Chop wood, carry water: How Famika Anae rebuilt New Mexico's offensive line

Chop wood, carry water.

Famika Anae first heard the story as a first-time offensive line coach in his early 30s, working for head coach David Bailiff at Texas A&M Commerce. There was a young monk who wanted to do the great things the abbot, the head of the monastery, was doing.

Instead, the monk found himself mired in a monotonous daily routine. He chopped wood for fires, carried water to the kitchen. He went to the abbot forlorn and questioning: When could he start doing the things the abbot did? Why did he do the same things every day?

The abbot told him he started the same way. He used to chop wood, carry water. What you did didn’t matter as much as how mindful you were when you did it.

Chop wood, carry water.

And there was Anae, trading what amounted to a Zen proverb with players and coaches at a commuter school 65 miles outside Dallas.

“It just stuck with me because it epitomized our position group,” Anae, New Mexico’s offensive line coach, said last week. “It’s a thankless deal, so where do you hang your hat — validation and affirmation?

“It comes from your self-confidence. It doesn’t come from anywhere else, because if you’re looking for it from somewhere else, you’re never gonna get it as an O-lineman”

As UNM nears the midway point in head coach Bronco Mendenhall’s first season, external validation has started to creep in. Under Anae’s leadership, UNM is the only FBS program to have not allowed a sack, a point of pride among a group that entered the season without having played a snap together.

And the run game is starting to pop. UNM ran for a season-high 331 yards and seven touchdowns in its first win against New Mexico State.

Also, it’s a front that’s seen three different starting lineups, two season-ending injuries and one constant, guiding message.

Chop wood, carry water.

By the time Anae came on board in December, he couldn’t have done either fast enough. Down 11 offensive linemen from last season, there was never a question UNM would turn to the transfer portal to rebuild a position at “ground zero.”

Anae needed players that wouldn’t wash out in an attrition-heavy first season under Mendenhall. And no position is as reliant on chemistry and averse to the type of quick fixes offered by the portal.

“You can be tough and be all over the place,” Anae said, “and you can be soft and play together. And the chemistry to do both at the same time is really hard to develop.”

To get the right pieces, Anae leaned on players he previously coached, recruited or both. Campbell — where Anae coached for the last two seasons — lost former head coach Mike Minter just two days before Mendenhall’s coaching staff was formally announced. Players entered the portal en masse, and Anae was able to land starting left guard Baraka Beckett and backup tackle Elvin Harris amid the exodus.

Right tackle McKenzie Agnello, in the portal after three seasons at Texas A&M Commerce, was initially being recruited to Campbell by Anae before he switched to UNM. Anae previously recruited FAU transfer tackle Wallace Unamba and Tulane transfer tackle LaJuan Owens out of high school, rekindling connections with both as the two looked for a new school.

“I knew which ones I would be able to focus on,” Anae said, “knowing that they would not only be able to handle the football stuff, but handle the type of offseason and type of program coach Mendenhall was establishing.”

Richard Pearce, a guard from East Carolina, was the only player Anae didn’t have a prior relationship with. “None,” Anae said. All he had to distinguish Pearce from the rest was game and practice tape from three years with the Pirates.

“It was just 100 miles an hour (in) everything he was doing: Center, backup center, guard, backup guard, field goal, punch shield,” Anae said. “He was just running around 100 miles an hour and that, to me, resonated with what was going to be necessary to get this deal off the ground.”

Pearce is now a team captain, a leader that emerged as Anae put the line in practice situations where they had to “fight and work every single day, for every blade of grass.” That culture was confronted with circumstance when Grambling State transfer center Jawaun Singletary went down with a season-ending injury before UNM’s opener against Montana State.

Instead of bringing backup center Malik Aliane into the fold, Anae moved Agnello over from right tackle.

Through four games at the position, Agnello is PFF’s third highest-graded qualifying center in the Mountain West. He’s allowed no sacks, quarterback hits and just five quarterback pressures — all at a position he never played before until this year.

“It could be one of those things that was obviously great for us, but it could be really good for (Agnello),” offensive coordinator Jason Beck said last week. “Because he has a future as a center. Like the chances of (him) playing at the next level as a center, it’s a possibility.”

Through the changes, a trend has emerged.

Agnello said in August he didn’t know for sure he would start at center against Montana State until Anae told him in stretch lines before the game. Replacing injured left tackle Tevin Shaw, Owens had even less time: the redshirt freshman said in September he wasn’t 100% sure he’d start against Auburn until the coin toss.

“It’s kinda like taking your nerves away,” Owens added. “It’s a different kind of feeling. But I like the way he does it.”

“There’s no time to think, there’s no time to overanalyze yourself in that deal,” Anae said. “You find out later and then, shoot, it’s just (a) grip it and rip it kinda thing, you know?”

Few knew how to do it better than Anae. The son of longtime Mendenhall assistant and offensive coordinator Robert Anae, he grew up dreaming of following in his father’s, grandfather’s and uncle’s shoes by playing at BYU. In carrying on that legacy, Famika cultivated a reputation as an overwhelmingly physical presence.

Mendenhall, then BYU’s head coach, remembered a 47-0 drubbing of Hawaii in 2012, Anae’s first and only career start in his redshirt sophomore year. “I believe there were three separate Hawaii players that were put out of the game with concussions,” Mendenhall recalled this week, “by him specifically.”

Battered by ACL injuries to both knees since high school, Anae medically retired in the same season as that memorable night on the island. Mendenhall asked him to stay at BYU, finish his degree and help out with the offensive line.

“And it just started from that,” Anae said.

Playing careers bleed over into coaching careers. As a player, Anae hung his hat on overwhelming, in-your-face physicality. “And then my development as a coach over the years has been to become a skilled smasher guy, you know what I mean?” he added. “Not just the wild man.”

More like the monk.