Wright: New Mexico’s defense comes up not big, but huge

Was there any fixing this New Mexico defense?

That defense, the one ranked 130th of 133 NCAA FBS teams in both scoring defense and total defense entering Saturday’s home game against Washington State?

Yeah. That one.

In a game highlighted to two stunning performances from quarterbacks, but with the UNM defense holding Washington State to a single touchdown in the second half, New Mexico (5-6) upset the 19th-ranked Cougars, (8-2), 38-35.

With the victory, the Lobos kept alive their hopes of a bowl bid. A victory against Hawaii in the regular-season finale on Nov. 30 would give them the required six victories.

And — this just in — playing defense in the current era of college football ain’t easy.

The offenses are just too good.

A Saturday crowd announced at 14,067 can bear witness.

When Bob Davie’s son Clay told him he wanted to be a college football coach, dad had one piece of advice for the younger man.

If you want to be a college coach, make sure you do so on the offensive side of the ball.

Bob Davie, a career defensive coordinator before he became a head coach at Notre Dame and then New Mexico, saw it coming. Spread offenses; run-pass option. Up tempo, no-huddle.

Lightning-fast, acrobatic, glue-fingered wide receivers. Versatile running backs. Ridiculously athletic tight ends. Monstrous offensive lines. The better athletes gravitating to offense.

And quarterbacks like Philip Rivers (North Carolina State, 2002), Derek Carr (Fresno State, 2012-13), Josh Allen (Wyoming (2016-17) and Jordan Love (Utah State, 2017-18), who tortured UNM defenses on their way to the NFL.

And now, there’s John Mateer.

(And no, trust me, we’re not forgetting Devon Dampier. Not after yet another unforgettable performance from the dynamic UNM sophomore on Saturday).

If we don’t see Mateer in the NFL in seasons to come, it will be because he decided to run for president or find a cure for cancer instead. He’s that good.

Saturday night at University Stadium, Washington State’s Mateer threw for 375 yards and four touchdowns and ran for 68 yards and another score.

Blame the New Mexico defense for those numbers if you wish; it’s a unit, after all, that ranked 130th of 133 NCAA FBS teams in both total defense and scoring defense entering Saturday’s game. First-year UNM coach Bronco Mendenhall is facing the same reality that greeted Davie when he came to Albuquerque in 2012; scheme can do wonders for an offense when building a program, but there’s no corresponding solution on defense.

Besides, Mateer plays no favorites.

Entering Saturday’s game he’d thrown for 2,332 yards, rushed for 630 more and accounted for 33 touchdowns.

Lest we forget …

While Mateer has been slicing and dicing opposing offenses for Washington State, Dampier has been doing the same for New Mexico.

Dampier, the Lobos’ dynamic sophomore, threw for 174 yards and a touchdown and ran for a mind-boggling 193 yards — and the winning touchdown with 21 seconds remaining.

He became the first UNM quarterback to surpass 1,000 yards rushing in a season, with a game yet to play.

Will we see Dampier in the NFL someday? At 5-foot-10, he doesn’t fit the profile; an NFL team might want to make him a slot receiver.

For a dual-threat quarterback, there’s really no answer.

Is there hope for defenses?

Davie found one, at least partially, at UNM. After going 11-26 in his first three seasons despite offensive coordinator Bob DeBesse’s prolific triple-option offense, an improved defense helped the Lobos go 16-10 with two New Mexico Bowl appearances in 2015-16.

Davie couldn’t sustain that success and was fired three years later, but that’s another story.

Now, it falls to Mendenhall to write a story of his own.

Defense was a huge part of that story on Saturday.

”My message to the team,” Mendenhall said, “was that if we could weather the storm in the first couple of drives of the first half that it would level out. … We didn’t make hardly any adjustments other than we just kind of caught up to them.

“We caught up to them and just sucked it up. And whoever played played really well.”

Senior linebacker Dimitri Johnson (nine tackles, half a tackle for loss) said he felt the defense, between the pass rush and pass coverage, forced Mateer into some off-target throws in the second half (10-for-19) after near-perfection in the first (15-for-17).

“We just tightened up a lot more in the second half,” Johnson said. “… We are very capable against a very good team.”

Mendenhall, UNM’s defensive coordinator under Rocky Long from 1998-2002, came back to Albuquerque after Danny Gonzales was fired following four losing seasons. Gonzales, though, left Mendenhall a generous gift in the form of Dampier.

Mendenhall populated his staff with men he knew from his previous head-coaching stops and BYU and Virginia, mostly the latter. He clearly hit a home run (mixed metaphor noted) with offensive coordinator Jason Beck and the rest of his offensive staff; the Lobos entered Saturday’s game averaging 33 points per contest.

But wouldn’t Mendenhall’s defensive coaches be of the same caliber? Probably so — the only problem being that they coach defense.

Maybe it’s not a problem, or won‘t be, after all.

Take a look: UNM football beats No. 19 Washington State