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It was a rough start for the Aggies in their second Mountain West road game of the 2025 college football season, and they were never really able to recover.
New Mexico raced out to a 19-0 lead nine minutes into the second quarter and never looked back en route to a 33-14 victory over Utah State in front of an announced crowd of 20,097 on Saturday afternoon at University Stadium in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"First, congratulations to coach (Jason) Eck and the University of New Mexico. They played really good football today in all three phases. They were motivated, they executed well, they won the field position battle."
The Aggies were rarely able to seize any momentum and when they did, it was short lived. Simply put, it was an afternoon to forget in all three phases of the game for the Aggies, who fell to 0-4 on the road this season. Meanwhile, the Lobos improved to 4-0 at home for the first time since 1962.
"They really made most critical plays in each situation, starting with the (punt) return for a touchdown, a safety, and then again just controlling the clock, as well as controlling the momentum," Mendenhall said. "So, their execution from beginning to end in all three phases of the game exceeded ours today. As the head coach, I'm responsible for all phases of our program — the coaching and execution and how we play — and certainly (there's) a lot of work to do still in our program."
It was a dream start for the Lobos (5-3, 2-2) against their former head coach as D.J. McKinney returned a punt 49 yards to the house with 9:14 remaining in the first quarter. The Aggies (4-4, 2-2 MW) put themselves in a position to bounce back as they advanced the pigskin inside the red zone on their second series of the contest, but Bryson Barnes' pass was picked off in the end zone.
The Lobos then proceeded to capitalize on that momentum swing as they methodically embarked on a 13-play, 80-yard march to paydirt, capped off by a 2-yard run by McKinney early in the second quarter.
New Mexico's cushion extended to 16-0 with 9:02 left in the half when unblocked standout linebacker Jaxon Eck read the jet sweep call and tackled Noah White running back in the end zone for a safety. UNM punter Daniel Hughes, for the second time in the game, pinned the visitors inside the 5-yard line — this time at the 1 — to set the stage for that safety.
"Going back on the punt returns, some of the decisions we made on fielding punts ... those also really backed us up and were problematic," Mendenhall said. "And so, again, the special teams wasn't really any different than than our (execution on) offense, defense."
The Lobos dominated the field position battle in the first half as they returned the ensuing free kick to their own 43-yard line and, therefore, only had to march 34 yards to set up Lukę Drzewiecki's 41-yard field goal and a 19-0 lead.
USU stopped the bleeding momentarily on an electric 64-yard TD run by speedy tailback Miles Davis, who sprinted through a big gap untouched and broke an ankle tackle attempt near midfield.
USU's momentum didn't last, though, as the Lobos only needed four plays to push their advantage to 26-7 with 2:44 remaining in the second quarter. Tight end Cade Keith was wide open over the middle of the field, caught a pass from Jack Layne and cut back to the perimeter on his way to a 40-yard TD.
The Aggies were rock solid defensively in the third quarter as they only gave up two first downs, nevertheless the quarter ended up being a stalemate. USU did march into plus territory on both of its possessions of the quarter, but both drives stalled out and both resulting punts went into the end zone.
The Aggies did give themselves a glimmer of hope as a seven-play, 87-yard possession culminated with a 13-yard scoring strike from Barnes to Braden Pegan. Pegan came through with an impressive 56-yard catch and run on a ball thrown behind him on the play before his TD.
USU had a golden opportunity to sustain its momentum for the first time in the contest as it seemingly forced UNM into a punting position. However, the Lobos dialed up a fake punt at their own 34-yard line and a missed open field tackle loomed large.
"Yeah, we actually defended it well," Mendenhall said. "We had two unblocked players and we didn't make the tackle. They had it for minus yardage and their player made a play, and ours didn't. And ... so credit New Mexico's execution. Again, we had a defended well, we just didn't make the play."
The Lobos ultimately turned that successful fake punt into six points. Damon Bankston broke at least three tackles — two at once — on a 41-yard scoring scamper midway through the fourth quarter to give New Mexico a commanding 33-14 lead, and the Aggies never recovered from their knockout blow.
New Mexico completely controlled the time of possession battle by nearly a two-to-one margin — 38:16 to 21:44. The field position battle was also clearly won by the Lobos, who never allowed the Aggies to start a series past their own 25-yard line. Conversely, UNM's starting field position exceeded its own 29-yard line on five occasions.
"They controlled the game," Mendenhall said. "They didn't allow us to sustain drives offensively and they did sustain drives offensively, so besides the time of possession, where they were starting with a ball was also in their favor."
The Lobos finished with a balanced 407 yards of total offense — 183 through the air on 17 of 22 passing, and 224 on 42 rushing attempts. Meanwhile, the Aggies produced their second-lowest tally of the season with 306 yards. USU, which failed to score at least 22 points for the first time this year, gained 250 total yards against Texas A&M.
"As an offense, we've got to make plays," said Davis, who accounted for 110 yards on 10 carries — his third time eclipsing the century mark this season. "That's it. I think right now the coach is calling the right plays, we've just got to execute in the right way and make them."
Barnes, who was sacked three times and pressured on a few other occasions, completed 13 of 23 passes for 164 yards, with Pagen accounting for 108 of those yards on five receptions. It was the UCLA transfer's second 100-plus-yard performance of the '25 campaign.
It was an uneven performance for the Aggies defensively as they swarmed to the ball well at times, but didn't tackle well at times and only produced one tackle for loss. USU entered the contest having averaged 4.4 TFLs an outing.
"I think Bronco said it fair enough," said USU safety Brevin Hamblin, who contributed with a team-high, career-high and game-high 11 tackles. "Our execution, we've got to run our stunts right, our blitzes right and, at the end of the day, when we hit someone, they've got to fall backward instead of fall forward."
Linebacker John Miller and defensive end Carson Tujague chipped in with 10 tackles each for the Aggies, who got nine tackles from cornerback Noah Avinger against his former team.
Both teams were penalized seven times, but USU's were seemingly more costly as a few of them hindered seemingly promising offensive series.
"The number of penalties continues to be an issue for our team and they're coming in fairly consistent patterns and places," Mendenhall said. "We haven't yet addressed that, I haven't yet addressed that effectively enough to get out of the way of that."
