The Lobos snapped a two-game losing streak this past Saturday with their win against the San Jose Spartans. Even though the Lobos never trailed in the game, it still felt like an up-and-down affair, with the Lobo offense taking advantage of a weak Spartan defense to build leads, but the Lobo defense letting the Spartans get back into the game. Ultimately, the Lobos came away with a 48-41 win to move to 2-2 on the season, including a 1-0 record in conference play, and we came away with a few thoughts:
Lobo Offense, Lamar Jordan Edition
One thing that stuck out to me in this game is how reliant the Lobos were on their run game. Against the Spartans, Lamar Jordan only attempted 8 passes, completing 4 of them for 45 yards and throwing an interception. That meant that the Lobos rushed a whopping 64 times for 446 yards. Now, the simplest explanation is that the Spartans just couldn’t consistently stop the Lobos’ rushing attack, and hopefully that’s all it was, because the worry that I have about Lamar running the offense is that it starts to become one-dimensional, rather than looking unpredictable and dynamic like it did earlier in the season. We’ll get a better sense of whether or not this is simply a one-game thing on Friday, or if that’s just how the offense is going to be run under Lamar.
That said, overall, Lamar did fine. He’s clearly comfortable in the game and looked confident out on the field, but I don’t think that he did enough to maintain sole possession of the starting QB position once Austin Apodaca comes back from his injury. It looks like he’ll get another opportunity on Friday, and if he puts together the sort of game that helps beat Boise State, it’s going to be hard to keep him on the bench.
Defensive Struggles
The optimist can look at this game and see that the Lobos put up 48 points in a conference game and be pretty happy with how the offense did. The pessimist, however, can see that the Lobos gave up 41 points to a sputtering offense that hadn’t managed to get to 20 against any other FBS team. And really, both viewpoints are valid. This offense is actually pretty good. In fact, by Football Outsiders’ S&P+ ratings, the Lobos have the 57th best FBS offense. However, the defense is really struggling, as it’s currently ranked 115th.
Now, here’s the weird thing about the defense: on passing downs (2nd down with 8+ yards to go, 3rd and 4th down with 5+ yards to go), the Lobos are really good defensively, ranking 36th in the country in stopping their opponents on those downs. On standard downs (that is, anything that’s not a passing down), the Lobos are 125th defensively. Out of 128. That basically means that if the Lobos can force their opponents into a passing down, they’re likely to clamp down and force a punt. However, they’re just not good at getting to that point. This game had some great examples of this. On one hand, they only allowed the Spartans to convert 2 of 9 third downs that they faced. On the other hand, the Spartans had a 75-yard touchdown run on a first down and a 65-yard touchdown pass on a first down.
Now, are these issues just a consequence of the scheme that the Lobos are running, or is it some sort of breakdown in communication that keeps occurring? If it’s the first, then I don’t know if the issues will stop without some sort of drastic change to the way the Lobos approach defense. If it’s the latter, then, even though it’s frustrating, it means that if things can get tightened up, the defense could actually be good. I’m hoping for that to be the case, but the longer we see these issues reoccurring, the harder it is to think that things are going to change.
Big Picture
So sure, this might not have been the most satisfying win the Lobos have ever had, but at the end of the day, the Lobos snapped their losing streak to get back to even on the season and are now 1-0 in conference play. The win couldn’t have come at a better time, as they have a huge game this Friday against Boise State, a team that is both ranked and looking for revenge from last year. It’s hard to overstate how big a win against the Broncos would be, so hopefully this win helps them get ready for the matchup and a big crowd shows up to watch. I’m sure there are plenty of good seats available.