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At some point, Danny Gonzales is going to have a chance to showcase what he can do as the head coach of New Mexico under normal circumstances. Hopefully.
Through his first two seasons at the helm, the Lobos have had one season cut short and impacted severely by a pandemic and a second all but ended by an astonishing number of injury problems at the quarterback position, which forced a team manager into action by the end of the season.
The 2021 campaign was supposed to be the former San Diego State defensive coordinator’s first real shot to prove himself as a head coach, until starting quarterback Terry Wilson suffered an early season injury and just about every backup met the same fate.
By October, New Mexico had essentially abandoned the passing game and adopted an option attack out of desperation. The Lobos averaged 32 passing attempts per game in September, 20.3 in October, and 12.5 by November. The rushing attack, meanwhile, averaged 44 carries per game in the final month of the season. New Mexico had a few players who could carry the ball and zero players who could throw it, so it did the only thing it could think to do within the confines of a season.
As expected, given the nature of the option as an extremely detail-oriented offensive system, this was almost exclusively a disaster. The Utah State game to end the season was littered with botched snaps and disastrous reads. Those that preceded it aren’t a whole lot better. New Mexico was not an option team entering the season, tried to learn the system on the fly, and has a 9.2 points-per-game average in the final six games of the season to show for it.
Yet, entering the third year of the Gonzales era, that late-season flourish of creativity should not be written off entirely as an act of desperation.
To be clear, it will be. New Mexico will almost certainly be back to a normal offense this fall, so long as it can field a quarterback capable of throwing the ball down the field. This was not designed to be an option program, and changing course so severely in the middle of a tenure is just about unheard of.
But dear reader, I’m here to tell you something.
New Mexico Should Run The I-Form Option
That’s right. The new offensive identity for the Lobos should emerge from six weeks of truly desolate football. Hear me out.
Firstly, New Mexico has the coaching staff for it.
Offensive coordinator Derek Warehime cut his teeth under Tom Herman at Houston and Texas before joining this staff in 2020, but his roots are in the option game. He spent two years coaching the offensive line under Willie Fritz at Sam Houston State and traveled with then-SHSU offensive coordinator Bob DeBesse to New Mexico to work under head coach Bob Davie.
He was named the run-game coordinator for a unit that would average more than 300 rushing yards per game in 2014. Warehime went through the “spread offense” wash under Herman and dropped the option reputation, but this stuff isn’t new to him. He’s directed option attacks at every level of the offense.
Just look at this. A coach without love for the option isn’t drawing this up. Look at the pulling guard. Look at the insert block from the tight end. I want to kiss this play on the mouth. This is the product of a staff that wants nothing more than to unleash the beast.
Here’s another one. This is brilliant. Just spend the entire offseason working on this.
Offensive line coach Jason Lenzmeier spent four years of his own under DeBesse and Davie at New Mexico. The experience is here for New Mexico to do this – to really do it.
Gonzales made these hires because he wanted a spread offense with hints of the option. That isn’t going to work without very good quarterback play, and New Mexico is about to enter its third season without that. The other side of the ball belongs to Rocky Long, one of the sport’s most innovative defensive minds. His group is already taking shape. It’s time for New Mexico to lean in, hold the ball for 40 minutes a game, and let Long cook.
The returning personnel suits the switch, too. Long is losing only four starters from a defense that already took big steps forward in his 3-3-5 scheme last season. The departure of disruptive defensive end Joey Noble stings, but Justin Harris and Jake Saltonstall combined for 69 tackles, 9.5 TFL and 6.5 sacks working opposite noble last season.
Outside linebackers Cody Moon and Syaire Riley combined for another 90 tackles and 6.5 TFL last season, serving essentially as edge rushers in their own right. They both return, as does Reco Hannah, who racked up 18 tackles, 3 TFL and 2 sacks in just four games.
Starting tackle Langston Murray departs, but he and backup Jaden Phillips were essentially indistinguishable and Phillips is back to take over that role. Inside linebacker incumbent Ray Leutele is back to back him up, as is Dion Hunter. Hunter backed Leutele up last season, but like Hannah on the outside, he may end up as the better player than the guy ahead of him on the depth chart.
Starting safeties Tavian Combs, Jerrick Reed III and Ronald Wilson are all back, Donte Martin can hold down one of the cornerback spots and Antonio Hunt looked strong enough in coverage as a safety last year that he should get a look for replacing departing starter Corey Hightower at cornerback opposite Martin. The pieces are here for New Mexico to make another leap defensively, and if last season was any indication, that could yield a top 60 (or even top 50) group nationally.
The only way that this offense – given its returning pieces – can truly help that defense is by staying out of its way as much as possible. Hold onto possession, kill the clock and don’t turn the ball over. Wilson is gone, and there’s no quarterback on the roster with any proven production as a passer.
Isaiah Chavez, the best of the returners at the position, went 17-of-24 passing for 161 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT last season but did it across four starts. He threw six passes per start. CJ Montes started once and finished the season with 10 completions on 33 attempts. Connor Genal was 5 of 14 for 44 yards. Trae Hall, who started much of the 2020 season at quarterback, threw two passes in 2021 and is listed as a wide receiver.
The option from without is Kansas transfer Miles Kendrick, who completed 73 of 120 passes for 647 yards, 6 TDs and 5 INTs in 2020 before losing his job in 2021. New Mexico is probably going to try to run the Wilson playbook with Kendrick. Both joined the program as veteran game managers from a run-first offense, both are competent enough passers to keep a standard spread offense from collapsing.
But, if Kendrick does claim the starting job, he’ll be lining up behind an offensive line with two returning starters that already struggled last season. Wilson was sacked 15 times in six games, Motes was sacked 11 times in four. This line surrendered 34 sacks last season and is almost certainly going to get worse.
What happens if Kendrick goes down like Wilson did? We’ve laid out the resumes of the incumbents. New Mexico didn’t trust them as passers last season. Kendrick is not strong enough in that category to justify building an offense around being able to throw the football. He’s a strong runner, as are most of these backups. Plus, a line that doesn’t have to pass block is a line that can get very good at run blocking. Run. The. Option.
The strongest case against the switch is in the offensive skill rooms. Top halfbacks Bobby Cole and Aaron Dumas have both transferred, leaving Peyton Dixon (29 carries, 120 yards) as the top returning rusher. Nathaniel Jones rushed 49 times for 232 yards in 2020 before redshirting in 2021 and has garnered a lot of praise from the UNM staff this offseason, while JUCO product Sherod White was excellent in 2021 (138 carries, 1,001 yards, 15 TDs), but that’s still a lot to ask of two relatively new faces at halfback. Option runners don’t need to be Barry Sanders, but you do need them to be competent, and we can’t yet say for sure that these backs are.
The receivers group, meanwhile, is entirely intact. Last season’s top seven receivers (in snaps) return and Arizona State transfer Geordon Porter joins them. Tight end Trace Bruckler was an extremely strong receiving threat last season, too. It isn’t like New Mexico would be abandoning any 1,000-yard receivers here, but this is a legitimately decent group and to ask them to focus largely on blocking wouldn’t be especially easy.
I’m sticking to my guns, though. New Mexico is going to field a legitimately strong defense and is without the pieces needed to build a competent passing attack offensively. This staff has shown a propensity for option design and development. New Mexico has winnable games against Colorado State, Maine, New Mexico State, UNLV, UTEP and Wyoming this season. The best bet for winning all six of those games and going to a bowl game for the first time since 2016 is to take a page from the Davie book. Bring the option back to New Mexico.