BROOKINGS With football season under a month away, its time to look at who South Dakota State will be going up against in the first two games of the season.
The Jackrabbits will open the season at home against Sacramento State on Aug. 30. Theyll then travel to Montana State on Sept. 6 for their first road game of the season.
I am going to preview each of these teams to let you know what the Jacks will be up against in their first two games.
Aug. 30 vs. Sacramento State
Like many of the teams in the FCS, Sacramento State saw a lot of movement in the transfer portal this past season.
The Hornets lost 17 players to the portal but added 42 players to the team via the portal. 34 of those players that joined Sac State came from FBS schools.
Sac State will also have a new leader on the sidelines as Brennan Marion was hired as the head coach. He was the offensive coordinator at UNLV the past two seasons and is known for his Go-Go offense. The Rebels averaged a school-record 36.2 points per game last season and that ranked 14th in the FBS in scoring.
The Hornets brought in Jaden Rashada at quarterback in the offseason. He was a four-star recruit out of high school and started his collegiate career at Arizona State. He started three games at ASU and transferred to Georgia but did not play a snap for the Bulldogs before heading to Sacramento.
The Hornets have three transfers and their second-leading rusher from last season in the running back room. Jamar Curtis comes from Lafayette and has rushed for over 1,000 yards in each of the past two seasons. Savion Red was Nevadas second-leading rusher last season and Rodney Hammond comes from Pitt where he ran for over 1,500 yards in 36 games for the Panthers. The lone returner for Sac State at running back is Curron Borders.
The wide receiver room is riddled with transfers as well after the Hornets lost their top-six catch passers from last season. Gavin Thomas has the most experience of the group, coming from Saint Francis, and had 46 catches for 726 yards and seven touchdowns last season. Jordan Anderson comes from Oregon State, Ernest Campbell comes from Texas A&M and Damien McDaniel comes from UNLV, all of whom are redshirt freshmen.
The Hornets have three FBS transfer tight ends in Jordan Williams (Colorado State), Logan Tanner (San Diego State) and Bear Tenney (Utah). They also have three returning starters on the offensive line who all played over 500 snaps last season. The other two lineman are transfers from the FBS in Jordan Herman from Charlotte and Dean Abdullah from San Diego State.
Sac State struggled on defense last year as the Hornets gave up 34.8 points per game. The Hornets return three of the top 11 tacklers from last season but have plenty of transfers.
Linebacker Derek Houston, who was second on the team in tackles last season, returns. Safety AntaVeon McKenzie and Linebaker Fata Puloka also returned and they were the seventh and 10th-best tacklers on the team, respectively.
Linebackers JeKob Jones and Dylan Gooden will provide some depth at linebacker. Jones comes from Cal Poly and had 130 tackles in 36 games and Gooden comes from Maryland did not see a lot of snaps in his first two seasons as he redshirted in 2023 and got hurt last season.
Safety Oscar Moore comes from UTEP and started five games for the Miners in 2023 and totaled 62 tackles in 23 games.
The Hornets defensive line has four FBS transfers as well. Syncere Massey comes from Texas Southern and he had 43 tackles and 1.5 tackles for a loss in 2024. James Gillespie played in nine games and started two of them for Middle Tennessee State last season and he had 10 tackles and two sacks. Kris Ross comes from Nevada and he started six games last season with 29 tackles, 5.5 TFLs and 2.5 sacks. Dylan Hampsten played 13 games for San Jose State a year ago and had 19 tackles and 4.5 TFLs.
Sacramento State President Luke Wood has publicly promised that the Hornets will make the jump to the FBS in 2026. However, the Division I Council denied their waiver to be an FBS independent in June. Sac State says it still plans to be an FBS member in 2026.
With the amount of new contributors for the Hornets, the Jacks are probably playing them at the right time with it being the first game of the season. SDSU has plenty of new players seeing action as well but seem to have more connectivity in terms of playing with each other, so it will be interesting how it plays out on Aug. 30.
Sept. 6 at Montana State
Montana State is coming off of a season where it fell to North Dakota State in the national title game. It was the second time in the past four seasons that the Bobcats lost to the Bison in the title game.
Montana State lost 11 players to the portal. The Bobcats added four FBS transfers and have five all-conference players returning.
The biggest loss for the Bobcats was Walter Payton Award-winning quarterback Tommy Mellot. They also lost their two best offensive linemen, but return two All-Big Sky running backs, their top wide receiver and three starting offensive linemen.
Montana States quarterback is not set in stone yet as they have four players vying for that starting spot. Sophomores Chance Wilson and Patrick Duchien, and true freshman River Warren were on the roster last season. Stanford transfer Justin Lamson is also in the mix.
Lamson has the most experience. He is a fifth-year senior who began his career at Syracuse before transferring to Stanford in 2023. He threw for 804 yards and four touchdowns in the past two seasons and also ran for 428 yards and 13 touchdowns.
Leading-receiver Taco Dowler is back after catching 38 passes for 597 yards and 11 touchdowns. The next two top receivers and top tight end need to be replaced.
Adam Jones is back at Montana State after finishing No. 2 in the Jerry Rice Award last year, which is given out to the FCS top freshman. He ran for 1,172 yards and 14 touchdowns last season and was second on the team in rushing. Julius Davis is also back for the Bobcats after being limited to four games last year due to injury. He ran for 718 yards and eight touchdowns in 2023 after transferring from Wisconsin.
The three returning linemen are Titan Fleischmann, who was second team All-Big Sky last season, Burke Mastel and JT Reed.
On defense the Bobcats lost their top two tacklers and major contributors in the secondary.
MSUs strength will be the defensive line, led by Paul Brott and Kenneth Eiden IV, who were each All-Big Sky players last season. Brott had 49 tackles, six TFLs and three sacks and Eiden had 32 tackles and 10.5 TFLs and nine sacks, which were each team highs.
The Bobcats bring back two linebackers who were top five tacklers on the team. Neil Daily had 51 tackles, 6.5 TFLs and two sacks last season and Bryce Grebe had 43 tackles, 2.5 TFLs, one sack and two forced fumbles.
The MSU secondary has just one player that has started a game before as safety Caden Dowler started the first six games last year before a season-ending injury. Tayden Gray, Takhari Carr and Taki Uluilakepa all have over 200 snaps at cornerback. They also brought in Bryson Parker from Nevada, Bryant Meredith from Fullerton College and Ife Ohalete from Blinn College.
This will be the first trip back to Bozeman for the Jacks since they lost 31-17 to the Bobcats in the 2021 FCS Semifinals. SDSU beat MSU 20-16 in Brookings during the 2023 regular season after beating the Bobcats in the 2022 semifinals.
MSU has won 14-straight games at Bobcat Stadium. It will be the first road start for SDSU quarterback Chase Mason and will be a litmus test for where the Jacks are at as a team before the competition lightens up.
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