Idaho Montana State football score
The final Idaho Montana State football score reads 35-34, Idaho — and it will go down as the wildest finish of the college football season. On Friday night at the P1FCU Kibbie Dome in Moscow, winless Idaho drove 80 yards in 49 seconds with no timeouts, watched the clock hit zero, got one second back on a disputed ruling, and beat the No. 1 team in the FCS anyway. Quarterback Joshua Wood hit Ryan Jezioro for a 25-yard touchdown with no time left, then muscled into the end zone on the two-point conversion to stun Montana State and snap the defending national champions' program-record 19-game winning streak.
Idaho entered 0-4 and roughly a 16.5-point underdog. Montana State arrived 5-0, first in the Stats Perform FCS poll and carrying the authority of a reigning champion. By the time ESPN's nationally televised “Big Sky After Dark” window ended, the Vandals were 1-4 overall and 1-1 in conference, the Bobcats were 5-1 and 2-1, and every comfortable assumption about the FCS hierarchy had been shaken.
Why this matters: No. 1 fell, and the FCS bracket felt it
A 19-game streak does not die quietly, especially not against a team still searching for its first win. Montana State's loss is more than poll theater. The top of the FCS playoff bracket is built around scarce national seeds, home-field advantage and the credibility that comes from surviving conference play. A road defeat to an 0-4 opponent gives voters a reason to reconsider No. 1 and gives selection-committee members a blemish they cannot ignore if résumés tighten in November.
It also reopens a championship race Montana State had spent more than a year trying to close. South Dakota State, the last team to beat the Bobcats, is waiting in the wider national picture. Other contenders now have proof that the defending champions can be pressed, disrupted and beaten. That does not erase Montana State's résumé, but it removes the aura of inevitability — a meaningful difference when playoff seeding decides who plays December football at home.
Five plays, 80 yards and one disputed second
Montana State punted into the end zone with 49 seconds remaining, leaving Idaho at its own 20, out of timeouts and trailing 34-27. Wood moved the Vandals 80 yards in five plays. The critical gain was a 23-yard throw to Noah West-Baranco, who reached the Montana State 25 for a first down as the remaining time drained away.
The clock appeared to reach zero. Officials restored one second so the chains could be set, a decision that immediately became the game's central dispute. Montana State coach Brent Vigen then used a timeout as Idaho rushed to the line. After the pause, Wood found Jezioro for a 25-yard touchdown. Idaho coach Thomas Ford Jr. declined the tying extra point, kept his offense on the field and asked Wood to win the game. The quarterback powered across on the two-point run: 35-34, no return possession, no margin left.
The Brent Vigen timeout debate has three distinct arguments
The timeout produced the loudest criticism because it seemed to convert chaos into a clean offensive snap. Analyst Warren Sharp called it “one of the WORST coaching decisions you will ever see” and the “worst timeout EVER.” That is the prosecution's case: Idaho was scrambling, and Montana State voluntarily stopped the clock before the decisive play.
Vigen's explanation deserves to be stated plainly, too. “It's one of those situations where you call a timeout or you don't call a timeout,” he said. “We wanted to get grouped up, regrouped on defense. Ultimately, they made the play. I hope there was a second left.” A defense facing a last-second formation with the season's biggest result at stake may reasonably prefer alignment and a clear call to confusion.
Then there is the officiating question, which is separate from the coaching decision. Former NFL official and rules analyst Terry McAulay argued that the reset was wrong: under the relevant replay rule, he said, the clock can be restored only when it would restart on the ready for play with at least three seconds remaining and the offense has no timeouts. In that reading, the on-field crew should not have supplied the extra second and replay should have ended the game. That remains an expert interpretation of a disputed ruling, not a reversal of the result. The official final stands, and Idaho still had to execute both the touchdown and the conversion.
Thomas Ford's two-point call turned belief into a result
Ford called the decision to go for two a no-brainer. The logic was competitive as much as mathematical: Idaho had spent the night trading blows with a deeper favorite, Wood was playing the best game of his season, and one clean short-yardage snap could finish the upset before overtime restored Montana State's depth advantage.
Ford had forecast that conviction inside the program. “When we beat this team, everyone in the country will be surprised, but not one single person in that room will be surprised,” he said. That sentence could have sounded like motivational furniture from an 0-4 coach. After Wood crossed the goal line, it became the thesis of Idaho's night.
Joshua Wood and Ryan Jezioro owned the biggest moments
The last sequence was not a miracle detached from the rest of the game. Wood announced Idaho's intent on its first offensive snap, throwing a 75-yard touchdown to Jezioro for a 7-3 lead. The advantage changed hands six times before Montana State took a 24-20 margin into halftime. Myles Sansted's 26-yard field goal and Patrick Duchien's two-yard keeper then stretched the Bobcats' lead to 34-20 early in the fourth quarter.
Wood answered with a one-yard touchdown run at 9:54, cutting the gap to seven and preserving the possibility of the finish. He ended 19 of 25 passing for 315 yards and two touchdowns, while adding 41 yards and a score on 15 carries. Jezioro caught six passes for 147 yards and both touchdowns. The 75-yard opening strike showed explosive capacity; the 25-yard final connection showed composure when everyone in the dome knew the ball had to go forward.
Duchien's excellent night became the stat line nobody will remember
Montana State quarterback Patrick Duchien did enough to win almost any other game: 23 completions in 32 attempts, 249 passing yards, two touchdown throws, 92 rushing yards and a touchdown on 14 carries. Carter Dahlke, filling in for injured receiver Taco Dowler, caught ten passes for 126 yards and a score. The Bobcats built a two-touchdown fourth-quarter lead and led after the clock initially showed zero. Yet all of it became supporting evidence in Idaho's comeback.
The missing starters matter without excusing the finish. Quarterback Justin Lamson and Dowler were out for a second straight week, while running back Adam Jones was also unavailable. Montana State still produced 34 points and received high-level play from Duchien and Dahlke. The decisive failure was not simply a depleted lineup; it was an inability to prevent an 80-yard drive against an opponent without a timeout.
The numbers behind a historic Kibbie Dome upset
Idaho had never beaten a No. 1 team before Friday. The victory snapped a seven-game losing streak stretching to October 31, 2025. It came before 9,231 spectators in a building where Montana State has not won since 1990. That history is not abstract: Idaho also knocked off the No. 2 Bobcats 24-21 in the Kibbie Dome in 2023. Moscow has become the road trip Montana State cannot solve.
For the Bobcats, the dates measure how rare this result was. Their previous defeat was a 30-24 double-overtime loss to South Dakota State on September 6, 2025. Their previous Big Sky loss was a 37-7 defeat at Montana on November 18, 2023. Nineteen straight wins became a program record before ending against a 16.5-point underdog. Upsets are often sold as emotion; these numbers explain the scale.
What happens next in the Montana State FCS playoff race
Idaho visits Weber State on October 10 with a chance to prove the upset was a beginning rather than an isolated eruption. One win does not repair an 0-4 start, but a conference victory over No. 1 changes the ceiling. If Wood sustains this efficiency and the Vandals carry the Kibbie Dome urgency onto the road, the second half of their season can look nothing like the first.
Montana State gets a bye before traveling to Eastern Washington on October 17. That week should be used for more than healing starters. Vigen and his staff must repair late-game communication, reestablish the defense's situational confidence and make sure one disputed second does not become a month-long explanation. The Bobcats remain a championship-caliber team. They are no longer a championship inevitability.
The fairest verdict is also the most uncomfortable one for Montana State: officiating controversy helped create the final chance, but it did not throw the touchdown, call the two-point try or carry Wood across the goal line. Idaho did those things. In the season's most compressed moment, a winless team played with more clarity than No. 1. That is why the final score will travel far beyond Moscow.
Sources and reporting notes
- AP recap via Montana Sports: No. 1 Montana State stunned at Idaho, 35-34
- USA Today: Idaho's last-play FCS upset of Montana State
- Sports Illustrated: timeout controversy in the final second
- Idaho Athletics: Vandals shock the FCS with win over No. 1 Montana State
Reporting note: scores, statistics, records, game sequence and direct quotations are drawn from the cited coverage. The clock reset is disputed; this article distinguishes the official result from rules analysis and identifies forward-looking playoff implications as Signal Post News analysis.