The Lobo football team, fresh off of consecutive wins, headed up to Nevada in hopes of extending their winning streak against a team that was trying to regroup from an upset loss to an in-state rival. Unfortunately for the Lobos, Nevada was able to regroup, leaving UNM on the losing side of a 35-17 game. This loss puts the Lobos back even at 3-3 and searching for some ways to shore up some of their weaknesses.

Like most things in life, football games are just a series of moments. Some of these moments are forgotten almost as soon as they occur, like a two yard run up the middle, but some end up sticking in your head long after the game is over. In this game, that indelible memory happened in the fourth quarter with about eight minutes to go. Austin Apodaca had been put in at quarterback in a last-ditch effort to jumpstart the offense and it appeared as though the move was working. Apodaca had the team marching down the field, mostly relying on quick screens to Dameon Gamblin, and was facing a second and four from the Nevada 11. Apodaca again found Gamblin on the flat and the receiver was able to make a couple of defenders miss before he dove towards the end zone, stretching the ball out in hopes of reaching the goal line. As he reached out, he lost control of the ball just inches away from a touchdown and Nevada recovered the fumble for a touchback. That play would have given the Lobos the chance of getting within a field goal with a two-point conversion and who knows what would have happened after that. Instead, they remained down 11 and lost possession. Nevada then proceeded to take the ball down the field for another touchdown to put the game completely out of reach.

Still, that didn’t feel like a game that the Lobos deserved to win. In fact, if I think back to the moments that stick out from this game, only a few of them were positive for New Mexico. The recovered muffed punt sticks out (partially because the Lobos are making a habit of doing that), Teriyon Gipson’s excellent 38 yard touchdown run was certainly a highlight, and Nias Martin’s 77 yard fumble recovery for a touchdown might have been the most exciting play of the game. Aside from that, most of what I’ll take away from the game were missed tackles, devastating penalties, and that fumble near the end zone.

Nevada was clearly motivated from their loss to UNLV and ready for the Lobos, as they were completely prepared to handle the Lobos’ offensive attack and seemed to know how to exploit the weak spots in the Lobo defense. The Lobo offense never really seemed to get going and perhaps the biggest indicator of that is the mere 135 rushing yards that the team gained as a whole. The triple option was mostly ineffective, leaving Lamar Jordan with only 22 yards on 8 attempt, which left him as the team’s second leading rusher behind Gipson’s 68 yards. This ineffectiveness is why Davie decided to turn to Apodaca at the end of the game and based on the results, we might be back to having a quarterback controversy (yay?) On defense, linebackers Dakota Cox and Kimmie Carson were focused on and almost completely neutralized by Nevada, leaving huge holes up the middle for their running backs to exploit. This seemed to happen to the Lobos in the NMSU game as well, but adjustments were made in the second half that allowed the defense to stop the big runs. Whatever adjustments were made didn’t have nearly the same effect in this game. The Lobos will need to find a way to stop giving up these types of runs up the middle with such regularity, otherwise we’ll just keep seeing teams take advantage of it.

It will be interesting to see where the Lobos go from here, as there are clearly some things that need to be fixed if they are going to win more games. Will they turn to Apodaca or (ugh) a two-quarterback system, or will they stick with Jordan? Will the offense add some new wrinkles in general? Can the defense make the necessary adjustments to stop teams from running all over them? It is easy to feel like a defeatist after this sort of game, but I think that the Lobos are still in an okay position all in all. They still sit at 3-3 and they still do have winnable games remaining on the schedule. One of those games happens just next week, when Hawaii comes to town. Hopefully the Lobos can pull themselves together to be as prepared for the Rainbow Warriors as Nevada was for them.