Bobcats Usher in the Choate Era
By Danny Waldo
Internet chat boards lit up, and coffee shop conversations around the state revolved around the state of Bobcat football in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 season
MSU, fresh off its first losing season in over a decade was a ship without a sail. No, the sky was not falling, but clearly something was wrong. Changes needed to be made, and so on November 23, two days after a 54-35 loss to in-state rival Montana, head coach Rob Ash was sent packing.
Enter new head coach, Jeff Choate.
Choate has brought a new vibe to the MSU football program. All- Big Sky offensive lineman, JP Flynn, summed it up best when he stated, “It’s been a lot of fun, the most fun I’ve had.”
Choate’s new team may be having fun now, but will that enthusiasm carry over into the season, where MSU is picked to finish 7th/8th in the coaches and media polls following a disappointing 2015 season that began with Big Sky and national title aspirations, but finished with the ‘Cats missing the FCS playoffs for just the second time in the past six years.
While Ash brought in his fair share of talented players, guys like DeNarius McGhee, Orenzo Davis, and Deonte Flowers, there are plenty of gaps to fill in Choate’s first go-around as the sheriff in town. How those gaps get filled will go a long way toward determining how accurate MSU’s preseason position stands at the end of the 2016 campaign.
First and foremost with any team hoping to compete for championships is the play of the guy under center. The Bobcats could have had the top signal caller in the Big Sky, if not the FCS, had senior Dakota Prukop decided to stick around for his final year. Instead, the ultra-athletic dual threat quarterback took his talents to Eugene, Oregon to play for the Mighty Ducks, following in the footsteps of fellow Big Sky Conference quarterback Vernon Adams of Eastern Washington.
Prukop was the top quarterback in the league last season, accounting for 3,822 yards and 39 touchdowns. In his two seasons leading the Bobcat offense, Prukop established himself as a one-man wrecking crew, leading the team in rushing his sophomore season, before leading the team in total offense his junior year.
But all that is gone.
However, Choate believes he has found himself a serviceable replacement in junior Tyler Bruggman, a once highly recruited quarterback out of Arizona who has been on a mission to find playing time for the past three years. Since graduating from Brophy Prep in Phoenix, AZ, Bruggman has spent time at Washington State, where he originally signed as a four-star recruit. But after redshirting, he transferred to Louisville in 2014. After Louisville didn’t fit, Bruggman transferred again, this time closer to home at Scottsdale Community College where he threw for over 1,700 yards and 19 touchdowns a season ago.
Bruggman had familiarity with the new MSU staff prior to coming to Bozeman, as Choate was on the staff that originally recruited him to Washington State, and new offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham recruited him while at Iowa State as well.
The good news for Bruggman is he has a plethora of weapons around him to take the burden to produce of his shoulders, something that plagued Prukop for two seasons. Several skill players return, including seniors Chad Newell and Gunnar Brekke in the backfield, and explosive receivers Justin Paige, Mitchell Herbert and Jayshawn Gates to help stretch defenses. The question mark will be the protection Bruggman will receive up front.
The Bobcats will be breaking in no fewer than four new starters on the offensive line after the graduation of John Weidenaar, Kyle Godecke, Alex Eekoff and Joel Horn. However, three-time all-league selection, senior JP Flynn returns to provide stability to the young and inexperienced line.
For all the questions Bobcat fans have about their new look offense coming into 2016, they pale in comparison to the questions surrounding a much-maligned defensive unit that resembled something like Swiss cheese last season.
The once-feared Bobcat defense was but a shell of itself last season, finishing at, or near the bottom of nearly every statistical category in the Big Sky Conference. The ‘Cats gave up an average of 34 points and 472 yards per game, including a gaudy 247 yards rushing. The defense did little to help the offense out, and was the main culprit behind MSU dropping five of their six losses. In those five games, MSU gave up over 40 points, and in three of them the Bobcats gave up over 50 points.
Needless to say, if Montana State is to get back to the top of the Big Sky, they are going to have to get much more defensive-minded.
The good news is help is on the way in the form of new defensive coordinator, Ty Gregorak, who switched from in-state rival Montana to revitalize the Bobcat defense. Gregorak’s defenses at UM have been some of the top-producing units in all of the FCS the past four years, and Bobcat fans hope some of that success will carry over to Bozeman this season.
But coaches cannot win games by themselves, so Choate and crew set out to upgrade the roster on the defensive side of the ball, starting with a pair of FBS transfers, Naijiel Hale from the University of Washington and John Walker, a graduate transfer from the University of Colorado. Both players should bring instance athleticism to a defensive backfield that was repeatedly beaten by the big play last season.
The defense will center around up-and-comer Mac Bignell who had a breakout sophomore season, leading the team in tackles with 101, to go along with 20.5 tackles for loss, and numerous bone crushing, momentum changing big hits. But the true key to improving the Bobcats’ defense will be the ability to get to the quarterback and not leave the defensive backfield alone on an island with the likes of Eastern Washington’s Cooper Krupp.
Senior Jessie Clark really started to come on at the end of last season, and he will be counted on to get to the quarterback. Up the middle, sophomore Tucker Yates had a good spring on the defensive line, and looks to be picking up where he left off with the opening of fall camp. If he can successfully take on double teams and swallow up the inside run plays, it will allow for Clark to run unabated off the edge, and let Bignell and the rest of the linebacker crew to be playmakers on the second level.
Choate has spent his first seven months on the job trying to instill a new mentality in a Bobcat team that appeared to be lacking confidence and swagger following the end of last season. “I think about the identity of our football team. And the identity of our team is toughness. We’ve got to be a physical team on both sides of the ball and in the kicking game.”
MSU appears to be down in the eyes of many outside of the Bobcat program, and for the first time in a while they will be considered an underdog in a number of their games this season, beginning with the season-opener at Idaho on September 1. But the schedule sets up nicely for MSU with league favorite Northern Arizona, Eastern Washington and North Dakota, three road losses for the ‘Cats last year, all having to make the trek to Bozeman.
A pivotal game versus Weber State on October 15th, a program on the rise, could go a long way toward determining MSU’s ability to return to the FCS playoffs, and of course, the ‘Cats end the season on the road versus Montana in the annual Brawl of the Wild on November 19th. Ironically, the ‘Cats have had more success versus the Griz in Missoula, having won there in two out of the last three contests.
For a complete look at the Bobcats’ schedule for 2016, or for more information, log on to www.msubobcats.com.
