ALBUQUERQUE — Utah State and New Mexico entered Saturday afternoon’s matchup with eerily similar resumes. Both teams were 4-3 on the season with new coaching staffs looking to bounce back from low win totals and coaching turnover over the last several seasons.
Both also have almost entirely new rosters, with New Mexico returning the fewest number of players in the country at 34, while Utah State is not far behind with 39 returning players.
Despite the similarities between the two teams coming into the matchup, what played out on the turf at University Stadium Saturday could not have been more different. The hometown Lobos controlled the game from start to finish, winning 33-14 to hand the Aggies their fourth loss of the season.
“Their execution from beginning to end in all three phases of the game exceeded ours today,” Utah State head coach Bronco Mendenhall said. “As the head coach, I’m responsible for all phases of our program. The coaching, the execution and how we play, and certainly a lot of work to do still in our program.”
The Aggies looked completely overwhelmed and unprepared in nearly every facet of the game from the opening kick. Utah State won the opening kick and deferred to the second half; and promptly, put the kickoff out of bounds, giving the Lobos an extra 10 yards.
The Aggies got a stop on the drive, but the favorable field position allowed New Mexico to pin the Aggies on the 4-yard line. After three plays that went for -1 yard, which led to a punt, New Mexico returned it for a 49-yard touchdown.
After a near safety on the ensuing kickoff, Utah State was able to move the ball on the ensuing drive, but the drive ended when Bryson Barnes threw an interception in the end zone. Several possessions later, a New Mexico punt pinned the Aggies on the 1-yard line, where the Lobos snuffed out a Utah State jet sweep in the end zone to force a safety.
The lone bright spot in the half for the Aggies was a 64-yard touchdown run from Miles Davis late in the second quarter, though even that was quickly answered by a 40-yard touchdown pass from New Mexico to put the home team up 26-7.
Not much went better for Utah State in the second half.
Though the game looked close statistically, New Mexico outperformed Utah State at just about every critical moment on Saturday.
The Lobos played hungry and desperate for a win, while Utah State looked cathartic and indifferent. On the first drive of the second half, Utah State drove into the Lobos side of the field before facing a fourth-and-4 and electing to punt while down by 19.
“That much time left in the game, and to start to claim field position or try to battle back from that, it seemed like a good opportunity,” Mendenhall said. “The risk versus reward at that time it seemed smarter to, in my opinion, to try to claim the field position game. And, certainly, that can be argued.”
New Mexico took the opposite approach throughout the game, going for it twice on fourth downs in the first half and converting both times.
The final blow came in the fourth quarter when the Aggies, trailing 26-14 and coming off a touchdown on their previous drive, got New Mexico to a fourth-and-1 on their own 34. The Lobos converted on a fake punt that went for a 14-yard gain; and three plays later, New Mexico scored on a 41-yard run to put them up 33-14.
The same issues that have plagued Utah State all year were again prevalent in the loss — again showing up in critical moments.
“The number of penalties continues to be an issue for our team, and they’re coming in fairly consistent patterns and places,” Mendenhall said. “We haven’t yet addressed that — I haven’t yet addressed that effectively enough to get out of the way of that.”
Third downs, as well, proved to be costly again as the Aggies went just 4-of-10 on third downs. The penalties, third downs and decisions not to go for it on fourth downs cost the team offensively and allowed New Mexico to maintain momentum.
“As an offense, we’ve got to make plays; that’s it,” Davis said. “Coach is calling the right plays; we’ve just got to execute in the right way and make them.”
With the team’s second bye week coming this week, the Aggies will have plenty of time for introspection and potential improvement as they prepare for their final four games of the year.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.