New Mexico Football: Lobo Fans Need To Be Patient (Again)

After last week's 72-0 drubbing at the hands of the Oregon Ducks, it is looking like Lobo football fans are in for another long year. Maybe the offense will start clicking a few weeks from now, and maybe the Lobos will win a few games, but most likely, this season will be yet another painful growth process for the Lobos.

And I understand that, and don't mind that, as long as the program makes reasonable steps toward improvement. First, that means focusing on fundamentals.

If you're a team with decent but not world-class talent, you can't afford to make unnecessary errors, like blowing punt coverage, fumbling, and forgetting how to properly block and tackle. The Lobos can succeed in the fundamentals of football, as long as they train relentlessly to improve.

Second, getting the offense on track is extremely important. Not only does the offense have the job of scoring points, which is obviously the key to winning games, but a good offense can keep possession of the ball for long periods of time, chewing up the clock and wearing out the opponent's defense while keeping their own defense fresh and on the sidelines.

I don't know what goes in during practices for the offense, but the players need as many repetitions as possible when learning the playbook. The players cannot be put in a position where they have to think about what their job is on a given play while 59,000 Oregon fans are screaming for blood.

The offense needs to drill, drill, drill until they can run every play in the playbook in their sleep, particularly the running plays, which give teams the best chance to control the ball and eat up the clock.

If the spread offense is just too complicated for that, then maybe it needs to be simplified a bit, or maybe some of the playbook needs to be thrown out.

But simplified or not, the spread offense must be kept in place. If this season turns out to be another losing one, the coaching staff cannot do what has been done so often over the last 10 years: scrap the offense in the off-season and force the players to learn a new one.

That practice is what has been holding this program back and keeping players from realizing their full potential. Just stick with one offense and let the players master it. It might take two or three seasons, and it might not be pretty, but at least progress would be made toward mastery. Changing the offense would just put the team back at square one.

As I have written before, former Lobo quarterbacks Kole McKamey and Donovan Porterie spent most of their UNM careers learning new offenses, and McKamey himself said learning a new offense is like learning a foreign language.

In summary: the Lobos need to get back to fundamentals overall and just continue learning the spread offense, in a simplified form if need be. And learning means practice, practice, practice. 

And once again, Lobo fans need to be patient.