This was not just a win. It was a shot across the bow of the entire FCS hierarchy. Idaho, a team that had started 0-4, beat the No. 1 Montana State Bobcats 35-34 in Moscow on a final-play 2-point conversion, and in the process ripped up the script, the streak and the idea that the defending champions were untouchable.
NCAA.com called it a “MIRACLE IN MOSCOW,” and that is not overstating it. Idaho had protected its home against Montana State since 1990, but this one still felt beyond belief because of the opponent and the timing. The Bobcats arrived as defending FCS national champions, riding a 19-game winning streak, and left with that streak snapped in the cruelest possible way.
The finish was pure chaos, the kind of ending that makes a game live forever. Joshua Wood threw a 25-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass, then led the final two-point conversion sequence that gave Idaho the edge. Thomas Ford Jr. later called it a “no-brainer decision,” and once the ball went down, it was hard to argue with the boldness. In a game decided by one snap at the end, Idaho backed itself and got the result everyone else thought was out of reach.
Why this result matters
This is bigger than a single upset because of what Idaho beat. Montana State was the FCS No. 1 team, and Idaho had already lost enough early in the season to make a turnaround look unlikely. Yet football still has room for the kind of moment that blows up all the neat assumptions. The Vandals did not merely survive; they went after the best team in the country and took the game off the table at the last possible second.
Joshua Wood was central to all of it. Through five weeks, he had seven rushing touchdowns, and he played like a quarterback who understood that reputation means nothing if you do not finish. Idaho has now beaten Montana State in back-to-back seasons, including the 2023 win over a No. 2-ranked Bobcats team, and that is no accident. The gap between these teams is no longer theoretical. Idaho has found a way to make Montana State uncomfortable, and that should worry the rest of the Big Sky.
For Montana State, this one hurts because there is no refuge in the numbers. The Bobcats were ahead of the narrative, ahead of the ranking and ahead of the clock until they were not. Their 19-game winning streak is gone, and the final image is not of a champion closing out another routine victory. It is of a team that let a 35-34 lead slip away on the final play in Moscow.
That is the ugly beauty of college football: one play can wipe away months of certainty. Idaho State football now has a headline result to point to, but Idaho has something even more valuable — proof that the biggest team in the FCS can be beaten, even when it looks impossible.
