ANN ARBOR, MI — The UTEP football team’s trip to No. 19 Michigan was never going to define its 2026 season.
With Mountain West play ahead, the Saturday, Sept. 26, homecoming game against Oregon State will provide an early conference benchmark for UTEP.
What the 52-14loss to the Wolverines in front of the largest crowd ever to see UTEP play
(110,668) showed was two things: the Miners’ ceiling and their floor.
The good and the bad for UTEP football on display
In the first 24 minutes, UTEP showed how good it can be when everything is rolling. In the last 34, they showed how quickly that can all get away. The third quarter was an absolute nadir for UTEP football, a grim stretch in which the Miners lost every single play on offense and all but two on defense.
In both games against FBS opponents (both
in the top 25), UTEP came out of the locker room in troubling fashion.
UTEP falls flat in third quarter gain
Michigan “came out of the half ready to go; it’s my job to have our team ready to go, and I don’t think I did a good job of that,” coach Scotty Walden said in a frank assessment. “I need to get them on the field earlier, get them warm and we’ve got to be ready to play coming out of the half.
“We had them set up perfectly. We deferred (the opening coin toss), it was a close game, we’re getting the ball, we have every opportunity to go down and score but we came out and went three and out.
“I have to have them ready to play. It was an execution thing.”
As for the end of the first half, Walden talked about field position, and indeed, starting from the 14-14 tie, Michigan’s average starting field position on its next five drives, when it turned a tie into a rout, was its own 48-yard line.
Poor special teams surface again
Much of that was because of poor punting. The nation’s worst team in net punting averaged 30.3 yards and is probably still last. The 26-yarder at the end of the first half was essentially a three-point punt for Michigan, allowing them to lead into the locker room.
So far this year, UTEP’s special teams grade out at a D-minus, at best.
But there was that first 24 minutes and that can’t be taken away or ignored. As Walden pointed out, the way UTEP came out against Michigan showed strides from how it opened the first two games.
There was improvement, to a point
“From game 1 to now I love what I’ve seen,” Walden said. “We came out with much more intensity, much more fight in the first half.”
Their best defensive player, Xavier Smith, hinted at that while also pointing out the bad.
“We came out fast; we wanted to attack our opponent,” Smith said. “We did that, but we didn’t establish a consistent rhythm to sustain for four quarters. We have to hit the drawing board again and focus on relentless effort each possession.
“Our motto was winning the possession; we’ve still got a lot of work to do with that that will take us a lot further in the season.
“We definitely put some good stuff on film; a lot of guys were flying around, getting downhill fast. We showed some good stuff that we’re able to build off of. We have to keep doing it.”
Indeed, there will always be that film of the first 24 minutes. UTEP forced two turnovers and a three-and-out in its first four possessions, and mixed in two touchdown drives off turnovers that drew boos from the crowd.
The offense got in rhythm, the play calling was the best of Walden’s tenure on both sides of the ball and UTEP played with a surprising confidence that belied the talent mismatch.
They responded to Michigan’s first touchdown by forcing a fumble and scoring on the ensuing drive. What they didn’t do was respond to any adversity at all (and it suddenly came crashing down on their heads) that followed.
UTEP shows two faces, only one of them pretty
So which is the real UTEP? Both, of course, as the one thing the Miners have not done this year and perhaps aren’t capable of doing is stringing together 60 consistent minutes.
That will be the goal moving forward, of course, and the time to fix that before the games that count the most are running low.
UTEP did see positives in the Big House, but the negatives can’t be ignored.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: UTEP football can't finish what it starts, and Michigan proved it
