How far can Makena “The Dude” Simis take the Griz?
Behind third string quarterback Makena Simis, the Montana Grizzlies looked like a new team last week in their win over North Dakota. This week the Superfans discuss the Griz performance, grant Simis a well-deserved nickname, and talk about their expectations for Cat-Griz and the FCS playoffs.
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Hot Take Nate (Cats fan): From the texts you guys sent this weekend, I think we are about to have a long conversation about the Griz new QB sensation, Makena Simis, and the Griz’s title hopes.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): You’re right, Nate. This article is going to be Griz heavy, so be warned Bobcat fans. We’ve covered the Cats a lot the past couple week’s (check out the archives here), and Their win last week against East Tennessee State, the legit worst team in the FCS, taught us nothing.
For UM, going into last week, we knew the Griz had to win at least three, probably four of their remaining five games to make the tourney. The UND games wasn’t necessarily a must win, but it was close to it. And by blowing them out with our third string QB? As a Griz fan…holy smokes. I’m pumped.
Z-Train (Griz Fan): Last week, I predicted UM’s easy handling of UND—their offense was so one dimensional it was at times unfair (barring that first, 80 yard play). UM’s offense was able to run the ball efficiently, eeking out enough 3-4 yard runs that resulted in several running first downs, and they ended the day with 160 rushing yards –double what UND usually gives up.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): And all of Missoula is a twitter about the play of third string QB, Makena Simis. He looked fantastic on Saturday.
Z-Train (Griz fan): Yup. UND got absolutely torched on the pass. Because of injuries the Griz are on their third QB of the season, but if you add all of their stats together and treat them as a three-headed QB monster Cerebrus, they would be sitting in third place nationally for passing yards. The Griz passing attack is for real.
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): By no means do I mean to diminish Simis’s performance, but having a young gunslinger toss 6 TDs isn’t the real story. We should be talking about the jaw-dropping action from the WRs Jamaal Jones and Ellis Henderson (forever to be known as “Jamaalis”) when they were left isolated in one-on-one situations.
Z-Train (Griz fan): Ha! Everyone in my section would see the single coverage on Jamaalis and would call it out waiting for the TD. I have no idea why North Dakota didn’t double them until late in the game, but it killed them. Simis was able to loft 6-8 rainbows to those guys and let them do work. Four of those were TDs and the other couple directly led to TDs.
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): In Simis’s press conference he mentioned as much, saying, “We got two dudes who can run by every corner in this conference.” He also said, “We knew [UND would] bring a lot of dudes, and our O-Line was doing a great job picking that up. I just felt like I could sit back there, and it’s easy when you got dudes on the outside that can create separation, and you just gotta get them the ball.”
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): I love it. He played a great game + he dropped the word “dude” multiple times in the same press conference. He’s only played a game and half, but can we officially give him a nickname? Makena “The Dude” Simis? Also, does this remain The Dude’s team when Gus and Chaz get healthy?
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): He’s in bad need of a nickname. The Dude it is.
Z-Train (Griz fan): The Dude has passed for more TDs than Gus AND Chizzy Chaz separately. For all of Gus’s heroics, he didn’t throw a lot of TDs, and he threw picks at a fairly high rate (4 in less than 3 full games). I really think staying with the Dude’s hot hand may be a good idea – at a minimum, it develops our future guy during an up and down season where we may not make playoffs.
Hot Take Nate (Cats fan): I’m interested to see how this offense responds against Portland State, who is way better than North Dakota. Griz fans are sounding like they were after the NDSU game so I’d love to see them get knocked down a peg or two again.
Z-Train (Griz fan): My new “Dark Horse Significant Game of the Week Pick” is the Griz game at Portland State. Big surprise there.
Portland State seems to run all over folks, but they live and die on Jones and Kuresa rushing the ball. That’s going right at a growing strength of the UM defense – if Critt’s body didn’t explode again during UND game. Portland State’s QBs are adequate game managers that feed off teams overplaying the run. Sounds familiar. I see them as the real deal version of UND–they have a multifaceted running attack, more capable passers, and a tough-ish, ball-hawking defense.
Overall, I think they are tough to evaluate. They struggled to put up 17 points on UND who the Griz just destroyed, but put up 66 on FBS North Texas and 38 on Cal Poly. Then they beat Washington State, which has wins against Oregon, OSU, and Arizona…how do you explain that?
I say the Griz chances are even at best.
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): Did you guys notice Portland State forced four fumbles last week against Cal Poly? Despite this, they only won by 3 points (38-35). I’m optimistic that Portland State is more mortal than their record indicates.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): Vegas agrees with you guys. The line started out as Portland State -6, but has since dropped to Portland State -3.5…this means a lot of money is coming in the Griz. The Griz really need this win…assuming 7 wins gets you to the playoffs, the Griz need to win 3 out of their last 4. Can the Cats still make the playoffs?
Coach (Cats fan): Thank god, an end to the Grizzly talk. The way the Big Sky is beating up on one another I have a hard time seeing that many teams making the playoffs. I’m a Bobcat to the core, but even I realize there’s little to no hope that they can make it.
Z-Train (Griz fan): The Missoulian ranked the Cats as 5th in the Big Sky and said this: “The Bobcats climbed here by way of a ton of losses around the Big Sky this past week. Yes the Cats’ offense is prolific, but MSU ranks 110th in the nation in total defense (471.3 ypg). The Bobcats’ four wins have come over three awful teams and one bad one in Cal Poly.”
Z-Train (Griz fan): I’d say right now we’re looking at Eastern, Portland State and Southern Utah. We’ll see how the Griz finish, but as of right now those three are the only ones who deserve it.
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): Portland State has a tough road ahead, and they end their season with a string of bruisers. They face a surging Montana team; a courageous Northern Colorado squad who gave EWU everything they could handle last week; Southern Utah, a small Conservative Arts College; and EWU who is king of the hill.
Hot Take Nate: I’m not sure about Southern Utah either. I thought it was interesting they weren’t getting any love in the rankings with their blemish free Big Sky record, and the fact that have held Big Sky opponents to a total of 9 points TOTAL through 4 conference games!
Then I looked at who they played: Northern Colorado, at Weber State, Sacramento State, and at UC Davis. Two of those are bottom of the Big Sky teams but the other two are right in the middle. They are at home versus Cal Poly this weekend and then they come to Bozeman in a massive match up of a great offense and a great defense.
With the Griz offensive show on Saturday is Griz Nation now super confident about their chances against the Cats? We know the Cats should (with a healthy Prukop) be able to put points up on most teams but does the newfound offense in Missoula change everything? The Griz strength is defense but the Cats showed they can score on anyone.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): Before last week, I would have bet on the Cats to win for sure. A great offense should beat a good-not-great defense, and covering for a terrible defense is helped when you’re playing a 3rd string QB. After the games on Saturday, I’d call it a tossup that is rapidly trending towards the Griz for two reasons:
First, the Cats defense further proved against East Tennessee State that it can’t stop anyone, including one of the worst offenses in all of the FCS. True ETSU only scored 7 points, but the Cats gave up 376 yards. ETSU WAS ONLY AVERAGING 292 YARDS PER GAME BEFORE THIS! We covered the shitiness of ETSU’s schedule last week, but my god. They averaged 292 yards while playing the likes of Division II squads Maryville, and Emory & Henry.
Second, as discussed above, The Dude could be good. After one full game, you can’t get too excited. But Griz fans have the right to be optimistic. That’s where I am. He could be legit good (which helps us for the playoff run), but even if he’s not, we don’t need him to be to beat MSU. We just need him to Nick Sexton good. Nick Sexton, you’ll remember, is the East Tennesometing State QB who averaged over 10 yards per pass against the Cats. So I’m not worried about the Griz moving on them even if we start our 5th stringer.
Clarence Toole (Griz fan): Griz Nation should be nervous. The Cat-Griz game distills the highest energy level from each team. Point spreads often mean nothing. I think the raw energy of Cat-Griz is transduced better to the defense side of the ball than offensive. If MSU’s defense gets energized I can see their 1 star defense rising to 2 stars, and a 2-star defense might be the difference if the Griz are still playing The Dude at QB.
Granted, last week The Dude played like he was the beneficiary of a Josh Baskin/Big situation with Aaron Rodgers instead of Tom Hanks. But as I mentioned, I think his drop-the-mic debut might have been 1/2 Jamaalis Henderjones and 1/2 skill. I’m not throwing shade at The Dude, but over-reacting is risky because there has to be a regression to the mean. If there isn’t regression, it might actually mean Aaron Rodgers is the Griz QB, and some lucky ass college replacement player spent the Packer’s bye week waking up next to Olivia Munn.
Z-Train (Griz fan): I’m for sure still nervous because besides the North Dakota game, the Griz offense couldn’t punch its way out of a wet paper bag. That being said, the Griz have beat better Cats teams before, and I think a hungry Griz team may have a mental edge over a reeling cats team if the Cats defense doesn’t get fixed. We pointed out last week that MSU will likely have more pressure on them to win, and Coach Ash is desperately trying to keep his job.
Hot Take Nate (Cats fan): That’s very true. Cats went into Cat-Griz as the #1 team in the country a few years back and got run out of their own building. Cat-Griz is a different beast and it’s hard to predict even without the unpredictability that the Big Sky has week to week. Nguyen could run for 400 yards on the Cats and beat them… isn’t that sad when that’s an obvious exaggeration but I actually tried to decide if there’s enough time in a game to rack up that much yardage on the Cats defense.
Coach (Cats fan): Right now the Griz have to be the clear-cut favorite to beat the Cats. Even if our offense puts up 60 I see no way our defense slows down the UM receivers. Outside of that we can’t stop the run, so we’re basically fucked.
I spoke to someone close to the MSU program about the defense. He’s watched all the games and most of the practices, and says it really is a combination of players under-performing and coaches scratching their heads. Sounds like the staff is taking some heat and that their jobs are in serious jeopardy if they don’t beat the Griz.
Z-Train (Griz fan): Before I get too confident, I’d like to see us take another step forward against Portland State this weekend. If The Dude and the offense can go out and put 35 up, I think they are in a good spot to be favorites vs MSU. We need to see progression, not regression.
Scotty Mint (Cats fan): All we hear about is the MSU defense. But how much does it matter? There are three teams in the Big Sky that are shitty against the run. Keep in mind there are 123 FCS teams
| Team | National Rank | Yds per carry | Rush yards per game |
| A | 117 | 5.39 | 260.9 |
| B | 119 | 5.36 | 271.1 |
| C | 122 | 5.83 | 294.7 |
Teams with this glaring of a weakness are bad, or at best mediocre, right?
Team A is the 4-3 Montana State Bobcarts
Team B is the 2-6 Idaho State Bengals. Pitiful.
Team C must be someone truly pathetic. Nope. It is the 5-2 and top ranked Eastern Washington Eagles.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): I think that’s fair. We truly don’t know anything.
One last point before we close for the week. Right as we were about to publish today’s article, we learned ESPN is pulling the plug on Grantland.com. The site was started by Bill Simmons, who has inspired a number of new sport writers, including many of us at the Montana Mint. Though Simmons is no longer with the site, seeing it shut down is a major bummer.
Z-Train (Griz fan): Horribly depressing. I will forever despise ESPN for muzzling Simmons when he dared criticize NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell. What kind of “journalistic” enterprise fails to go to bat for their best worker saying what needs to be said? ESPN has successfully made it so only vanilla, fungible sportscasters are allowed on to mindlessly squawk like undifferentiated dead eyed flacks. Who gives a shit what those stuffed suits say on Sports Center anymore? They are the broadcasting equivalent of elevator Muzak.
Bear Tycoon (Griz fan): Grantland stood out because it was thoughtful and well written. Sports coverage on the internet is all hot takes, fantasy sports, and computer generated game summaries…that drives the most traffic and is the most economical. I get that. It is just a huge bummer that something like Grantland can’t exist to supplement the bullshit.
While what the Montana Mint does is small potatoes compared to Grantland, we started the site, in part, with a similar mission: to provide thoughtful and unique stories to our great state. We’ve been able to keep the lights on because of support from our great fans, and will continue to do so for as long as you let us. We can’t thank you enough.
Cover image is the the movie poster for the Big Lebowski combined with the profile pic for @Makena_Simis.
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