No. 18 WSU’s second half woes lead to embarrassing 38-35 loss to New Mexico

WSU’s big dreams were laid to rest in New Mexico.

No. 18 Washington State’s dreams of sneaking into the College Football Playoff were dashed after an embarrassing loss to the New Mexico Lobos, 38-35.

WSU (8-2) looked like the better team for the majority of the first half. The Cougars raced out to a 28-14 lead through the first 30 minutes of football, scoring a touchdown on four of their first five drives, and had the opportunity to pour it on by receiving the ball to open the second half. Instead, the offense laid a dud in the game’s final 30 minutes. WSU punted four straight times to begin the second half, never crossing past the UNM (5-6) 44-yard line. The Lobos took advantage of WSU’s offensive incompetence and their defensive miscues by scoring on four of five offensive drives, including the game-winning touchdown with 21 seconds remaining.

All season, WSU has been able to dodge season-altering landmines, narrowly escaping the likes of San Jose State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. The latter of the two came away from Pullman, where WSU has struggled to find any offensive rhythm. This time, they finally flew too close to the sun and suffered a devastating loss to a team that the 18th-best team in the country shouldn’t lose to.

It didn’t have to end this way. WSU’s offense dominated an analytically weak UNM defense early, with John Mateer lighting up the Lobo secondary to the tune of completing his first 11 pass attempts for 221 yards and two passing touchdowns. The ground game also had success, averaging 4.3 yards per carry in the first half. Defensively, the Cougars had answers for UNM’s dual-threat QB Devon Dampier after allowing a touchdown drive to open the game. WSU held UNM to just 2.2 yards per play over their next three drives. On the Lobos fifth drive of the game, a coverage breakdown allowed Caleb Medford to sneak past the WSU secondary to haul in a wide open 42-yard touchdown to pull UNM back within seven points.

WSU responded with a touchdown drive of their own, incorporating a healthy mix of run and pass culminating in a Mateer’s third touchdown of the first half. A beautiful 22-yard pass dropped right into the bucket of Kyle Williams hands. The throw more or less encapsulated what Mateer’s first half looked like. Mateer dropped dime after dime, completing passes that he usually either left or short or put just out of the reach of his receiver. But he looked incredibly dialed in to start this game.

The second half was a much different story offensively.

According to ESPN’s analytics, WSU had a 96.8% chance to win when the Lobos kicked the ball away to begin the second half. Wayshawn Parker took a 12-yard handoff for a first down, then Mateer threw three straight incomplete passes, resulting in a punt. Dampier led the charge for the Lobos with a 33-yard touchdown run on a QB keeper to make it a 28-21 game. As the WSU offense continued to sputter and fail to even get across the Lobo 40-yard line, the Cougar defense grew visibly more frustrated as the up-tempo UNM offense continued to gash them, averaging 8.1 yards per carry. The pace of the Lobo offense seemed to cause issues with the way WSU signaled their play calls in. Multiple times Cougar defenders looked to be scrambling to get in position and communicating with their teammates when the ball was snapped. It didn’t help that the offense couldn’t really sustain any drives, forcing the defense to stay on the field for a majority of the second half.

The Lobos proceeded to rattle off another 10 unanswered points, taking a 31-28 lead on a 19-yard field goal with 4:40 remaining in the game.

It apparently took losing the lead to get the Cougar offense to wake up. Williams got things started on the critical drive with an eight-yard catch, and then Leo Pulalasi flew past the Lobo defense with a pair of big runs at 18 and 12-yards, respectively. On just the fourth play of the drive, Mateer connected with Williams in the endzone for Williams’ third touchdown of the game and sixth in the last two weeks. Though WSU was able to recapture the lead, they left the Lobo offense with 3:21 to drive down the field and didn’t give their defense much of a break after just being on the field for 7:27 of game time on the Lobo’s last possession.

All year long, WSU’s defense has shown a great ability to bend but not break. But eventually, they were due to get burnt. It just so happened to come in a half where they had already been getting constantly gashed and looked gassed. On a 3rd and 2 from their own 33, Eli Sanders broke free on an end-around play that WSU had trouble stopping all half long, resulting in a demoralizing 33-yard carry that put the Lobos in great shape.

UNM managed the final two minutes nearly perfectly, grinding their way to the goal line and punching in the go-ahead touchdown. Although up in a similar situation to their miraculous comeback against San Jose State, WSU would not get the same result as their hail mary fell incomplete and the Lobos picked up their first win over a ranked opponent since 2003.

The defense may have allowed 24 points in the second half, but the offense only scoring seven points against a defense that ranks amongst the worst in just about every metric is abhorrent. With how bad WSU’s offense has played on the road this season, they were due to lose one of these games if they couldn’t find a way to find an answer. It looked they finally did with a great first 30 minutes of football, but utterly failed to carry that over into the second half.

Now it’s not like WSU wasn’t having any type of success; the ground game averaged 8.2 yards per carry in the second half, and even without those two long Pulalasi carries in the go-ahead drive, they still averaged 6.5 yards per carry. They only ran the ball 10 times in the second half. Meanwhile, they attempted 19 passes in the second half for just 108 yards, and again, prior to that go-ahead drive, they only had 47 yards through the air on 13 pass attempts to start the second half.

Credit where credit is due. UNM fought hard in a game they had to keep bowl hopes alive, but that doesn’t negate the fact that this is a revolting loss for WSU. The Cougars playoff hopes were always razor thin, but finishing with 11 wins would have almost guaranteed them to be at the very least in the Alamo Bowl. Now, with a bad loss on their resume and Colorado and Arizona State both winning, there’s a real chance WSU went from dreaming of the playoff to looking like a lock for the Las Vegas Bowl in just one night in Albuquerque.