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What’s Wrong With Mountain West Football So Far This Season?

The Mountain West mostly hasn’t played up to preseason expectations thus far. We take a closer look to try and figure out why.

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Can the conference be fixed?

Roughly one month into the college football season, only four Mountain West teams sit above .500. The conference has just one Power 5 win, against a Colorado Buffaloes team that might be the worst in the country. It has just one non-conference road win, Nevada’s victory over New Mexico State back in Week 0. Almost no one has, to quote a sage of our era, straight up had a good time of things.

Despite what looks like an unexpectedly exciting conference title chase, it’s hard not to wonder where things have gone wrong to this point in the young campaign. That’s why we want to look under the hood and figure out what might be driving the early results.

Returning Production

It wasn’t a secret that many teams across the conference would be replacing a substantial amount of talent since, as Bill Connelly noted in his percentage adjustments throughout the summer, the Mountain West trailed the next least-experienced conference by a full five percent going into the fall. It may have been too optimistic, then, to expect that many teams would continue to operate like normal.

Nevada and Hawaii were obvious rebuild candidates at the very bottom of the list but Utah State, for instance, returned just 50% of its overall production of 2021, too. The Aggies’ net points per drive has dropped from +0.61 (37th in FBS) to -1.43 (110th) while their net available yards percentage has fallen from +8.1% (32nd) to -11.1% (95th), but they’re hardly alone in that regard: Wyoming sat just above the Wolf Pack and Warriors with 34% of its production set to return, while San Diego State brought back only 55% of its 2021 production and Colorado State sat at 58%. Despite their differing win-loss records, all have seen similar declines by both metrics.

Injuries

It may be that recency bias plays a role here, but it seems like nearly every team in the Mountain West is dealing with a harsher rash of early injuries than usual:

• Air Force has been without DeAndre Hughes, Dane Kinamon, and Jayden Thiergood, among others, in recent weeks.
• Boise State has played recently without Ezekiel Noa, while Tyreque Jones got banged up in the Week 4 loss at UTEP.
• Colorado State is already missing both starting offensive tackles while quarterback Clay Millen got knocked out of the Week 4 contest against Sacramento State.
• Fresno State is headed to UConn in Week 5 without four starters, including quarterback Jake Haener and safety Evan Williams.
• Hawaii’s passing game has dealt with injuries to wide receivers Jonah Panoke and Zion Bowens.
• Nevada just lost kicker Brandon Talton for the foreseeable future, and the Wolf Pack have already been without offensive lineman Aaron Frost and defensive back JoJuan Claiborne.
• New Mexico just lost star safety Tavian Combs for the season, while linebacker Ray Leutele is week-to-week.
• San Diego State played last week without starting guard Ross Ulugalu-Maseuli while safety Patrick McMorris has also been banged up.
• UNLV wide receivers Kyle Williams and Jeff Weimer got knocked out of their Week 4 game, and the latter will miss Week 5 with a shoulder injury.
• Utah State has lost contributors like Phillip Paea and Kyle Van Leeuwen for the season to injury.
• Wyoming lost expected contributors like Buck Coors and Sabastian Harsh for the season back in fall camp, while Titus Swen and Frank Crum have been slowed at points.

The only team to really escape the injury bug so far is San Jose State, but the nature of the game is such that the Spartans are likely to be dealing with similar issues at some point, just as everyone else.

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Mountain West Football: Separating Contenders From Pretenders After One Month

Four weeks into the season, we re-examine what the race to the Mountain West championship could look like over the next two months.

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Not quite what was expected.

Also-rans

Colorado State

Things haven’t come together as planned at Fort Air Raid. The Rams have scored a meager 10.8 points per game, ahead of only UMass among FBS teams, and averaged 4.03 yards per play, which ranks 129th in the country, while quarterback Clay Millen has been battered week after week to the point that he finally got knocked out of the contest with Sacramento State in Week 4.

It isn’t all doom and gloom in Fort Collins, as Tory Horton, Mohamed Kamara, and Jack Howell have all shined despite the difficult circumstances, but it may serve CSU fans well to recall that head coach Jay Norvell had to absorb a 3-9 campaign in his first year at Nevada back in 2017, too, before the Wolf Pack got on track.

Hawaii

It’s been a bumpy ride for Timmy Chang’s Warriors in the first month of his tenure, with a win over Duquesne and lopsided losses to Michigan, New Mexico State, Vanderbilt, and Western Kentucky by an average of 37.5 points. Running back Dedrick Parson has been a bright spot on offense, but no one could have predicted it would take five games for Hawaii to secure its first passing touchdown.

The defense, meanwhile, has been active about getting its hands on the football with seven takeaways in five games, but they also rank 128th among FBS teams in allowing 7.33 yards per play to date. It’s not out of the question they could steal another win or two against other also-rans in conference play, but it may just as easily be a long Year Zero on the islands.

Nevada

It was nice while it lasted, but the Wolf Pack have come back to earth with a three-game losing streak in which they’ve posted a not-so-nice -69 point differential. While they’re still tied for first in the Mountain West with 11 total takeaways, Nevada has been shut out on that front in the last two games, as well.

Don’t mistake the diminishing returns for bottoming all the way out like others in the Mountain West, though. Nate Cox appears to be the answer at quarterback while the running back duo of Toa Taua and Devonte Lee has been solid, but the explosiveness on offense just hasn’t been there yet with only 13 plays of 20 or more yards in five games. Dom Peterson has continued to ball out as expected, too, while the secondary has at least proven it can be opportunistic, so the Wolf Pack have at least a few things going for them which could lead to a surprising result or two in the next couple months.

New Mexico

Of all the teams in this part of the column, the Lobos are the likeliest candidate to be a real headache for those expected to contend. That’s because, even after being drubbed by LSU in Week 4, UNM still ranks 69th in the country by defensive SP+. For the sake of context, San Diego State currently sits at 56th on that side of the ball while Fresno State is 80th.

The bigger question is whether the offense will ever come around. In terms of offensive SP+, the Lobos are dead last in the country; if you prefer yards per play, UNM is 126th after four games with an average of 4.21. Their running game has flashed potential here and there, most notably from Sherod White and Christian Washington, but it’ll take a group effort to truly play the spoiler role.