At 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, he was one of 16 players named to the preseason Buck Buchanan Award watch list. With 12 sacks as a sophomore and six more last season, it figured that Murphy would have a shot at being called the top defensive player for one of the best programs in I-AA.
Then came some dings, some dents, an appendectomy and ... well really, not a whole lot has changed. Montana, ranked second in Division I-AA, leads the Big Sky Conference in total defense, and Murphy is still one of the best defensive players around.
"Murph's had as good a year as he's ever had, if you sit down and watch the tape," maintains Kraig Paulson, defensive coordinator for the Grizzlies. "It doesn't show up in the stats, but he's had a phenomenal year."
Phenomenal in more ways than one. It is hard to explain how a 23-year-old can be as star-crossed as Murphy has been following his breakout sophomore campaign. Last season he figured to keep building his resume, but assorted injuries - the most notable being a broken thumb suffered against Portland State - kept him from piling up major statistics.
Things didn't begin much better this season.
"There were a couple early setbacks," said the senior. "I felt healthy going into the Iowa game, and I took a couple injuries."
The appendectomy followed, and kept him out of the Sacramento State game. He returned for the Grizzlies' critical 26-20 win at Portland State, but heading into the Northern Arizona game on Oct. 14, he still didn't have a sack. The Buchanan list was gone.
That much was different.
Five weeks later, as Montana heads into the 106th Griz-Cat game, Murphy has five sacks. That's good for ninth in the Big Sky. He makes up a third - along with Kroy Biermann, who jumped onto the Buchanan list, and Dustin Dlouhy - of Montana's unholy trinity of defensive ends.
"I like how in the college scheme it's primarily a play-making spot," Murphy said. "You have a couple key things you have to take care of, but for the most part you don't have to worry about dropping into coverage. You just line up and go."
The ends are a focal point of a defense that surrenders just 102.5 rushing yards per game, 169.5 passing yards per Saturday and an average of 272 total. Murphy has 31 tackles, 6.5 for losses. His 25.5 career sacks place him third all-time at UM, behind only Andy Petek and Tim Bush.
Whatever totals Murphy has, he's right where he wants to be: Playing the edge at the University of Montana.
His father Tom graduated from Montana's school of law in 1983, which is also the year Mike was born. When he was three years old the family moved to Great Falls. Murphy went through middle school loving basketball, but it was at Great Falls Russell, playing for legendary high school coach Jack Johnson, that he found his true calling.
"The longer I went, the more opportunities I saw to play football," he said.
In 2001 Murphy was all-state for Class AA for a second time, and his Rustlers won the state title. A few weeks later, the Grizzlies claimed their second Division I-AA football championship. Murphy said to that point he was only a casual fan of UM. That changed with the Grizzlies' 13-6 win over Furman.
"I fell in love with it from there," he said. "That was huge. I just liked the way they ran their program, and I knew the players. It was a pretty big deciding factor."
It must've been. When he hit the Montana campus, Murphy had to pay his own way.
Frontier Conference schools aside, Murphy said Montana State recruited him the hardest, offering a scholarship before his senior year.
He didn't commit. He was waiting to see what the Griz would offer, and the Griz were taking their time.
"I think they had quite a few D-ends on scholarship at that time, and I don't think I was a high priority," he says now. "They didn't offer until after we won the state championship.
"I just wanted to come here. I was just waiting for them to make an offer. The gray-shirt was good enough for me."
A gray-shirt meant Murphy wasn't officially part of the 2002 recruiting class. He came to school as a 210-pound freshman, and he couldn't work out with the team. He made the best of it, he said, by taking a look at the likes of Bush and Ciche Pitcher and hitting the weights, and the carbs.
"It was actually good motivation," he says now. "I felt compelled to work pretty hard. I saw some of those D-ends that were coming in. They were pretty big.
"I actually put on 20, 30 pounds in that first semester, pretty much on my own."
But things weren't lined up yet. After the 2002 season the coach who'd recruited Murphy, Joe Glenn, took the job at Wyoming.
"I was a little worried about that," said Murphy. "For one, it was losing a great coach that you wanted to play for. Plus I was a little worried about what coach we were going to get, and if I was going to have my scholarship."
In came Bobby Hauck, and a defensive ends coach named Fred Von Appen. Murphy talked to both, and felt he'd have a chance. The only thing between him and a scholarship was a deep pool of D-ends and whoever was blocking him. That was future NFL draft pick Dylan McFarland.
"I knew I had to perform that spring, and I did. I impressed the coaches," Murphy said. "It was a rough spring, though. I was taking a lot of reps against Dylan. It definitely got me ready to play college football. That's for sure."
Murphy played in all 13 games, starting two, for the 2003 team that finished 9-4. Injuries gave him the opportunity, and he made the most of it. He made the trip to Maine for UM's opener, and got in the stat book by recovering a muffed punt on special teams.
"I don't know if I would've been playing if Pitcher hadn't got hurt," he said. "I remember thinking it was crazy. It was so fast. It kind of intrigued me a little bit."
The season ended with a 43-40 double-overtime playoff loss to Western Illinois. Murphy was named the defensive player of the game.
"I was thinking, 'OK, I've got it figured out,' " he said. "I just decided I was going into my sophomore year with the same intensity."
That 2004 season had the makings of a storybook ending. The team scuffled early and gave up big yards in the middle before winning six straight games, most of them in dominating fashion.
"It was weird," Murphy remembered. "The defense kind of struggled that year. It was more of the offense carrying the defense. (Craig) Ochs was on fire, and we just had some great camaraderie - some of the same camaraderie I feel with the team right now."
Murphy was dominant, earning second-team All-America honors and making first-team all-Big Sky. His recent surge he can credit to being his healthiest since then, though he adds, "I've never really been 100 percent since I've started playing college football."
Another is strength. He got strong at the start under Lacey Degnan but has also seen obvious results under UM's football-only strength coach, Mike Gerber.
"Gerber just brought in some new lifts, and stressed some things on platform (read: cleans and squats)," Murphy said. "Our maxes have jumped. I think we're more explosive."
Never mind that the statistics haven't always shown it.
"Watch the film," says Paulson, now also UM's defensive ends coach. "There's a reason why coaches after the game are taking about him. He's all over.
"He's stuck with the plan. A lot of kids who are on a watch list start going wherever they can go to make a play. They don't stay disciplined."
Murphy has. The byproduct, of course, is that the Griz keep winning. Murphy and Hauck have been on the same team for four years; in that time UM is 38-12, including a 9-1 mark this fall.
It's been the fit he expected all along, and then some. Aside from an uncle, Ed McGreevey, being here in town, brothers Matt (21) and Tommy (19) are on campus. Matt is Mike's roommate.
Murphy himself is about to graduate with a degree in psychology. He's debating between trying counseling and coaching in high school and law school. He'll take the law entrance exam, either before or after heading to Italy with Matt. He'd also love a shot at the NFL.
Before then there are some loose ends. A pair of those 12 collegiate losses have come to the Cats. If Murphy didn't follow the Cat-Griz games in high school, he certainly is aware of them now.
"Personally, it's huge," he said. "I've only won once against these guys. It's kind of been a nuisance of a game.
"It means a lot to the whole state of Montana. I've got fans coming to me saying, 'Hey, how are things, nice game Saturday.' And the next thing they say is, 'Beat the Bobcats!' It's more than just a game on Saturday. It's bragging rights and it's pride for each program and its fans. It's all you work for. You just hate to lose to these guys."
Back in 2004, the Griz pinned a 38-22 loss on MSU in the midst of that late-season tear. It ended with a 31-21 loss to James Madison in Chattanooga, Tenn., in the I-AA championship game.
Just as he does the Griz-Cat game, Murphy - a relative youngster then - appreciates that stage more now.
"I think a lot about it," he said. "A lot lately. It really hurts. I know how huge it was, but that may have been a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
"After a long season like that, you couldn't really grasp what just happened. Looking back on it after all this time - it hurt to go down there and lose that one. Hopefully this season we can make that right. We can get back there and take care of business."
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