His arrival dates back to at least Monday.
“I thought he was good all week, when I watched him on film,” said McNeese State coach Matt Viator, after his visiting Cowboys absorbed a 31-6 loss to the Griz in the first round of the Division I-AA football playoffs. “I coach quarterbacks, and the thing I was impressed with is he can throw against man and zone. He has the ability to throw it on-time.
Swogger, the senior transfer from Washington State, made fairly short work of a program that has given Montana fits in the playoffs. Twice the Griz saw their season end with Cowboy rallies in Lake Charles, La. The last time McNeese State visited Missoula, in 1994, the Grizzlies needed a last-second field goal through the snow to escape 30-28.
Saturday's snowstorm broke well before kickoff, then resumed as traffic thinned around Washington-Grizzly Stadium. In between, Montana played a cuticle-saving game while winning its 11th straight. The No. 2-ranked Griz (11-1) earned a quarterfinal home game next Saturday against No. 10 Southern Illinois (9-3), a 36-30 victor over Tennessee-Martin.
Swogger went 18-for-26 for 259 yards in just three quarters of action. He fired a 50-yard touchdown pass to tight end Dan Beaudin and a 14-yarder to Eric Allen in the first half. Craig Chambers added TD catches of 8 and 11 yards as Montana put the game away in the third quarter.
There were plenty of other highlights for the largest opening-round crowd in UM history. Freshman Thomas Brooks-Fletcher ran for 113 yards on just 13 carries, including a 48-yard burst that set up Chambers' first TD. Brady Green had 98 all-purpose yards. The defense allowed just 224 yards, and the Griz kept McNeese return man Steven Whitehead in check, partly by punting just once.
“That was a pretty dominating effort, in all three facets,” Griz coach Bobby Hauck said.
It started with Swogger, or more to the point, his protection. The 6-foot-5 quarterback found time to check down to Beaudin in the first quarter, and the Griz were off and running.
Beaudin, a redshirt freshman from Noxon, broke free in the right flat as Swogger looked off his first target, H-back Kevin Klaboe. Swogger fired a strike that Beaudin caught at the 35, and the freshman shook free of safety Lawrence Darby, then bulled through 190-pound corner Ivan Stevenson at the 25.
It was the 235-pound Beaudin's first collegiate touchdown, and along with Dan Carpenter's extra-point kick provided all the points UM would need. The Griz led 7-3 at 7:54 of the first quarter.
Swogger wasn't through. In the second quarter he directed a marathon, 17-play drive that netted a field goal for a 10-6 lead, then a lightning-quick, seven-play drive that took all of 63 seconds.
The latter was crucial, boosting the lead to 17-6 with 13 seconds left in the half. It came after McNeese, which had moved the ball with freshman Derrick Fourroux at quarterback, had a brutal series with sophomore Mark Fontenot at the controls. A false start and a sack by Kroy Biermann set up a punt, and Swogger took over with 1:16 left in the half.
He fired a 14-yard pass to Chambers, flipped a screen pass to Brady Green that went 19 yards and hit Ryan Bagley for 17 yards down to the 14. On the next play Swogger rolled left, dodged McNeese rush end Bryan Smith and hit Eric Allen at the 5-yard line.
Allen drove between defenders Darrick Brown and Jonathan Walker for the TD.
Montana's running game kicked into high gear after that, though Swogger felt it set tone in the first half as well.
“The passing game goes as the running game goes and as the offensive line goes,” said Swogger, who threw to eight different receivers. “And in this game, they did an outstanding job. I think I got sacked twice (actually once), and that was a good defense.”
Yet the Griz gained 514 yards. Their four first-half possessions netted 269.
“We just look at each others' eyes and just know that things are going to happen if we have time, and I get the ball into the receivers' hands,” Swogger said.
Not much happened for No. 22 McNeese (7-5), the Southland Conference champ. Whitehead ran twice for 18 yards and caught six passes for 66, but the Cowboys managed only two Blake Bercegeay field goals. Crowd noise led directly to five Cowboy penalties, four of them false starts, and indirectly to three muffed snaps to Fourroux.
“They certainly outplayed us today,” said Viator, who took over the struggling Cowboys at midseason and led them to a 6-2 mark, including five straight wins. “They lined up foot to foot and kind of ran it right at us.
“Montana is a really good football team and this is a tough place to play. We knew we were going to have to play as good as we could possibly play today, and we didn't. But they had a lot to do with it.”
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