New Mexico Football Report

Mountain West Conference Standings (11/11/12)

 Fresno State               6-1   8-3 

 San Diego State              6-1 8-3 

 Boise State                5-1 8-2 

 Air Force                        4-2 5-5 

 Nevada                        3-3 6-4 

 Wyoming                        2-4 3-7 

 Colorado State        2-4 3-7 

 UNLV                        2-4 2-9 

 New Mexico               1-5 4-7 

 Hawaii                          0-6 1-8

As a Lobo fan, you have to feel good for Rocky  Long,  former Lobo Qb. and the school's most successful head football coach ever.  Rocky has resurrected his career at San Diego St.   With Saturday's 28-9 win over Air Force, the Aztecs are poised to claim at least a share of the Mountain West Conf. crown. Their first league title since they won the Pacific Division of the Mega-WAC in 1998.

''Today's win matters a whole bunch to me,'' said  Long. ''Our whole existence of this football team is to win a conference championship. That's what we build to, that's what we train for, and guess what, we get a chance.'' San Diego State, which began the day tied for first place (along with Air Force, Fresno St. & Boise St.)  remains in the hunt for its first Mountain West title in its last season in the conference.

The loss drops Air Force out the first place scramble. San Diego St. has a win over Boise St. but a loss to Fresno St., Boise St. has a win over Fresno St. and a loss to San Diego St.  Fresno St. beat San Diego St. but lost to Boise St.  If all three teams win out, and it appears that they will, then The Mountain West Conf. will have a certifiable cluster fuck at the top of the standings.

The Aztecs have one game remaining vs. resurgent Wyoming.  Meanwhile, Boise St. plays CSU and wraps up the season two weeks later against Nevada (Dec. 1st.) Fresno St. has one game left against Air Force. Working under the assumption that Fresno will beat Air Force and San Diego St. beats Wyoming, we'll have to wait until Dec. 1st. to crown the league champion. Then and only then, can the Mountain West close the book on both SDSU and Boise State.

UNM Lobos  23           Wyoming Cowboys  28

As UNM's option attack took hold and they started to win, a joke took root around here,  "Machete don't text and Cole don't pass" Against Wyoming, the Lobos racked up a season high 551 yards in total offense behind the running and passing of Fr. Qb. Cole Gautsche. If anything productive has resulted from the Lobos current four game funk and the loss of starting Qb. B.R. Holbrook, it's that Gautsche has been forced to develop his passing skills.

Gautsche wound up with 149 yds. rushing and 155 yds. passing, 8 completions in 15 attempts and 2 td passes. Not too shabby for a quarterback who had a total of 67 passing yards prior to the game. This development bodes well for the future even as the present results continue to disappoint. I won't totally discount the possibility of UNM beating CSU in the season finale, but it's starting to look like this team is destined for a 4-9 record.

The loss to Wyoming finally puts the "bowl talk" to rest. This team certainly hasn't played well enough to deserve a bowl bid and the measly announced crowd of 17,839 would make most bowl committees nervous as hell. Let's allow Bob Davie to build something, then we'll revisit the possibility of a bowl bid. Let's not let all  this talk of offense and bowl games draw attention away from the play of UNM's defense during this fruitless four game stretch.

In all four losses the defense has had some major breakdowns. In the Air Force game UNM went up 17-14, only to see the Falcons score twice to win the game. The Lobos had Fresno St. down by 21 pts. and yet lost by a 17 point margin. Against UNLV, the Lobo defense was a no-show giving up 530 total yards of offense.  We've been exposed said Coach Davie after the Air Force game and of course he was right.

Wyoming Qb. Brett Smith hung the Lobo secondary out to dry. Smith threw four td. passes, finishing with 374 passing yards. Smith threw three touchdown bombs (81, 64 & 32 yards) during a span of seven minutes in the first half. “We continue to give up the big play,” Coach Davie said. “There’s no secret where people try to expose us.” New Mexico's young and undermanned secondary will continue to be picked on.

You could say that the Lobo's season is dying of exposure.  Coach Davie added, “I’m really proud of this football team. … We gave up some grenades in the first half … but they stuck in there, they played, they fought, and they gave themselves a chance to win at the end of the game.” Down by five, UNM marched down the field working to set up a go-ahead touchdown. A third and 6 turned into a fourth & 17 thanks to a personal foul on LaMar Bratton.

The Lobos were forced to punt, but amazingly got the ball back with 1:40 left on the clock. Four Gautsche incompletions later, the Lobos were out of chances and time. Twice the Lobos whittled Wyoming's lead down to five points in the second half, but getting over the hump proved difficult. The Lobos outscored the Cowboys 16-7 in the second half and 10-0 in the third quarter, to battle back from a 21-7 halftime deficit.

NMSU Aggies   7                   San Jose St. Spartans   47

The Las Cruces Sun-News called Saturday's dreary smackdown by San Jose State  "one of the worst games that could be remembered" Aggie head coach DeWayne Walker, who hasn't hesitated to tell us what he really thinks added this, "It was embarrassing, this was the first time all year that I felt like, from start to finish, I don't want to question our players effort, but from start to finish it was just a terrible, terrible game"

The Spartans were up 17-0 after one quarter and 37-0 at halftime. SJSU Qb. David Fales threw for 276 yds. and 4 td's.  By comparison Aggie Qb., Andrew Manley struggled with interceptions and tipped passes, he was spelled by Travaughn Colwell who led the Aggies to a near score in the first half (he was stopped six inches shy of the end zone) and a touchdown in the game's final minute. 

The Aggies have a bye week coming up, they should put that time to good use and find ways to plug Colwell into the offense.  A big stiff, immobile pocket passer is not going to get it done at NMSU.  Walker seems reluctant to ditch Andrew Manley and retool the offense, even as the Aggies have scored just one touchdown in three of their last four games (they scored two against Louisiana Tech) What they're doing now is not working.

The lack of production by the offense also fall on NMSU's anemic running game.  Germi Morrison, an earnest but limited running back is what passes for a ground game. At the start of the season, the Aggies knew they didn't have the offensive weapons at their disposal that they had in 2011. Above all else, Andrew Manley's failure to launch has crippled the Aggie's offense. So much more was expected from him and he's failed miserably. 

Prior to the UNM game I was almost giddy over the thought of Manley dissecting the Lobo's makeshift secondary, instead UNM's defense had little trouble containing him. Coach Walker is a dedicated and straight forward coach, but he lacks imagination.  Walker needed to open up the Aggie offense and go for broke after the UNM game, yet they plodded on trying to force a square peg into a round hole. 

The Spartans called off the dogs in the second half, sparing the Aggies membership in the 70 point club.  Said Walker, "I just felt like we didn't play today. And that's the most disappointing thing for me. That's the first time this year that it looked that way. They didn't have any energy. They didn't have any fight in them today" "Maybe I didn't have the team prepared, maybe the coaches didn't have the team prepared"

There's plenty of blame to go around, including beyond the football field and locker room.  "When you're going through a year like this, just being honest, but there's no fans. Maybe they don't need to support a team that has a (poor) record. But there were no fans in the stands today, no energy. I just felt like our kids played that way. I just felt like they didn't have anything left to go out there and fight."

BYU is next on the schedule for both teams. NMSU plays the Cougars on  Nov. 24th, while San Jose St. plays them on Nov. 17th.  It will the Aggies second bye week of the season.  The first one didn't do them much good. After a close loss to Idaho, the Aggies came back from a bye week and were stomped by Utah St.  The number of Div. 1 FBS coaches fired is increasing every week, Robb Akey at Idaho, Joker Phillips at Kentucky, Derek Dooley at Tennessee... 

The NMSU football program is at rock bottom, it's hard to see them winning another game this season and when the season ends so does their football association with the WAC.  The Aggies are unwanted castoffs, there's not a lot of reasons left for DeWayne Walker to desire staying at NMSU or for NMSU to desire him as its head coach.