After a long, eventful offseason, Lobo Football starts back up this weekend with a home game against Incarnate Word. Going into the year, the team has to answer some huge questions. Can they bounce back from a down season? Can they recapture fan support? And can they make a bowl game this year? It’s going to be a very interesting season.

The Most Important Season Ever!

Well, in the Davie Era, at least. After an offseason where Bob Davie served a month-long suspension and where the athletic department in general was in the news a lot (and not in a positive light), the Lobos will be facing more scrutiny than usual. Some fans were ready to jettison Davie when word of an investigation into his actions and ultimate suspension came out, so winning their favor back will be a challenge. Beyond that, Football became a target once sports started to get cut. Its huge budget (relative to the other sports) and lack of national success made some people question why any cuts to the program seemed to be off the table completely. Another down season won’t help that sentiment.

So what can the program do? Short answer: win, and win now. If the team has a similar season to what they had in 2016, I think that fans will start feeling better about the program in general. However, if it’s a repeat of last season, things are only going to get worse.

Does UNM Athletics need fans to support the football program to keep all of the other programs healthy? It certainly seems that way. But it is likely for casual fans to flock to a mediocre (or even bad) football team? No. Unless they brand themselves as the Mariachis for one game, attendance could be an issue towards the end of a losing season.

Offense 2.0

The big change this year is on offense. Gone are Lamar Jordan, basically the entire offensive line, most of the backfield, and even the offensive coordinator, Bob Debesse. In some ways, that’s terrifying, as there are a bunch of questions on that side of the ball. However, a reboot was absolutely necessary. In the plot below, I have the final S&P ranks for offense, defense and overall across all six years of Davie’s tenue (with the previous season as a baseline)(Wow they were bad that year). As we can see, the offense has been mostly good, but they bottomed out completely last year. I think that was driven by two things: 1) Teams are figuring out the triple option and 2) there were way too many turnovers.

New offensive coordinator, Calvin Magee, is coming over from Arizona and will likely continue to have an emphasis on the run game, but with a lot more attention spent to airing the ball out. I think that could be successful, between Tevaka Tuioti’s skill set and a strong receiving corp. It will remain to be seen whether or not they’ll ever reach the offensive highs that the triple option did, but it should be fun to watch.

General Outlook

A big reason for year’s down season was the increase in schedule difficulty. Instead of the likes of SJSU, Hawaii, and Nevada, they got SDSU, FSU, and UNLV. In other words, instead of the bottom three of the West Division, they got the top three. Beyond that, their road schedule was pretty brutal, with games at Tulsa, Boise State, Fresno State, Wyoming, Texas A&M, and SDSU. They went 1-5 in those games, which meant that they basically had to be perfect at home. Which they weren’t.

This season’s schedule is basically just as tough, except that the road games are now NMSU, Wisconsin, UNLV, CSU, Utah St., and Air Force. There are a few winnable games in that slate, so I think a 3-3 record on the road is possible this year. That means that if they can protect their home turf, they’ll make it back to bowl eligibility.

However, projections really don’t like the Lobos. ESPN’s FPI and Football Outsiders’ S&P ratings have predictions for every game of the season and, when I use them to simulate the seasons, I get the win distributions in the plot below.

The red area is where the Lobos were simulated to win at least six games and become bowl eligible. As we can see, there’s not a lot of red. FPI only gives them about a 12% chance of reaching eligibility while S&P is more optimistic, giving them about a 24% chance. In other words, these projections don’t have high hopes for this Lobo season.

However, that comes with a lot of caveats. Players develop in the offseason, opponents can end up with injuries, and there’s almost no way to predict how good the offense will be this year. If the Lobos are just a little better than their projections, those percentages will shoot up. They absolutely can make a bowl game this year. And if they do, they’ll have earned it.

First Game Preview

Incarnate Word, out of San Antonio, is an FCS program out of the Southland Conference. And not a particularly good one at that. Last season, they went 1-10, which resulted in the firing of their head coach, Larry Kennan. Replacing him is Eric Morris, an offensive-minded coach who has spent the past five seasons as the offensive coordinator for Texas Tech. That is promising for the Cardinals, as if Texas Tech is known for anything, it’s lighting up the scoreboard. But, it’s fair to say that he isn’t stepping into a team that was stacked with talent and recruiting is a little more difficult at Incarnate Word than it was at Texas Tech. It will very likely be a bumpy season for the Cardinals, but if he can turn the program around this season, they might surprise a few teams in their conference.

Last season, they didn’t do well on offense or defense, getting outscored 21.09 – 47.73 on average and averaging under 300 yards of offense each game while giving up almost 500 yards on defense. However, with a coaching change, who knows how well that translates to this season? I bet they do better on offense.

What to expect in this game? As with any buy game that they schedule, the Lobos should win, and by a lot. The main thing, as usual with these game are to do the following three things:

1. Win
2. Don’t get injured
3. Let as many people on the depth chart get some reps

I feel pretty good about seeing all three of those thing happen.

As an aside, we (and others) have brought this up on Twitter, but it might be time for the program to rethink having these buy games. On one hand, it’s nice to get a win towards bowl eligibility on the books early, but if the athletic department is in such dire straits, maybe the Lobos should be on the other end of a buy game instead.For football purposes, that isn’t a great idea, as it likely forces the Lobos to dig their season out of an early hole that two buy games would create. But for the budget, it almost has to be considered.

Game Details

Who: New Mexico Lobos (0-0) vs. Incarnate Word Cardinals (0-0)

Where: Dreamstyle Stadium, Albuquerque, NM

When: Saturday, September 1 at 6pm MT

Watch: ESPN 3

Listen: 770 KKOB