Chris Steinbeisser was a scrappy, tenacious player who delivered a miracle in Holt Arena
THREE WEEKS IN 1993: 'Run Steiny, Run!'
10/10/2018 3:00:00 PM | Football
Montana State pulls off a miracle in Pocatello thanks to an unlikely hero who went the wrong way
For three weeks in October, 1993, Cliff Hysell and the Bobcats played football that rang familiar to long-time Bobcat fans. It also mapped a path into the future that would take a while, but which once again found Montana State Football on top of the Big Sky Conference. The Bobcats won a miraculous game in Idaho State's Holt Arena, followed that with an improbable home win over No. 1 Idaho, then finished the trifecta with the least probable of all - MSU's only win ever in Boise State's Bronco Stadium. Over the next few days we'll look back on that crazy stretch of three games that don't really seem like they were a quarter century ago...
There was no way. Just no way.
Montana State was not going to win this game. The Bobcats trailed Idaho State 17-6 early in the fourth quarter, and 24-12 with four minutes left. But when the Bobcats needed a miracle, one showed up – in an unlikely package.
The 4-2 Bobcats and 2-4 Bengals slogged through a largely uneventful – and unartful – first half. The teams didn't score in the first quarter, and after ISU got on the board with a field goal early in the second quarter the Cats answered with an 80-yard touchdown drive. But that drive wasn't engineered by starting quarterback Chad Mayer.
BYU transfer Brock Spencer entered the game four minutes into the second quarter, and marched the Cats 80 yards for a touchdown on his first drive. The PAT was off target, and the Cats carried a 6-3 lead into the intermission. The teams traded futile possessions early in the second half, but the Bengals capitalized on a 24-yard touchdown pass near the end of the third quarter to jump in front 10-6.
And then all hell broke loose.
Idaho State marched 54 yards to open the fourth quarter, and took command of the game when Shawn Behr connected with sensational running back Alfredo Anderson on a 25-yard touchdown pass. Behr, like MSU's Spencer, was on in relief. The Bobcats trailed 17-6. Anderson remains one of the most brilliant players in Big Sky history, one that long-time Bengals play-by-play man Jerry Miller remembers fondly.
"Alfredo Anderson is probably for my money the most physically skilled athlete we've ever had in terms of speed and quickness," Miller said, and Anderson put that ability to good use on this day. He rushed for 161 yards, and that touchdown catch was among his 39 receiving yards that day. "He was amazing. He could do just about anything you wanted him to do."
Spencer led the Bobcats onto the field, and down the field. He found Aaron Wilkins for 25 yards, and then Fred Moore gained 22 yards on three rushing plays. A screen to Moore accounted for eight yards, to the ISU 25, and Moore bulled his way for a first down. After a sack and an incompletion, Spencer found Eric Hopkins in the end zone for a touchdown, and the score was suddenly 17-12.
Behr answered. ISU marched 74 yards, and when Chad Kay broke tackles and rambled 20 yards for a touchdown, the home team led 24-12 with 4:05 to play. But here came the Cats, and specifically Spencer. Nine plays – all passes – covered 65 yards. The last was a six-yarder to Mark Crews (his third reception on the series) for a touchdown, and now the score was 24-19.
With 2:19 to play, things didn't look great from the MSU sideline. Kay found nothing happening in the middle of the line on first down, then Behr found a little room scampering around end on second. With 2:06 to play, everyone in Holt Arena – and the enthusiastic crowd was 6,227 was in full throat – turned to their internal clocks. One more time out would take the under two minutes, then a punt, and the Bobcats would have a minute-and-a-half to find glory.
Second-year Bengals coach Brian McNeely had surely run the numbers, and he decided to try to end the game without Brock Spencer getting another shot. On first down, Kay tried the middle of the line for no gain. MSU called time out. On second down Behr kept on a sprint option. "It was a great call because the quarterback wasn't accounted for," Damberger remembers, "but Mark Grimmer worked his way through and made the tackle" for a four-yard gain to bring up third and six.
Then it happened. A one-time walk-on named Chris Steinbeisser from Sidney took center stage, and no one saw it coming. "We were just going to max-blitz," Damberger recalls, "shoot every gap and just try to blow it up."
"Steiny went the wrong way," said Bobcat offensive lineman J.C. Murray.
"That's what I remember," confirms defensive tackle Wade Rademacher.
"He took two steps forward then peeled back," Damberger said of Steinbeisser's play. "I don't know if he saw something or what, but he got himself to the right place. " To everyone's surprise but Steinbeisser's, Behr tried to dump the ball to his running back, and it sailed into Steinbeisser's waiting arms.
Miller groans at the memory. "I remember that interception so clearly," he says. "We had this game, we had the lead and the ball, and then we threw that pass."
What no one else knew is that before that third down play, an on-field conversation between Steinbeisser and middle linebacker Tyler Sharp – two players remembered all these years later not just for their toughness but for intelligence – led to the middle-of-the-play audible.
"I just said, 'Why are we blitzing when they'd thrown the ball over the middle every time before that,'" Steinbeisser recalled 25 years later. "So when I got stopped on the blitz I said, 'What the heck,' and dropped back right to the spot they'd been throwing the ball every time we blitzed the whole game. I think Sharp came around to my point of view after that play," he said with a laugh.
"I was watching the action in the backfield, and someone (on the headset connected to the coaches in the press box) yelled, 'Run Steiny, run,'" said Damberger, who was stationed on the sidelines. "I couldn't tell exactly what happened, but Steiny was taking off toward the end zone. I didn't know if he was going to stay in bounds because there was some traffic around the 20 (yard line)."
It's not what Damberger heard, but 100 feet or so above the playing surface, Dean Alexander's memorable call of that moment featured a familiar exhortation – "Run Steiny, run!" A quarter century later, Alexander remembers that Steinbeisser "came out of nowhere and picked six. He found speed he didn't know he had, it was his fastest 55 yards ever."
Steinbeisser stayed inbounds, and scored, and when an Idaho State fourth down pass fell incomplete a few seconds later, Montana State had secured one of the most improbable wins in Bobcat history.
From Miller's viewpoint, things had dimmed instantly. "I started doing (Bengals) games in 1982," the year after the program's Division I-AA National Championship, Miller said. Recounting a string of disappointments following that moment of football glory which rings painfully familiar to MSU fans, Miller said that the scene unfolding before him "was just one of those things if you'd been around this program long enough. You knew the team just found ways to lose."
The impact on the Holt Arena sideline nearest the press box was just as immediate. "It was just such a massive turnaround," Murray said. "You knew they just had to run out the clock so playing safety ball and grinding it out on the ground was what you expected them to do. The fact that Steiny ran the wrong play and ended up with the interception was such an exact 180 (degrees from) the emotions you expected to feel. The interception and runback for the score was the biggest flip of emotions in a game in my career."
Rademacher, then a senior, saw things in a slightly different light. "In my five years," he said, "we never got the lucky bounce. We never got the lucky break. This was one of those games that we began to think, maybe things can go our way."
NEXT UP: The greatest home win – alright, the greatest home win over an out-of-state opponent – in Bobcat history.
There was no way. Just no way.
Montana State was not going to win this game. The Bobcats trailed Idaho State 17-6 early in the fourth quarter, and 24-12 with four minutes left. But when the Bobcats needed a miracle, one showed up – in an unlikely package.
The 4-2 Bobcats and 2-4 Bengals slogged through a largely uneventful – and unartful – first half. The teams didn't score in the first quarter, and after ISU got on the board with a field goal early in the second quarter the Cats answered with an 80-yard touchdown drive. But that drive wasn't engineered by starting quarterback Chad Mayer.
BYU transfer Brock Spencer entered the game four minutes into the second quarter, and marched the Cats 80 yards for a touchdown on his first drive. The PAT was off target, and the Cats carried a 6-3 lead into the intermission. The teams traded futile possessions early in the second half, but the Bengals capitalized on a 24-yard touchdown pass near the end of the third quarter to jump in front 10-6.
And then all hell broke loose.
Idaho State marched 54 yards to open the fourth quarter, and took command of the game when Shawn Behr connected with sensational running back Alfredo Anderson on a 25-yard touchdown pass. Behr, like MSU's Spencer, was on in relief. The Bobcats trailed 17-6. Anderson remains one of the most brilliant players in Big Sky history, one that long-time Bengals play-by-play man Jerry Miller remembers fondly.
"Alfredo Anderson is probably for my money the most physically skilled athlete we've ever had in terms of speed and quickness," Miller said, and Anderson put that ability to good use on this day. He rushed for 161 yards, and that touchdown catch was among his 39 receiving yards that day. "He was amazing. He could do just about anything you wanted him to do."
Spencer led the Bobcats onto the field, and down the field. He found Aaron Wilkins for 25 yards, and then Fred Moore gained 22 yards on three rushing plays. A screen to Moore accounted for eight yards, to the ISU 25, and Moore bulled his way for a first down. After a sack and an incompletion, Spencer found Eric Hopkins in the end zone for a touchdown, and the score was suddenly 17-12.
Behr answered. ISU marched 74 yards, and when Chad Kay broke tackles and rambled 20 yards for a touchdown, the home team led 24-12 with 4:05 to play. But here came the Cats, and specifically Spencer. Nine plays – all passes – covered 65 yards. The last was a six-yarder to Mark Crews (his third reception on the series) for a touchdown, and now the score was 24-19.
With 2:19 to play, things didn't look great from the MSU sideline. Kay found nothing happening in the middle of the line on first down, then Behr found a little room scampering around end on second. With 2:06 to play, everyone in Holt Arena – and the enthusiastic crowd was 6,227 was in full throat – turned to their internal clocks. One more time out would take the under two minutes, then a punt, and the Bobcats would have a minute-and-a-half to find glory.
Second-year Bengals coach Brian McNeely had surely run the numbers, and he decided to try to end the game without Brock Spencer getting another shot. On first down, Kay tried the middle of the line for no gain. MSU called time out. On second down Behr kept on a sprint option. "It was a great call because the quarterback wasn't accounted for," Damberger remembers, "but Mark Grimmer worked his way through and made the tackle" for a four-yard gain to bring up third and six.
Then it happened. A one-time walk-on named Chris Steinbeisser from Sidney took center stage, and no one saw it coming. "We were just going to max-blitz," Damberger recalls, "shoot every gap and just try to blow it up."
"Steiny went the wrong way," said Bobcat offensive lineman J.C. Murray.
"That's what I remember," confirms defensive tackle Wade Rademacher.
"He took two steps forward then peeled back," Damberger said of Steinbeisser's play. "I don't know if he saw something or what, but he got himself to the right place. " To everyone's surprise but Steinbeisser's, Behr tried to dump the ball to his running back, and it sailed into Steinbeisser's waiting arms.
Miller groans at the memory. "I remember that interception so clearly," he says. "We had this game, we had the lead and the ball, and then we threw that pass."
What no one else knew is that before that third down play, an on-field conversation between Steinbeisser and middle linebacker Tyler Sharp – two players remembered all these years later not just for their toughness but for intelligence – led to the middle-of-the-play audible.
"I just said, 'Why are we blitzing when they'd thrown the ball over the middle every time before that,'" Steinbeisser recalled 25 years later. "So when I got stopped on the blitz I said, 'What the heck,' and dropped back right to the spot they'd been throwing the ball every time we blitzed the whole game. I think Sharp came around to my point of view after that play," he said with a laugh.
"I was watching the action in the backfield, and someone (on the headset connected to the coaches in the press box) yelled, 'Run Steiny, run,'" said Damberger, who was stationed on the sidelines. "I couldn't tell exactly what happened, but Steiny was taking off toward the end zone. I didn't know if he was going to stay in bounds because there was some traffic around the 20 (yard line)."
It's not what Damberger heard, but 100 feet or so above the playing surface, Dean Alexander's memorable call of that moment featured a familiar exhortation – "Run Steiny, run!" A quarter century later, Alexander remembers that Steinbeisser "came out of nowhere and picked six. He found speed he didn't know he had, it was his fastest 55 yards ever."
Steinbeisser stayed inbounds, and scored, and when an Idaho State fourth down pass fell incomplete a few seconds later, Montana State had secured one of the most improbable wins in Bobcat history.
From Miller's viewpoint, things had dimmed instantly. "I started doing (Bengals) games in 1982," the year after the program's Division I-AA National Championship, Miller said. Recounting a string of disappointments following that moment of football glory which rings painfully familiar to MSU fans, Miller said that the scene unfolding before him "was just one of those things if you'd been around this program long enough. You knew the team just found ways to lose."
The impact on the Holt Arena sideline nearest the press box was just as immediate. "It was just such a massive turnaround," Murray said. "You knew they just had to run out the clock so playing safety ball and grinding it out on the ground was what you expected them to do. The fact that Steiny ran the wrong play and ended up with the interception was such an exact 180 (degrees from) the emotions you expected to feel. The interception and runback for the score was the biggest flip of emotions in a game in my career."
Rademacher, then a senior, saw things in a slightly different light. "In my five years," he said, "we never got the lucky bounce. We never got the lucky break. This was one of those games that we began to think, maybe things can go our way."
NEXT UP: The greatest home win – alright, the greatest home win over an out-of-state opponent – in Bobcat history.
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