After reading a ton of articles and watching a bunch of interviews, I think our Montana Grizzlies are facing a pretty good Missouri St. team. This isn't an NAIA team or a division 2 team, Missouri St. Is a pretty good team desire what their record was last year.
Of course I hope we roll over them and we win by 40 but I don't think it's going to be a walk in the park . And I can just see fans who don't really understand the game complaining about our team.
We are facing a non conference opponent for the first game of the season, so our offensive playbook and defensive plays will be very vanilla.
Coach Pease and Tim Hauck are intelligent coaches so they won't show a ton of things and will keep things simple. I also think they will rotate players more in these first 4 games, trying to get the 1's and 2's and maybe some 3's some playing time so it doesn't matter who's starting or on the 2 deep roster.
Although we lost Hill, Janacarro and Flink in the middle, I'm looking forward to watching Riley, Cooper and Vai all playing at the same time. Braxton was my favorite player to watch on defense. That kid covered sideline to sideline and was the heart of the defense along with Gunner. But I have no doubt Hauck will put these guys in great spots to make plays.
On offense, I think it will take a little while to get things going but when it does hit it's stride, watch out! Maybe not in this game, but overall we will see more big plays in the passing game. Pease always does a great job at attacking coverages and we will see some big plays by our waffle house receiving core getting wide open.
I also think our offense will be throwing the ball way more than we saw last year. 60-65%pass and 35-40%run. Like I said from the beginning, I think the QB play will be exactly the same as last year. Both QBs will play and we will see who emerges as the starter. Hopefully we get a big lead and Huot can also get in the game to show his stuff.
Special teams should be as good as ever but the one thing I saw that I thought they should change is the holder for fgs unless I misread it. They should have one of the back up QBs holding field goals just in case a bad snap or a broken play.
Other than that, I'm not worried and can't wait to see what the future holds for our GRIZ. I can't wait til October and November's come around because I finally get to come back and watch a home game. I wasn't able to last year, so I can't wait to experience the home crowd and the best fans in all of college football. GO GRIZ!!!!
