GRAND FORKS — Who’s UND’s best offensive player?
The way Fighting Hawks head coach Eric Schmidt sees it, opponents are going to come up with all sorts of answers in scouting his team.
“You might get five different answers, right?” Schmidt said.
Through two weeks of the 2025 season, the best label for UND’s offense may be ‘diverse.’
In just two games, 14 different players have caught passes for the Fighting Hawks. The leading receiver is a first-year transfer at running back and the second-leading receiver is a true freshman tight end.
UND running back Xavier Leigh leads the way in the pass game with six catches for 68 yards. Tight end Nathan Hromadka has four catches for 62 yards and two touchdowns.
The Hawks’ leading wide receiver in terms of catches is Korey Tai with five, yet he didn’t catch a pass against Portland State last Saturday in a 50-20 Potato Bowl rout.
UND’s top receiver in terms of yardage is Nate DeMontagnac, who has two grabs for 41 yards. DeMontagnac has one catch in each game.
Five different tight ends have caught passes, despite the team’s top pass-catching tight end, Aidan Behymer, missing the first two games with an injury.
UND’s rushing leaders look even more strange. First-year quarterback Jerry Kaminski is the team’s top rusher with 18 carries for 74 yards.
Running back Sawyer Seidl is second in UND rushing with 11 carries for 69 yards, despite seeing only three carries against Portland State.
Quarterback Javance Tupou’ata-Johnson is the team’s third leading rusher, despite playing in just a few series at the end of the Portland State blowout.
UND’s individual numbers don’t jump out but it’s all added up to the No. 6 scoring offense in the FCS so far.
“I think more than anything else, championship football teams don’t have any weaknesses,” Schmidt said. “There’s not a certain guy that you look at and say, this type of player can’t be on the field. Everybody has to be at a standard, and I think we’re starting to develop that at all those different spots.
“Defenses are always going to try to take something away from you. Are you good enough to be able to, when they take something away, go to the next part of your offense? As far as our identity, we’re going to attack you in what we believe is the weakness of the defense in that week. Teams are going to try to take away certain things, and we have to be dynamic enough that, when teams do that, we can make them pay with the next part of our personnel.”
Scott Sewell / IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Kaminski’s ability to mix in quarterback runs, as well as his knack for completing his visual progressions, has led to the spreading of the offensive production.
“I think a lot of it comes down to what we’re doing at the quarterback spot,” Schmidt said. “When we picked Jerry, it’s like the offense is going to take on his personality. He brings to the table a lot of leadership, a lot of athleticism and a lot of diversity.
“We don’t have a running back that needs to, say, get 150 yards for us to be successful. Or this one wide receiver … I heard everybody talking about Bo (Belquist) a year ago. Teams are taking away Bo. There was a concerted effort to be able to take away the best player.”
UND appears to utilize tight ends differently this year, as the 2024 tight end leader, Quincy Vaughn, ranked sixth in the team’s receptions.
“I think it’s one of the strengths of our team,” UND offensive coordinator Isaac Fruechte said. “We have some pretty good depth there, and we want to be in bigger personnel groupings. We want to run the football first and then use the running game to our advantage to set up our play-action pass.”
Who: No. 16 UND at No. 5 Montana.Where: Washington-Grizzly Stadium, Missoula, Mont.When: 2 p.m., Saturday.Viewing: Midco Sports and ESPN+.Radio: 96.1 FM.
