HELENA, Mont. \u2014 The pads are popping and the Saints are locked in as fall football camp is underway at Carroll college and with less than three weeks until the season opener head coach Troy Purcell and his squad are thrilled to be back in action.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcitement is always there. You know that fall camp for the whole town, the whole city, the college, all the players and all the coaches, and everybody in the, you know, state of Montana and the nation gets really excited for fall camp and an opportunity to go showcase your talent and be around the brothers again and continue the tradition of excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Purcell and his staff will have the tall task of replacing seven 1st team all-conference players from last year\u2019s squad that won 9 games and made the playoffs but the Saints do return a number of key players including starting quarterback Kaden Huot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m feeling great. You know, I got a great offense, and it’s not just me just making plays. It’s everyone around me, and I got to thank those guys. And they do a great job. And, you know, but feeling confident. Yeah, having, having fun on the field. But, you know, just looking forward to the first game and getting some football in with the guys.<\/p>\n
Purcell pointed to Huot\u2019s growth since returning to game action last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving Kaden for, you know, that first game last year was like 1300 days since the last time he played a football game or something like that. And he came out and showed and he performed as that year went on and continued to get better. Had a great spring and is carrying that into the fall here now,\u201d Purcell said.<\/p>\n
On the outside the Saints will have to fill the shoes of departed seniors Chris Akulschin and Carson Ochoa who combined for 18 receiving touchdowns last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always lose, you know, good ones and then you always gain good ones. I’m just excited about the crew coming back. You have Gavin Vandenacre and and Connor Sullivan are kind of the old guys with Ethan Triplett out there, transfer kid in Josh Johnson, you got Treyton Graham is starting to light it up a little bit.\u201d Purcell said.<\/p>\n
The offensive line is another group that will feature some new faces in 2026 but Coach Purcell and Huot are confident in the big boys up front to get the job done<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re doing great. You know, they work their butts off every day, fighting for everyone on the field. You know, it starts with them and they do a hell of a job up front,\u201d Huot said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike what we got. We got a great leadership there. Coach Alex Land is a new guy that came in, for the spring\u2026excited about our new concepts that we got going in. It’s pretty fun and got great leadership on that line,\u201d Purcell added.<\/p>\n
The Saints will have a new play-caller on defense with Joe Dunning replacing Randy Bandelow at DC after Bandelow took the head coaching job at Rocky Mountain. Carroll linebacker Eli Aby is excited about the next man up mentality the new scheme brings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new defense we’ve put in, it’s just such a team defense. There’s no individuals. You kind of just do your job, if the ball comes to you, it comes to you. If not, one of your buddies makes the play, and you go celebrate with them. So that’s one thing I like about it, is there’s no there’s no designated stars. It’s kind of everybody’s playing for each other and the bottom line is we just want to win games, and if we can stop people on defense, I don’t care if I have 1 tackle or 15, as long as we win the game.\u201d Aby said.<\/p>\n
The Saints kick off their season August 27th at home vs MSU Northern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HELENA, Mont. \u2014 The pads are popping and the Saints are locked in as fall football camp is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":967192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[3139,21053,51542,51543,127214,52543,127215,7,18324,106105,127216,127211,126261,127218,127213,127210,3141,2805,127217,3138,127212,9,3140,3137,52545],"class_list":["post-967191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-big-sky","tag-carroll-college","tag-carroll-college-fighting-saints","tag-carroll-college-football","tag-carroll-linebacker","tag-carson-ochoa","tag-fighting-saints-football","tag-football","tag-frontier-conference","tag-frontier-conference-football","tag-frontier-football","tag-gavin-vandenacre","tag-helena","tag-helena-montana","tag-joe-dunning","tag-kaden-huot","tag-local-sports","tag-montana","tag-montana-college-football","tag-montana-sports","tag-randy-bandelow","tag-sports","tag-sports-montana","tag-swx","tag-troy-purcell"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}