Lobo football: After beating UCLA, UNM focused on improvement entering first bye week

The tell-tale sign of a big win, at least in the modern era of college football?

A phone that won’t seem to stop vibrating.

“I just got finished up today, like, clearing them up,” New Mexico head coach Jason Eck shook his head and said Tuesday. “At one point, I think I had like 300 unread text messages.”

Makes sense. Because for one night, New Mexico was the story in college football.

A 35-10 win Friday at UCLA caught everybody’s attention, whether it was that of dedicated fans, or impartial observers surfing channels late at night, or even those who might be able to send Eck — and plenty of players — a hundred or so texts.

It’s the product of newfound success, and also the exact type of thing that might get in the way of week-to-week improvement.

“I appreciate the well wishes,” he said. “But I got kind of a long view look at this year. Our goal certainly wasn’t just to win two games or anything. So we want to — we gotta keep getting better. And probably more so at the end of the year, (we’ll) be able to look back and hopefully we can say this season was a resounding success.”

In that vein, Eck said the focus of the Lobos’ first bye week won’t shift to preparing for next week’s game against rival New Mexico State. Instead, position coaches were “challenged” by UNM’s first-year coach to focus on two or three things for their groups to improve on.

Eck also had a laundry list of things he’d like to see get better anyway.

“We gotta keep working on our passing game,” he said. “And then we’re going to work a lot on catching punts this week, because that was a big issue last week, special teams-wise. Defensively, we got to continue to create more turnovers and continue to get off blocks better.”

Notes and quotes

Not even a month into the season, the coaching carousel is up and running after UCLA fired second-year head coach Deshaun Foster on Sunday. Along with Southern Cal defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn and BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, Eck was listed by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman as a candidate he expects UCLA to consider

His response: “I’m just focused on this,” Eck said. “I think it’s a positive because if we were 0-3, my name would not be popping up in that. So you want to do well so that stuff happens.

“But I’m focused on this season, you know, not talking to anybody. I have an agent that would do that. But I’m very happy here, not looking at all to leave.”

KEAGAN'S RETURN: Eck said wide receiver Keagan Johnson is expected to return for the New Mexico State game (Sept. 27) while running back Scottre Humphrey will have a “heck of a chance” to do so. Johnson missed Friday’s game with what Eck termed a “head injury” while Humphrey (48 yards, one touchdown) played only one quarter before leaving with a sprained ankle.

“I think it’s a (well-timed) bye,” Eck said. “And I really do like how our schedule breaks up — we have three games, (a) bye week, six games, (a) bye week, three games. I think that times up pretty good.”

UCLA WIN HELPNG RECRUITING? The majority of UNM’s coaches will be out to recruit this weekend — Eck included.

With that in mind, has this staff seen the Lobos’ win over UCLA resonate with recruits?

“We’ve seen it already. Like a recruit who told us (no) this summer (called) us back and after (he) committed somewhere else and said, ‘hey, would you still be interested?’” Eck chuckled. “And it was a position where we were still in need, so we said, ‘yeah, we’d still be interested.’

“So, no question. I think that just gives a little evidence. You know, when we had all those recruits in (this spring and summer), we had never coached a game here, played a game here, with our staff. I think this adds a little bit of, not just our vision of what we’re selling, but we’re seeing some results on the path of our vision.”

GETTING DEFENSIVE: Linebacker Jaxton Eck — Coach Jason Eck’s son — was named the Mountain West Defensive Player of the Week on Monday

“I told him our staff is tough because he didn’t win the hammer,” Eck said, referencing an award the UNM’s staff gives to the player of the game. “(Defensive end Keyshawn James-Newby) won that and Keyshawn James-Newby got the interception, so he was our defensive player of the game.

“He’s the (Mountain West Defensive Player of the Week), but he was no higher than third in our rankings,” Eck added with a smile.