Saturday. And it was the good guys.

83 defensive snaps is a tax. The injury exposure is large, and while the nerds have mostly failed to find evidence that defenses “wear down” within a game, nobody’s dataset has much to say about nearly doubling your offense’s snaps and spending 43 game minutes on the field in a home opener.

The Eli ‘Touches’ discourse, already

It took less than 24 hours for the takes to congeal: 169 yards from scrimmage on 15 touches, therefore Pease is rationing him, therefore fire somebody.

Fifteen touches out of 46 plays is a 32.6 percent touch share. Gillman’s own All-America 2025 season came in at 27.3 percent of Montana’s plays. Isaiah Davis’s title-year workhorse season at South Dakota State was 29.3. Lan Larison’s deranged 2024 at UC Davis (the heaviest usage in recent FCS memory) was 34. So on Saturday, Brent Pease fed Gillman at close to the maximum rate. There were only 46 plays for him to eat. That’s the problem.

Even Sammy Akem, former Griz great who now does film breakdowns for a living, opened the weekend voicing the consensus: Eli needs the ball more. The consensus had not done the snap math. I quote-tweeted the math at him, and to his credit, he called it an excellent point. When the man who caught 29 touchdowns signs off on your math, print it.

And since we’re handing out credit in that receiver room:

Three receivers locking up three defenders on an 85-yard untouched touchdown is coaching. This staff treats downfield blocking as a discipline, and #22 in black is jogging at least in part because he’s expecting one of his lads to get free and turn Eli back inside. Everybody knows receivers can’t block.

Bridges flashing. Davis excellent. Landon Ransom-Goelz making plays. Hendrix. Dever. Finch. Plus all the guys I’m still learning the names of. This room has a lot of potential.

The fourteen points that disappeared

Ah Yat hits Ransom-Goelz at the 7. The ball comes out at the 1 and rolls through the end zone.

Touchback, drive over, seven points evaporated. And somehow that one was never reviewed, even after the officials held a two-minute symposium about it on the field, while the booth found time in the fourth quarter to conduct a formal inquiry into whether a Southern Utah runner made the line to gain. (He had. Thanks, everyone.)

Since this blog is called Bobby Ball, we should pause on a core Hauck coaching point, one the Belichick school preaches too: you never reach the ball for the goal line, for the reason Saturday demonstrated. With one caveat that outranks the rule. It’s fine on fourth down.

Especially, especially-especially, if it’s fourth down in the national championship and you’re about two inches away. Frisco, January 2024, opening sequence of the second quarter, fourth-and-goal from inside the 1: Eli takes it left, Adam Bock meets him, no gain, and the ball stays tucked. That’s okay, Eli. You’ve more than made up for it since.

Second: on the very first play of the game, Ah Yat underthrew Davis on a shot play Pease had scouted and was clearly drooling to run, but the ball floated on him and died. On any other day, Keali’i will dot that one up. Book it.

Those two snaps are why a one-score game was less concerning than the box score shows: fourteen points disappeared.

The official box logs the wind at kickoff as east at 10, which is adorable. Apple Weather had it steady at 10-12 with gusts to 22-24, and from where I sit, up top above the concourse where they sell the spritzes, I’ll testify the gusts won the night. It was also blowing backwards from the usual Hellgate flow: a quarterback gets a thousand practice reps in the prevailing wind and close to none in its opposite. Either way, the deep ball floated and the plays that happened are the only ones that count. But this passing game has more shot-play juice than one gusty night showed. And it still showed quite a bit.

As an aside, Silver’s field goal try showed leg, and I was impressed he was on target in the swirling winds. To my glossy eyes the kick was good from 50. Unfortunately, he was lined up from 54. But the power is there, and for a kicking game that’s been shaky through camp, that’s a reason for optimism I didn’t expect to be typing.

510 yards is a number; 21 is the score

Yes, the defense gave up 510 yards. That’s a loss. Across 83 snaps, that’s 6.1 a play, which isn’t good enough and also isn’t the apocalypse for a unit rolling out nine new starters and a brand-new staff running a new scheme.

The halves tell a cleaner story than the total: in the first half, Montana stuffed the running backs (Floyd Chalk had 10 carries for 11 yards at the break) and bled only quarterback yards, with Burns scrambling 5 times for 48. After halftime Chalk went 15 for 89 and the leak became structural. But the first half is cause for some optimism.

Whether that’s fatigue or 83 snaps of new-scheme static is the kind of thing week two exists to answer. Or is it week one? Who can say? Week zero is a deranged naming convention: we just played a football game that counts in the standings, and the sport has decided it happened during week nothing, which means I’ll spend the whole season miscounting. Somebody fix this.

Last year we allowed 5.79 a play against Division I, third in the Big Sky. Saturday’s 6.1 would have finished eighth last year, in the neighborhood of Cal Poly and Eastern Washington, and ahead of Weber State, Idaho State and Portland State. That’s below the standard. It is not the sky falling. If 6.1 against a mobile quarterback nobody knew what to expect from turns out to be the floor, we are not far off.

Improvement is required, and it will come, but week one is week one. Week zero is worse than week one: no film on this team, nothing to study but a roster and a hunch. It will be a yearly challenge, with conference games slated week zero from here on out.

The parts of Saturday everyone is panicking about are largely the parts the research says regress: opponents converting 47 percent of third downs comes back toward normal (God let’s hope), and turnover luck is a coin flip. The part nobody should bank on regressing in our favor is SUU’s kicking catastrophe: a blocked PAT, a blocked 50-yarder, zero-for-two on two-point tries. Three TDs. Zero XPs for week zero.

Also: who is SUU’s situational football guy? Going for two the first time made no sense, for the downstream reasons that played out. The expected-points crowd blesses an early two-point try when converting changes how many scores you need. This one changed nothing: down five after the touchdown, a kick makes it four, a conversion makes it three, not getting it keeps it at five. All three still requiring one more score. Kick all the PATs (with one blocked) and Southern Utah leads 23-21 with 11:41 to play. Whoever made that call was a factor in Saturday’s win, and I hope he stays employed down there forever.

The Sanders defense question

After Saturday I feel safe declaring the days of blitzing six or seven on nearly every third down are dead. Rest in peace to our precious double-mug A-gap blitz, which we ran so much in 2023 it was essentially the base defense.

Eric Sanders is a serious hire: EWU’s coordinator the last two years, three seasons at Stanford overlapping Kennedy on David Shaw’s staff, nine NFL seasons before that between the Raiders, Browns and Jets. His stated identity, in his own words, is “contain the football, attack the football.” Takeaways, gap discipline, simplicity. Which means Saturday probably wasn’t a vanilla week one, erm, week zero, costume. It’s the plan.

My worry is that the plan sets aside a unique weapon. Two decades of Griz defense were built on making this building a schematic boost: blitz, wreaking havoc, creating one-on-one blocks and protection changes while it’s deafening, next thing you know the left tackle forgets the snap count. We’ve seen it time and again.

The analytics crowd is lukewarm on my noise theology. Fine. I RAN THE ANALYTICS ON TURNING A COYOTE PELT INTO A TERRIBLE TOWEL AND THE RESULT IS 8 FALSE STARTS.

The seventeen SUU third downs on Saturday were seventeen chances to make Washington-Grizzly a participant, and Burns spent all seventeen of them upright. If we’re rushing four, the four have to get home, or at minimum keep the quarterback bottled up. Saturday we sat back and Burns burned us: zero sacks, 119 rushing yards, and 17 third downs that seemed far too comfortable.

Despite the spritzes, I saw no red turf Saturday, so I’m confident we weren’t at Roos Field. Here’s hoping Coach Sanders knows he isn’t there any longer. Wa-Griz is a weapon I hope he will deploy a little more often. I’m high on Sanders, the energy, the charisma, the way the players have taken to him. I just love my double-mug.

Two wrinkles I loved

The Gillman wildcat. Debuted with subterfuge — Ah Yat motioning out wide left, defense visibly unready for the look. Intelligent design, and a hat tip to Pease for scheming it up. It’ll be fun tracking how this package does and doesn’t resemble the Wortham designs. (Here’s hoping he sticks somewhere in the NFL this week.)

Orlandi at sub-backer. If my wind-weary eyes didn’t deceive me, at least a couple of series had Braeden Orlandi lined up at the second level in what was effectively a safety-heavy dime, which answers the question I’d been pondering all August: how do they get all these safeties on the field at once, and why is the guy who led all of NAIA football in tackles last year barely visible on the two-deep? Answer: they simply declare him a linebacker and let God sort it out. More on this later this week when I’ve had time to watch it back. Here’s hoping I didn’t mix up the numbers in my program and am totally making this up.

One I’m still waiting on: Styles Goodman appeared in the participation report and in none of the stat lines. Given the speed and the fall-camp buzz, I’m assuming it was the matchup, but he wasn’t on the 2-deep either, for whatever that’s worth (usually not much around here).

The Historian’s Corner

For everyone treating Saturday as an omen, some program history. Kennedy’s debut came eleven years to the day after another Bob’s debut. I was in the building for that 38-35 NDSU miracle, and the highest compliment I can pay Saturday is that at least we can be certain the high point of Bobby Kennedy’s tenure won’t be game one, which is more than Bob-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named could say. Because it never gets old, Joey Counts with two seconds left, August 29, 2015:

I’ll never forget my brother’s immediate reaction to the score, turning to me and screaming “OVERTIME!” amidst the throng of celebration. He surely had some wind in his eye that day too.

Bobby Hauck’s debut was a two-score grinder at Maine that launched seven straight Big Sky titles. Don Read lost his debut. And Joe Glenn opened with the infamous 10-9 home loss to Hofstra, after which, per the university’s alumni magazine, fans ran around Missoula “doing a Chicken Little impersonation screaming, ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We lost to Hofstra.’” That team played for the national championship fifteen months later. The Chicken Littles were at it again Saturday night by 10 p.m. Tradition matters in Missoula.

Also: Saturday’s pair of scores put Gillman at 55 career touchdowns, second in program history and four behind Chase Reynolds’s 59. The run was his 50th career rushing score, tying Lex Hilliard for second in that category too. Griz royalty, those two, and Eli is set to blow them out of the water. What a marvel he is to watch.

Remember how we all felt after the 2023 road loss at NAU, following the less-than-impressive Idaho State home win and the tense night win against a Ferris State outfit that had won the two previous D2 national titles. How did that season end up?

Let’s have a little patience with this team.

Rent-Free Bobcat of the Week

A crowded field for week zero. We aren’t even in actual numbered weeks and Cat fans online are in mid-season form. Our first award winner: Cat fans spent Saturday night posting in the eGriz game thread while their own team was actively playing a football game. (Yes, dear reader, I ventured into the eGriz cesspool for you, and I got no pleasure from it.)

Asked to explain himself, one offered this: “We’re just bored bc we won by a hundred again. Sorry. Carry on.” Then, shortly after: “Good grief I can not wait for November.”

Sir, I believe the first part. You were bored watching your team beat a Utah Tech outfit SP+ ranks 282nd in all of college football, sandwiched between the NAIA’s Lindsey Wilson and Morningside, behind thirty Division II programs, six Division III programs and three NAIA schools. Johns Hopkins is rated higher. Boredom is the correct response to that game. What boredom does not explain is why a man watching his own team announces, from inside a rival’s game thread, that he cannot wait for November. That’s not boredom. That’s a lease.

Rent is due. Credit to the eGriz regular who clocked it in real time, wondering aloud what it means that the visitors’ section of a Griz forum fills up during a Bobcat game. We know what it means. Please mail your rent check to our rev share: 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812.

Duty compels me to include one honorable mention. We thought we’d put the Ferris State thing to rest a couple years ago. They keep bringing it around.

For whatever it says about the Big Sky in 2026, SP+ rates Ferris State 148th nationally, ahead of ten of the conference’s thirteen football teams and eleven slots clear of our old foes at “FBS” Sac State. Enjoy the MAC, fellas.

By my count that would put Ferris State one hundred and thirty-four slots higher than the Cats’ D1 opponent on Saturday. But only seventeen higher than the SUU that visited Missoula. #GrizLogic.

Most Unhinged eGriz Comment of the Week

No names, because the point of this operation is making better fans, but two sentiments from the weekend need adjusting. The unhinged comment was a landslide winner: the buyout-the-coach-after-a-week-zero-win caucus.

One poster called that “the overreaction of the century after a close win.” I can’t speak to the entire century. But it carries the honor as the inaugural unhinged honoree.

To the 8-4-until-proven-otherwise projection making the rounds: I respect a hedge, but this team just posted 7.3 yards per play with its quarterback throwing a first-snap pick and its best drive ending in a touchback. The floor argument and the ceiling argument are using the same box score, and only one of them has the per-play math.

Who knows. We may be terrible. But I don’t think so. There was a lot to like for week zero. The Griz have always been slow starters who improve all season long, and a contingent of this fanbase gets that fact wiped from its memory banks every August.

Restore the Six, Entry No. 1

New weekly feature. Here is the entire purported-crime that cost Montana six games from its 2011 season: boosters covered bail and basic legal representation for two players. The NCAA’s own monetary penalty for the whole affair was a $3,000 donation to charity, and for that we lost six games, five wins, a Big Sky title, and a playoff run.

In 2024 the Heisman Trust handed Reggie Bush his trophy back and explained itself with a phrase worth memorizing: “fundamental changes in college athletics.” Bush’s benefits were the kind you can put a number on: a would-be agent sued the family to recover roughly $291,600 in cash and gifts, and the arrangement ran to a house, a car, travel, and a limo to the Heisman ceremony itself. Ours ran to bail money and a lawyer. If Bush can do that and get his Heisman back, we get our wins back.

The quarterback who scampered all over us Saturday is at his third school. He is, in all likelihood, being paid to play there, entirely legally and entirely fine by me. And for all I know he is on a personal injury firm’s billboard somewhere outside Cedar City right now, arms folded next to a phone number, which would also be entirely legal. Burned by Burns? You may be entitled to compensation.

Fifteen years ago a booster covering a young man’s bond was worth five wins and a conference championship. Today that same young man could sign the bail bondsman as a sponsor, thank him by name in the postgame interview, and wear the logo on his warmups. The wins remain vacated. Entry No. 1 and I’m just getting started; we have all season.

The FTC Tally

New season-long feature, and the methodology is airtight: I will count every “FTC” chant I personally hear at Griz games this season, and we’ll compare it against the FTG count at Cat games. Week zero score: Griz 0.

Bozeman will report its numbers in due time. They always do. Mony Mony.

That Guy Rocked

New recurring feature on players who rocked in their day and have been quietly misplaced by history because they weren’t a Mariani or a Dickenson. Entry No. 1 writes itself, because I ran into him Saturday and we watched the closing minutes together. (Apologies for whatever I was saying in that fourth quarter. The wind was in my eyes.)

Billings Senior Bronc, No. 8, son of a two-time Golden Helmet winner. Tied for the team lead in catches on the 2011 squad that went to the FCS semifinals, in an offense that spread the ball around. Campbell Trophy semifinalist while leading a rebuilding 2012 team in receiving.

Our hero described the 2011 Brawl to MTN: “They were ranked No. 1. And we went into the litter box and just dismantled them, 36-10 I think was the score.” He was there. I was there. You were there. Tell me which part of that the NCAA gets to take?

They are definitely not taking his hair, anyway. Our guy was out there with a blond mane pouring out the back of the helmet. Vacate the wins. Vacate the title. The locks are forever.

Which brings us to Restore the Six, Entry No. 2, filed on behalf of the innocent. I watched this man play football. The NCAA’s remedy for two kids making bail was to walk into a Billings kid’s career, take six games off a fourteen-game season he started every snap of, and hand him back a stat line that undercounts his own life.

Somehow our guy made catches in Bozeman that officially never happened, in a dismantling of the Cats that officially never happened, for a semifinalist who supposedly went 6-2. The record book now says he was worse at football than he was. I watched him. He wasn’t.

On Saturday he was in the stands like the rest of us, watching a one-score fourth quarter with a writer whose eyes were full of wind.

Sam Gratton. That guy rocked.

Last Call

One last gold star before I go: to the multiple groups seated behind us who kept haranguing us for standing up to yell on defense. Champions, all of you. Sitting down while the Griz are on defense isn’t something I’ve done for hardly any snaps in my 34 years on this strange planet, and you can be damn sure I won’t start now.

As Mick Holien would say, be at your best when your best is needed. Sitting down while your team plays defense is a lifestyle choice, and I promise to respect it as much in week one as I did in week zero: absolutely not at all. But hey, it was week zero for everybody.

Go Griz.