No. 3 Montana is back at Washington-Grizzly Stadium this weekend with a chance to move to 2-0, and Drake is the team in the way. The Griz welcome the Bulldogs in a non-conference game at 1 p.m., a quick turn from last week’s opener and the first real test of how Montana handles the lessons it took from that close win.
That is why this matchup is being searched now. Montana opened against Southern Utah and survived a tight season opener, while Drake arrives after a different kind of opener: a loss to NCAA Division II South Dakota Mines in which the Bulldogs still threw for 535 yards but gave up 527. One side showed it can win a grind. The other showed it can pile up yards and still lose control of a game.
The numbers explain the interest, but Dyllan Drummond put the focus on the week itself. He said Montana is taking what it learned from the opener and improving on it, then made clear the Griz are not spending time on what already happened. “We're taking the lessons that we learned from that and we're improving on them,” Drummond said. “But I mean, it's a new opponent, new week, new day. We don't focus on the past, we're just moving forward with the present.”
Drake adds another layer because it is not coming in as a mystery team. The Bulldogs are an FCS program in the non-scholarship Pioneer League and are under first-year head coach Matt Walker, who led Wisconsin River Falls to the Division III title a year ago. That background matters because the Griz are preparing for a staff that has already shown it can get production in volume, even if the opener ended in defeat. Walker’s team proved it can throw the ball all over the field; it also proved that yardage alone does not protect a defense that gives up nearly as much.
Bobby Kennedy said Montana expects to see that passing game tested again. “I definitely think our DBs will be tested this week,” he said, adding that Drake should be ready when it comes into Washington-Grizzly Stadium. Kennedy also pointed to the practical part of the matchup: there is always something to clean up, and the job for the Griz is to show up with energy, control what they can control and play hard. That is the piece Montana has to answer after an opener in which mistakes helped Southern Utah stay in the game.
The last time these teams met, Montana beat Drake 48-16 in Missoula in 2018. This game is not a rematch of that score so much as a new checkpoint for both teams: Montana wants to keep its perfect start alive, and Drake wants to show that a gaudy passing line and a loss do not have to define the next week. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m., and by the time it ends, one team will have a cleaner answer than it had a week ago.
