By halftime Friday night, the P1FCU Kibbie Dome had something it had been missing for most of the season.
Hope.
That might sound strange for a team that was trailing by a touchdown and still winless. Idaho entered the night 0-4, while Montana State arrived at 5-0 as the defending FCS national champion, the No. 1 team in the country and owner of a 19-game winning streak. On paper, the gap between the programs was enormous.
For the first 30 minutes, though, Idaho looked like it had every right to be there.
Montana State’s Myles Sansted missed a 44-yard field goal as the first half expired, leaving the Bobcats ahead 24-20. Idaho had trailed 10-0 early, then answered with three consecutive scoring drives. The Vandals had already shown enough to make the nationally televised game competitive, and for a program that had spent the first four weeks enduring one close loss after another, that mattered.
The expectation entering the night had been that Montana State would eventually pull away with a sizeable lead and advance to 6-0. Instead, the Bobcats had to keep answering Idaho.
The game would eventually come down to whether the Vandals could answer one more time.
With 13:29 remaining, Montana State quarterback Patrick Duchien scored on a 2-yard run to put the Bobcats ahead 34-20. The situation was all too familiar. Idaho had spent the first four games finding ways to remain within striking distance before watching opportunities disappear.
There was little reason to think this game would end differently. In the final 13 minutes of the game, Idaho played as if the previous four weeks had never happened.
The Vandals scored on a 75-yard drive to cut the deficit to seven. The defense forced a punt. Then, with 49 seconds remaining, Idaho got the ball back at its own 20-yard line with no timeouts.
What happened next was the kind of sequence that changes how a season is remembered.
The clock, which was actively running, read 13 seconds, and Idaho was still stuck in its own territory with the ball placed at the 41-yard line. An 11-yard completion to Tony Harste set up what was expected to be the game’s final play, as eight seconds remained and Idaho needed a touchdown to stay alive.
Rather than heaving a prayer towards the endzone, Wood found Noah West-Baranco for a 23-yard gain over the middle of the field. The problem was that Idaho had no way to stop the clock, so the game was seemingly over. The officials ruled that West-Baranco’s knee had touched the ground with one second remaining, so there was a momentary clock stoppage to move the chains.
However, amidst all the confusion, Montana State’s head coach, Brent Vigen, called a timeout. Instead of the one second running off the clock and the game ending before Idaho’s offense was able to snap the ball, this timeout gave the offense new life; One final opportunity to put the ball in the endzone.
Wood dropped back, worked through his progression and found Ryan Jezioro in the end zone for a 25-yard touchdown. Jezioro, who finished with a career-high 147 yards and two touchdowns, came down with the ball to make it a one-point game.
There was no hesitation from head coach Thomas Ford Jr. about what was going to come next. The Vandals were going for two.
Wood kept the ball on the two-point attempt and forced his way across the goal line. The officials signaled that the conversion was successful, the clock showed zeroes and the students poured onto the field.
Idaho had beaten Montana State 35-34.
For the first time in program history, the Vandals had beaten the No. 1 team in the country. They had ended the defending national champion’s 19-game winning streak. They had done it after trailing by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
And perhaps most importantly for Idaho, they had finally finished a game. That had been the question hanging over the Vandals since September.
They lost to Cal Poly 38-34 in the season opener on a miraculous last-second touchdown. They lost to Lamar 23-17 after falling behind 20-3 at halftime and mounting a second-half comeback. They lost to Abilene Christian 41-39 after taking a 24-21 lead into halftime. The three losses were decided by a combined 12 points.
Ford had repeatedly talked about the same things after each one: belief, togetherness and the need to play four complete quarters.
At 0-4, those messages were becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the results. Close losses can be encouraging for only so long. Eventually, a team has to turn them into wins.
Against Montana State, Idaho finally did.
“I think it really validates that we are a good football team,” Ford said after the game. “If that’s the number one team in the country, I think we’re pretty dang good.”
Idaho did not suddenly discover a new level of football Friday. Much of what happened against Montana State had been visible in pieces throughout the first four games. The difference was that the Vandals sustained it when the game reached its most important moments.
The defense held Montana State scoreless for the final 13 minutes. Wood made the necessary throws and runs. Idaho found enough offense late to erase a 14-point deficit. When the opportunity came to win rather than extend the game, Ford trusted his quarterback to finish it.
Wood looked comfortable throughout the night, particularly when the pressure increased.
He completed 19 of 25 passes for 315 yards and two touchdowns, added 41 rushing yards and scored Idaho’s final touchdown before the winning two-point conversion. It was his third 300-yard passing performance of the season.
The final touchdown was a good example of why Wood’s performance mattered beyond the numbers.
Ford said afterward that Wood is the best off-schedule quarterback he has coached, a description that fits some of the most memorable plays Wood has made this season. But on the final touchdown, Wood showed the other side of his game. He had six-man protection, stepped into the pocket, worked through his progression and used his eyes to move the middle safety before finding Jezioro.
The play looked calm because Wood was calm. That was part of what made the final drive so remarkable. Idaho had practiced for it.
Ford said the Vandals had specifically rehearsed a situation in which they were trailing late, had no timeouts and needed a touchdown. The scenario they practiced had 1:01 on the clock. Idaho had 49 seconds Friday.
The players knew what they were supposed to do because they had already been there.
“We practice this,” Ford said. “This is not just something that we made up.”
The result helps explain why Ford was so adamant after the first four losses that the Vandals were better than their record.
He said before the game that if a few plays had gone differently, Idaho could have been 3-1. That sounded optimistic when the team was 0-4. It carries more weight after the Vandals beat the best team in the country.
Friday did not erase the first four losses. It gave them context.
Idaho was capable of competing with Montana State because it had already been capable of competing with Cal Poly, Lamar and Abilene Christian. The problem was that it had not been able to complete the job.
The No. 1 team in the country finally forced Idaho to find a way. The timing made the victory even more meaningful for Ford’s program.
His first 16 games as Idaho’s head coach had produced a 4-12 record. The Vandals had entered the season hoping to establish a new foundation after the program had experienced its most successful FCS stretch under Jason Eck. The 0-4 start intensified questions about whether Ford could get Idaho back to where its supporters expected it to be.
For much of Friday night, those questions were still sitting there. Then the answer arrived with one second left.
There is a legitimate case that the victory ranks as the biggest in Idaho history. The Vandals had beaten Montana State when the Bobcats were ranked No. 2 in the country in 2023, but Friday’s opponent was undefeated, ranked No. 1 and carrying a 19-game winning streak into Moscow.
Montana State has not won in the Kibbie Dome since 1990. Idaho is now 20-7-1 against the Bobcats at home, and Friday’s result extended a home-field advantage that has survived decades of changes in both programs.
There was also the matter of how improbable the ending was. It was an extraordinary collection of circumstances, but Idaho still had to execute every one of them.
That is why the final sequence should not obscure what happened before it. The Vandals played the defending national champion for 60 minutes and gave themselves an opportunity to win. They responded after Montana State built a two-touchdown lead. They held the Bobcats without a point for the final 13 minutes. And when the game came down to one play, their star quarterback delivered.
The celebration afterward reflected how much had been building beneath the surface.
Ford had spent the first four losses insisting that his team was together. He knew that message was becoming difficult for outsiders to accept. After the Montana State game, he addressed that directly.
“People probably hear me in these press conferences after the losses and they hear me talk about this ‘together’ team and that we never quit and they think it’s just cliche and it’s just BS,” Ford said. “It’s not.”
Idaho is 1-4. The Vandals still have seven games remaining, beginning Saturday at Weber State. The result against Montana State does not guarantee a playoff berth or erase the margin for error created by the first month of the season.
But it does change what is reasonable to expect.
Before Friday, an Idaho playoff push required a lot of imagination. After demonstrating that they can beat the best team in the country, anything is possible. Ford said Monday that the victory validated the work the program has invested in building its roster and culture, while emphasizing that it was only one game and that Idaho had to move on to Weber State.
That is probably the healthiest way for the program to view what happened.
Friday was enormous. It was historic. It may ultimately prove to be the night that changed the direction of Ford’s tenure.
But it cannot become the season’s final accomplishment.
The first four games showed a team that could compete with good football teams, but could not quite finish them. The fifth showed what happens when that same team finally gets over the hump.
For a program that had spent a month asking people to believe, Idaho finally gave them something concrete to believe in.