VANDAL NOTES: Idaho football is 'chasing the standard' as No. 1 Montana State looms next

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Sep. 24—VANDAL NOTES

This weekend is a bye week for the Idaho Vandals football team.

At 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 2, No. 1-ranked Montana State will come to the P1FCU Kibbie Dome in Moscow to face off against the Vandals in a Big Sky Conference game.

But before then, the Vandals will have nearly two weeks to prepare for the Bobcats, the best Football Championship Subdivision team in the country.

Idaho has started the season off winless at 0-4 and 0-1 in the Big Sky. The Bobcats are undefeated and own an 18-game winning streak going back more than a year. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.

'Chasing the standard'

The Vandals are coming off a 41-39 loss to Abilene Christian on Saturday in which they gave up 20 unanswered points in the fourth quarter, leading to a third one-score loss to an FCS opponent this season.

Idaho coach Thomas Ford Jr. made it clear to his team after the loss on Saturday — they are still in control of their season. The issue is "so much less" about their opponent and much more about the Idaho program.

"We talked a lot just in our program in general about chasing the standard," Ford said on Saturday. "The standard doesn't care about time on the clock. The standard doesn't care about the score of the football game. The standard cares about the standard, and that's what we're trying to get back to here.

"And we're close, we're right there. We know that this team is capable of winning. We know we have players that are capable of making plays. Now we just got to execute and play four quarters of football."

Going into the fourth quarter, Idaho held a 24-21 lead, but let that quickly turn into a 17-point deficit as the Wildcats led 41-24. Idaho attempted a comeback and nearly succeeded but just ran out of time on the clock.

"This is in our control, and I think when you take control of the situation, you take the doom and gloom out — because it's nobody else's fault," Ford said. "There is nobody to point a finger at. There is nobody to blame. It's all on us, and that's what we're going to take a hard look at this week on the ways that each of us, as an individual, can make our units better, and obviously how our units can make this team better."

Wood is playing standout ball; the running game continues to struggle

Senior quarterback Joshua Wood is still playing "hero ball" often, really putting the Vandals' offense on his back. On Saturday, he went 22-of-34 passing for 326 yards and one passing touchdown, a 47-yard bomb to junior receiver Tony Harste. Wood also gained 37 rushing yards and scored a whopping four rushing touchdowns.

Harste caught six passes for 151 yards and the TD.

Wood was responsible for 81.7% of all the Vandals' yards and was behind every touchdown that Idaho put up.

"Joshua is a phenomenal player, phenomenal human and an absolute dawg in terms of a leader," Ford said. "The way he was rallying the troops (Saturday), both offense, defense and special teams, it shows you how special the player is. And then he gets on the field and has the performance that he does tonight — he's special."

Ford said that the Vandals will have to make the game easier for Wood and take some of the pressure off of him so that he doesn't have to continue to make the extra plays.

That starts with the run game, which has been unimpressive so far this season, with the Abilene Christian loss as the best game the running back room had this season.

Fifth-year running back Hayden Kincheloe had nine carries for 28 yards, junior Ferrari Miller had six carries for 27 yards, senior gadget quarterback Israel Carter rushed twice for 16 yards and junior running back Damonte Bias rushed twice for 4 yards.

The Idaho running game ranks No. 11 in the Big Sky Conference, averaging 107 yards per game.

Wood is the only Vandal in the top-25 rushers in the Big Sky at No. 18 with 52 carries for 170 yards and six touchdowns.

Defensive leaders

As a total defense, Idaho ranks No. 11 in the Big Sky in points allowed at 42 points per game, and the Vandals are No. 8 in yards allowed per game at 461.

Ford said the defense needs to be more consistent in tackling and "just be better in general in the secondary." He said it is a matter of technique, staying in an assigned gap, owning leverage and executing assignments. The defense improved last week but has plenty of space to keep improving, Ford said.

Fifth-year team captain, linebacker and Lewiston High product Cruz Hepburn led Idaho with 10 tackles and 1/2 a tackle for a loss against Abiline Christian. Fifth-year defensive lineman Mitch Jaskowiak recorded 10 tackles and 1/2 a tackle for a loss.

Senior safety and team captain Zach Wusstig had nine tackles and one sack, while sophomore linebacker Nikko Speer totaled nine tackles, one sack and 1/2 a tackle for a loss.

Leading the program

Ford pointed to execution as an issue that has continued throughout the season. He explained that execution comes down to a player doing their fundamentals, executing their assignments and finishing plays, and that somewhere along those three things, something is missing.

"I think the execution part always starts with me," Ford said. "At the end of the day, this is our program, but I'm the leader of this program, and I'm going to continue to get better and making sure that we can clean this stuff up, because again, it is in our control. These are fixable mistakes that I know that we can correct."

Being the leader of the program, Ford also needs to lead his coordinators and position coaches.

"I think my biggest thing with our coaches is just to continue to stay the course. Coach (the players). We have to coach them. We have to develop," Ford said.

In the new college football era with the transfer portal, Ford said that many FCS players will likely not stay four or five years, so trying to coach a new system to new players has caused difficulties.

"We do have two new coordinators that I think have done an excellent job installing our systems, but we don't have veteran players in those systems," Ford said. "So we've got to do a much better job of just continuing to coach, continuing to develop and continuing to believe in our players."

Junt can be reached at 208-848-2258, tjunt@lmtribune.com or on X @TrevorJunt.

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