Adam Jones returns to form with season-high 173 rushing yards, 10.8 per carry
By Colter Nuanez SKYLINE SPORTS
BOZEMAN—The complimentary football Brent Vigen wants out of his team made a return in full force on Saturday. And as it turns out, there’s nothing wrong with Montana State’s run game.
Over the previous eight seasons leading up to 2025, the Bobcats established a reputation as one of the most bruising and prolific rushing attacks in college football. Cal Poly’s triple option attack basically won the league rushing crown every season from 2012 until 2017, but once Jeff Choate’s power run spread offense took hold and MSU committed to employing a few of the best running quarterbacks in the history of the Big Sky Conference—Chris Murray, Troy Andersen and Tommy Mellott all rushed for more than 1,000 yards as the signal caller—the Bobcats have won the league’s rushing crown every season for close to a decade.
The last few years, MSU has been particularly unstoppable on the ground, rushing for more than 300 yards per game and averaging more than seven yards per carry.
So it was only natural when the Bobcats had to spend this last offseason replacing Mellott—along with All-American running back Scottre Humphrey and All-American offensive linemen Marcus Wehr and Conner Moore—that the collective narrative around the Bobcats would gravitate toward whether they could keep up the program’s motto of “run the damn ball.”
Over the first six games of the season, Justin Lamson emerged as true top-notch quarterback talent. In MSU’s Big Sky opener against Eastern Washington, Lamson completed 11 of 12 passes for 251 yards and three touchdowns as the Bobcats exploded to a 31-3 lead on the way to a 57-3 victory.
At the midpoint of the 12-game schedule, MSU was averaging more passing yards per game than it was rushing yards per contest. And despite a four-game winning streak entering Saturday’s action against Idaho State, some still wondered “what happened to Montana State’s run game?”
That thought was compounded by the fact that Adam Jones had just 224 rushing yards in the first half of the season after racking up nearly 1,200 as a freshman last year, on the way to finishing as the runner-up for the Jerry Rice Award, given to the best freshman in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Jones underwent off-season surgery that kept him out of action from January until August. He also has had a target on his back after being voted preseason Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year.
All of those questions can be put to rest, or at least quelled, following Saturday’s outburst. Idaho State entered Saturday’s matinee with a “close but no cigar” resume that included narrow losses to UNLV (38-31), New Mexico (32-22) and last week to No. 4 Montana (42-38).
Montana State disposed of any upset bid authoritatively, riding Jones’ breakout game of 2025 to a 48-14 beatdown of the Bengals.
Jones buoyed the resurgence of the run game as MSU rushed for 384 yards and averaged 7.2 yards per carry. The Missoula native piled up a season-high 173 yards on 16 carries and his 24-yard touchdown run kept Idaho State at bay, staking MSU to a 20-7 lead early in the second quarter.
“Adam’s been running the ball fine all year,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said with a little extra pitch to his voice. “He hasn’t had the opportunities—maybe and hopefully this will get everybody beyond that thought, ‘what’s wrong with Adam.’ Adam’s a good football player; he’s a really good football player and that showed up today.”
Combine that bruising rushing attack with Lamson looking sharp once again in the pass game and all of a sudden, the balanced Bobcats look as lethal as ever offensively. Lamson finished 11-of-14 for 184 yards and threw four touchdowns. He also rushed for 87 yards and netted 60 on the ground after sacks were accounted for.
After bolting out to a 14-0 lead, MSU got a dose of what makes the Bengals a scary team as quarterback Jordan Cooke connected on a 40-yard strike to Tsion Nunnally to set up their first touchdown, then after another MSU score, Cooke found Nunnally again for a 69-yard touchdown—the longest play against the Bobcat’ defense this season—to make it a 20-14 game. Nunnally finished with nine catches for 169 yards.
The Bobcats kept their composure as they did last week against Northern Arizona when they trailed 7-0 midway through the second quarter on the road.
“The defense set the offense up early with just how it went, offensively we really answered their scores,” Vigen said. “That stretch where we kept the ball as long as we did and then opened the lead up again. Can’t say enough about the complimentary aspect of how we played.”
Montana State has a strength of schedule ranked as the No. 2 hardest in the entire FCS. The Bobcats started 0-2 because of stout challenges from Oregon and South Dakota State. But Saturday’s win helps the Bobcats take a swell of momentum into their bye week.
“We set the tone well and we leaned into our run game even more today,” Vigen said. “I think our guys are really hungry to keep this thing moving forward.”
Montana State will rest up and travel to Cal Poly on Oct. 25.
Colter Nuanez has covered the Big Sky Conference for 19 seasons and has directly covered Montana State since 2011. His work can be found at skylinesportsmt.com and he can be reached at Colter.Nuanez@gmail.com.
