Do you think that helps Montana State coming down the stretch here?

Well, I think it helps Montana State in two ways, right? Obviously, you get your best players back on the field, but you also have built an incredible amount of depth.

So let's say you're in a tight game.

Let's say it's the brawl.

You're playing Cagner is.

It's obviously in Bozeman this year.

And let's say that Lanson's goes down with whatever.

But it's just all contributed to this very, very impressive streak here for him.

So take me through some of your memories of playing against Eastern during your playing career 10 years ago.

God, yeah.

We played some wild games for the freshman year, year one.

That was probably like my first real big start.

They had two brothers on the interior named the Halo brothers.

Big, big, big Polynesian brothers that were drop downs from Washington and Oregon State.

They were both 320-ish, maybe a little bigger, honestly.

So from the Montana State perspective, though, what do you think of this sort of this opportunity to sort of wash the taste out of your mouth coming off of a bye after suffering your first loss in a long time?

I bet you they end up somewhere close to 500 by the end of the year.

Yeah, it's not like Idaho is like some schmuck of a team.

Coach Ford's got a, you know, coming off, trying to rebuild some things over there.

I think he's done a pretty good job of putting a solid product out on the field.

Obviously, the spotlight is on the last drive of the game.

And to me, there's a lot of simple things throughout that entire game that could have totally changed the outcome.

I think overall, the offense played well.

But I just think that there was a lot of different things that led into maybe the last minute that led to the result more than the last minute.

What did you see out of him? Why did you think he was able to have so much success, especially in some of just the simplistic elements of their inside run game?

When you watch a guy run inside and outside zone, really outside zone in my opinion, because it's such a fluid play.

I'm a huge, huge outside zone lover.

Outside zone is my favorite play.

The reason why is because It's consistently gray.

You know, there is no black and white answer to outside zone.

It's not something where you line up like, hey, we're running power here and you cannot bounce power.

uh last thing for you is there such thing as a trap game and if so is friday a trap game what do you make just a matchup on national tv with a quick turnaround going to the cuby dome to play idaho

So what did you make of last week's result?

You know, actually, obviously there's plenty of things to clean up.

You know, turning the ball over, giving the defense, letting their defense score seven points.

It's obviously not a good look for the Cats.

But I think that, I mean, every time that I'm watching, especially now that we have a good body of work to kind of pull from, you know, the old line just continues to struggle.

And I can tell that coach Smith is trying to figure out some different pieces, you know, in the Nevada game, they switched up the right guard position at a half, which was new.

So that I think the offensive line is still trying to kind of find their way and figure things out.

So if there's a game where you don't play up to your standard, but you do win, do you like that as a coach being able to have film and say, hey, we got it done last week, boys, but here's the things we need to clean up?

So what have you thought of those efforts to get so many good receivers to come to those?

Well, you know, I think it's a lot, the one main key factor in that is getting a quarterback that can play at a high level.

And what Lamson has done in the ability to distribute the ball effectively is obviously done some great things.

You know, like you said, for the past decade, it hasn't necessarily been that, you know, you had Troy, obviously Troy is Mr. Bobcat, one of the best to ever do it in the blue and gold, but he wasn't, distributing the ball at a high level you know he wasn't uh that wasn't his role it wasn't his gig kind of got forced into that position um you know and so once they really found you know the cut and then Tommy came in and obviously initially I'm not saying his whole career initially it was kind of the same thing you know Tommy could obviously throw the ball much better than Troy um but initially it was like hey you know, we need to run the ball with Tommy.

We need to put a defense in conflict by putting numbers.

You know, they had all the crazy – you know, when House Wright was here calling plays, craziest creative formations and alignments, quad sets, unbalanced here.

You know, defenses were having a tough time getting aligned to it, and they pretty much were just – Making him choose, hey, are you guys going to play numbers? Are you going to play the QB run game? And so I think as Tommy progressed, that started to change, right? You know, once Tommy, you know, Tommy was gave or had the ability to show, prove that he could really distribute the ball at a high level.

So I think every step Montana State can take towards affirming that they belong at that level is a good thing for their football team.

So how would you sort of describe what you've seen from an offensive perspective, the way that they've been able to diversify what they're running, what they're calling it?

Yeah, I think that's actually kind of the perfect analysis of it.

I think that Cervic was kind of dipping his toe in the water early in the year last year, trying to get a feel for not only the personality out on the field, but what they were capable of and what they could do.

And so I think that once he figured out that he had a high-powered offense with the ability to stretch the field at the same time, run the ball successfully, and... keep teams honest and force issues across, you know, across the whole 52 and a third of the field, which was what really opened up his entire playbook that he's, you know, put together throughout his career.

And he realized there's nothing that he can't do.

And so once he figured that out, I think that that was, Very beneficial to the offense as a whole, because Lansing really emerged as not only a leader, but as a very, very good quarterback that command and handle and process a lot of different things.

And then you have a very veteran offensive line, and it's going to be the same thing this year.

I mean, do you feel like that's a way that they could keep defenses off balances by having this sort of a diversity of skill sets there?