How Buffs 'Discovered' Quarterback Steven Montez
September 28, 2016 | Football, Neill Woelk
El Paso prep product was not heavily recruited in high school
BOULDER — In Colorado football annals, the serendipity surrounding the recruitment of former CU All-American wide receiver Michael Westbrook is legendary.
Buffs fans may be ready to add the "discovery" of quarterback Steven Montez to that list.
For those who don't know the Westbrook story, here's a shortened version:
In the fall of 1989, then-CU head coach Bill McCartney was on a recruiting trip to Detroit's Chadsey High School. As he talked to the coach at the school about the player in whom the Buffs were interested, McCartney glanced across the room and saw a big wide receiver.
"Who's that?" McCartney asked. "I want to talk to him."
The coach shrugged his shoulders, but arranged a meeting for McCartney with the previously unknown — and virtually unrecruited — Westbrook.
The rest, as they say, is history. Westbrook chose Colorado and became one of CU's most-productive — and famous — receivers in program history.
Now fast forward to the fall of 2013.
Buffs defensive line coach Jim Jeffcoat was in El Paso, Texas, to look at a lineman at Americas High School. While talking to the coach there, Jeffcoat casually inquired as to who the best player in El Paso was that year.
"He said, 'Have you been to Del Valle High School?'" Jeffcoat recalled. "I said no, I haven't. That when he said the best player in El Paso is at Del Valle, and his name is Steven Montez."
Jeffcoat was intrigued enough to set up a meeting with Montez at the high school and watch him work out.
"I go over there, and everybody on his team is about 5-foot-6," Jeffcoat said with a laugh. "That's the truth. Then you see this guy come out of the locker room and he's 6-4 and 200 pounds. There's a 40 mph wind, dust everywhere — and he's throwing bullets. I mean bullets."
Jeffcoat is not usually the coach sent to recruit quarterbacks for the Buffs. A former Dallas Cowboys star defensive lineman, his forte centers more around the men in the trenches.
But, as he said, "I've been sacking quarterbacks long enough to know a good one when I see one."
Montez laughs when he remembers the workout.
"I remember Coach Jeffcoat was wearing his Super Bowl ring," Montez said. "We went out and threw and it was unbelievably windy and a dust storm. I did my best, but honestly didn't feel like it I had a good day. But after we were done, he said he really liked what he saw. Honestly, I don't know how."
Jeffcoat liked what he saw so much that instead of waiting until he returned to Boulder, he called CU head coach Mike MacIntyre that evening.
"Jim called me at like 11 o'clock at night," MacIntyre said. "He goes, 'Hey Mike, I found us a quarterback.' I said 'Where?' and he said 'El Paso.'"
MacIntyre admits to doing a double-take at the news. Understand that El Paso is not exactly known as the cradle of quarterbacks. But as Jeffcoat continued to rave about Montez, MacIntyre agreed to send Buffs quarterbacks coach Brian Lindgren to El Paso to check him out, even though he was on almost no one's recruiting radar.
"Brian watches him at practice and calls me back right away," MacIntyre said. "The first thing he said was, 'Boy, this kid can throw.'"
By then, the Buffs had done their homework. They knew Montez's father, Alfred Montez, was a former Colorado prep great at Granada High School in Southeast Colorado. They also knew that Alfred Montez had grown up a fan of the Buffs, particularly former CU quarterback Darian Hagan.
"It all worked out really well for us," MacIntyre said. "We checked into it and his family was coming up to Colorado for summer vacation, so Steven came to CU to camp. It was the first time I had seen him in person and he just blew everybody away. I said, 'Everybody's going to go after this guy — we need to get him.'"
Montez committed to Colorado on that trip. But fact is, despite a terrific senior season, when he led Del Valle farther into the playoffs than any El Paso school had been before, he didn't receive a lot of attention from other schools.
Even Texas Tech, where current CU offensive co-coordinator Darrin Chiaverini was coaching at the time, didn't aggressively recruit Montez.
"Honestly, I think it was because I was from El Paso," Montez said. "Whenever anybody hears El Paso, they say, 'Oh yeah they've got some good soccer down there.'"
Not that any more attention would have changed Montez's mind. CU's early interest, along with his family ties to the state and his dad's love of the Buffs, convinced him Colorado was the place for him.
"I don't think I would have ever really considered anyplace else," Montez said.
MacIntyre, though, did have a brief scare during Montez's senior season. While the football offers from Power 5 schools weren't flooding his mailbox, he was getting some attention as a basketball player — enough to attract some interest in that sport.
"He's got unbelievable talent," Jeffcoat said. "I watched him score 20-something point in a high school basketball game and have five dunks — in the first half. The kid is just a freakish athlete."
But Montez continued to assure MacIntyre that he was committed to Boulder.
"He kept saying I'm going to Colorado," MacIntyre said. "He really wasn't on anybody's radar and nobody really knew about him. We were happy when he signed … and like they say, the rest is history."
Now, Montez plays on a team for which Hagan is the running backs coach, and he still hears from his father about the great Buffs teams of the past.
But, the younger Montez appears ready to carve his own niche in CU history. In his starting debut last week at Oregon, he became the first-ever player in CU history to throw for at least 300 yards and rush for at least 100 in the same game. He finished with 333 yards and three touchdowns passing, along with 135 yards and one touchdown rushing in Colorado's 41-38 win.
Whether he'll start Saturday against Oregon State at Folsom Field (12:30 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) is still an unknown. Regular starter Sefo Liufau is still nursing an ankle injury, and while he continues to make progress, MacIntyre said it would like be a gameday decision again this week.
"We're just glad we found him," Jeffcoat said. "He was head and shoulders above everybody else. People had heard of him, but he wasn't getting much attention. He's a great kid and he comes from a great family. You can't say anything but good things about him."
And thus another entry into CU recruiting annals.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
