Lobos open season today with new offense, new hope
UNM opens season today against Incarnate Word
AALBUQUERQUE s polished in front of a microphone as any coach in college football, Bob Davie can spin a yarn like few others in his profession.
Several years on staff at two of the sport’s blue-blood programs will do that for you.
Just this week, he regaled the local media with memories of a game against Stanford more than a quarter century ago. The defensive coordinator at Texas A&M at the time, he strolled down memory lane with a story about studying old VHS tapes of the Bill Walsh offense during his time with the San Francisco 49ers and, before that, his previous stint as the coach at Stanford.
“Preparing for [Incarnate Word], it’s similar to that,” he said.
That’s right. In a roundabout way, the University of New Mexico’s coach compared the methodology behind preparing for an opponent with a new head coach to that of studying grainy footage of one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.
If that’s not entertainment, nothing is.
Now in his seventh year at UNM, Davie leads his Lobos into Saturday’s season opener at home against Incarnate Word, a one-win, FCS team out of San Antonio whose entire football history dates to 2009. The Cardinals are under a brand new coaching staff — just like the ’92 Stanford Cardinal under Walsh — and bring with them a certain air of mystery.
While the Lobos don’t seem overwrought with concern over Saturday’s game, the underlying current for the entire program revolves around getting things back on track. A disastrous 2017 left the team scrambling for answers as its offense struggled to run the ball. The running backs’ production was down more than 100 yards per game from the previous year, and turmoil on and off the field chopped the program off at the knees.
It reached a fevered pitch the past few months as public outcry over
the university’s decision to cut four teams only heightened the demand of critics who called for steep cuts in Davie’s program. Others suggested the elimination of football altogether.
“The great thing about sports, it does have the potential to bring people together,” Davie said. “It moves the needle, it moves the needle. And there’s nothing greater, in my opinion, than college football.”
Changes have been made to improve the product on the field. Sophomore Tevaka Tuioti won a contentious preseason quarterback battle as new offensive coordinator Calvin Magee was brought in from the University of Arizona to revamp the offense. The expectation is to pass the ball more and put the ball into the hands of playmakers like receivers Delane Hart-Johnson, Elijah Lilly, Emmanuel Harris and Jay Griffin, to name a few.
Griffin and Hart-Johnson had 44 catches between them last year and ranked 1-2 on the team in yardage, but by any stretch, UNM’s passing game was woefully inconsistent as three quarterbacks combined to complete fewer than half their passes and throw nearly twice as many interceptions (14) as touchdowns (eight).
Linebacker Alex Hart has seen the improvements in Magee’s system. The team’s top returning tackler, Hart said it’s been a welcome change to the standard triple option UNM has run the last several years.
“This offense is going to be an offense that will make you play well in space,” Hart said. “You’re going to need to tackle, you’ll need to play fast because they’ll come at you fast and the tempo is going to come in and the ball’s going to be everywhere. You’ll never really know where it is, so defenses preparing for this will have to study the film very well.”
The emphasis will still be on the run, Davie said, but opening things up for the skill players on the outside to create space in the defense is the key to success.
Surviving has been the name of the game for the Lobos the last several months. For Davie, it’s a fight he’s been waging practically since the first time he stepped foot on UNM’s campus. Having lived in the college football penthouse at Texas A&M and Notre Dame, stretching the almighty dollar has been the emphasis his entire time in Albuquerque. “We’ve done more with less in this program than anybody,” he said. “I’ve just never chosen to go public with it because I don’t want our players having a safety net, I don’t want our coaches having a safety net, I don’t want any excuses. What we’ve done here with the budget we’ve had is incredible. Incredible. And I’m very proud of that.”
NOTES
Senior Danny Sutton won the starting kicker’s spot during preseason practice but he will not suit up against Incarnate Word. Davie said Sutton is sick and may be back in time for next week’s game at Wisconsin. A fifth-year transfer, Sutton is the only Lobo with any kind of experience against Wisconsin. He spent the past two seasons serving as the kickoff specialist for Maryland, which is also in the Big Ten. … The Lobos lost two players to season-ending knee injuries in the final weeks of preseason camp. Defensive lineman Trent Sellers and walk-on Reece Wilkinson are both out. Sellers started his college career at Georgia Tech and was projected as a starter at defensive end, while Wilkinson is a freshman running back out of Albuquerque’s La Cueva High School.