After opening loss to UMass, NMSU football vows to find offensive identity

Aug. 27—LAS CRUCES — It's a long season, after all. And on Saturday night, Jerry Kill sat down, took off his glasses and confirmed he wasn't interested in making it any longer than it needed to be.

"I don't think we played up to our abilities," New Mexico State's head coach said after a 41-30 loss to UMass. "Sometimes you gotta play the first game to see where you're at. And that's one thing — we certainly identified where we're at, where we need to go.

"But we're not gonna let this carry on like we did for about five games last year. We're gonna get it taken care of."

Last year, the Aggies started 1-5 before rallying down the stretch for a 7-6 finish — including a 23-13 win at UMass, the second victory of a 6-1 stretch to close the season that colored expectations heading into this season. Saturday, it was the Minutemen who looked like they were on the cusp of starting something new for themselves after coming out of Aggie Memorial Stadium with their first road win and season-opening victory since 2018.

All of which begs the question: after one night out, where is New Mexico State?

Defensively, the numbers weren't great: UMass scored their most points in regulation since a 58-42 loss to South Florida on Oct. 6, 2018 and rushed for 5.3 yards a pop (197 yards total) with four touchdowns to boot. Quarterback Taisun Phommachanh was 10-for-17 passing but made his mark on the run, pairing with 96 rushing yards and a TD on the ground.

And yet, before that runaway 48-point fourth quarter, it was a 7-7, 10-10, 13-10 who-blinks-first affair for the majority of the game. Kill acknowledged there were key mental mistakes in the fourth quarter — particularly losing contain on Phommachanh's 26-yard keeper on 4th and 7 on a drive that led to a touchdown — but with a significantly younger defense, he was quick to add most of those issues can get cleaned up.

"Defensively, we'll be fine," Kill said. "Offensively, we got talent. We gotta figure out again: you gotta identify who you are, and you need to play."

Outside of perceived effort (which "wasn't where we wanted because we got outcoached," he said), that was Kill's biggest frustration. He repeatedly complimented UMass' defense that made the most out of an offense that didn't look like they had something to hang their hat on.

"Every team, you know, you look at," he said, eyes closed and plumbing for a team, "Alabama. You know who they are offensively. Like I said, we got a lotta new players. We got some receivers that can play. We got some guys.

"We gotta figure out how to utilize everybody and getting people where they need to be."

For his part, quarterback Diego Pavia pinned the offense's struggles in the first half on himself and himself only after throwing an interception on the Aggies' first drive of the game and credited cornerback Isaiah Rutherford for pinwheeling back to the ball on his second, a backbreaking 55-yard pick-six that pushed UMass up 34-17 with 6:40 left.

When asked what he felt the offense's identity should be, Pavia looked back to last year...

"We just gotta do more inside zone for sure," he said. "We're a good inside zone team, we know that from last year and we got the same guys up front. We just gotta trust it more (and) throw the ball more on first down. I felt like we were too (predictable).

...while also acknowledging things are different — in a good way.

"We gotta get (Jordan Smith) the ball. Trent Hudson, Chris Bellamy, (Jonathan Brady), (too)," Pavia said. "We got guys at the end of the day. Like everyone's saying, we've just gotta figure out our identity this year. It's not gonna be the same as last year. We got different players, we got different weapons on the outside."

Few encapsulated NMSU's struggle to get the right pieces in the right spots like Ahmonte Watkins. The redshirt sophomore running back took a jet sweep 80 yards to the house for NMSU's only rushing touchdown of the game in the second quarter, before following up with another run of 15 yards 10 plays later.

Then, nothing for the rest of the game.

"Ahmonte's good on the perimeter," Kill said. "There's no question about that. But he's gotta become a better inside runner. You gotta be an all-around back."

Kill added Watkins is a father of twins — something that isn't seen or well-known to the 15,356 in attendance on Saturday night. There's always things going on behind the curtain, he said.

But: "Does he need to touch the ball more? You bet," Kill added.

Right back to where we started.

"We'll go back to work tomorrow and do the same thing we did last year: just keep it moving," Kill said, motioning with his hands off to the 11 games ahead of them. "Keep this way, keep coaching them. You get (them) to buy in and believe in what we're doing and we'll be fine.

"But I ain't gonna wait for the fifth or sixth game for it to happen."