Here’s the definition of a program in a bad place: Fans and program followers wake up on Sunday morning smarting from another loss and check to see if there was a coaching change overnight.
That’s where UTEP football is right now after a 30-13 loss to Nevada that marked the first Mountain West Conference game in the Sun Bowl. It also was presented as progress.
Scotty Walden: UTEP got better
“I know this football team got better this week from last week. because of the way we practiced, the way we approached this game, the way we came out and competed,” coach Scotty Walden said. “There’s no moral victories, but I look at things like finishing drives.
”The
game’s out of reach, (quarterback) Ray Moore is fighting his (butt) off, throws (a touchdown) to Cash Cheeks — those are things we have to build on.”
So there, Miner fans, is the hope. UTEP played better at home against a team that just improved to 12-42 in the last five years than it did in the 61-7 loss last week at New Mexico. And with 67 seconds left against Nevada, they played through the tape and tacked on a late touchdown that cut their deficit from 23 points to 17.
That all came in the middle of a postgame press conference where Walden repeatedly said his team has to play better and where he attributed the loss to Nevada winning the line of scrimmage, which is absolutely where all the problems began.
UTEP football in turbulent waters
It should also be noted the post-game press conference was attended by athletic director Jim Senter, which is fairly normal win or lose, and also the athletic department’s chief revenue officer and their business and finance CFO, which is not normal. There is ominous, if intangible, noise around the UTEP football program.
And to be fair about Walden’s correct assessment of UTEP losing the trenches, the Miners had problems on the line after starting freshman left tackle Tyler Roberts went down, his backup, freshman Preston Perkins, went down and this was all in front of a backup quarterback in Raymond Moore.
UTEP has this much in common with many struggling programs, including the teams that got Walden’s predecessors fired: there’s a lot of injuries accumulating, many of which are just bad luck.
Is UTEP getting better? Hard to see
But the bigger issue is one of trajectory. Two and a half years into the Walden era, the Miners don’t seem, to the eye test applied by people not inside the football facility, any better than they did when this all began in Nebraska in 2024. There hasn’t been a point where fans can objectively look at matters and see improvement on the scoreboard.
When asked what progress the program has made, Walden pointed to better depth, he pointed to a handful of plays where the Miners “played to the standard.” And he pointed to UTEP winning a garbage-time possession at the end of a three-score home loss.
Attendance was 13,927 for the Nevada game, the first at home in the Mountain West Conference.
What UTEP could more tangibly use is a win over someone. Next up is a 3-3 San Jose State team in the Sun Bowl that doesn’t represent an impossible hurdle. The home game after that, on Nov. 7, is against 1-5 Hawaii where UTEP could be favored, or at least not a multi-score underdog. They close at winless Northern Illinois.
And at least as of Sunday morning following the Nevada loss Walden was still at the helm of a staff where no one else has the significant college head coaching experience that could make a mid-season coaching change easier.
If UTEP makes an expensive change this week or next (or even in the offseason; Walden‘s contract runs through 2028) will be because the big-ticket donors, who have stepped up dramatically since UTEP joined the Mountain West, demand to see the most tangible of changes at the top.
If UTEP is indeed making the progress Walden is sure is there, the Miners can beat Hawaii and Northern Illinois, maybe steal another one (San Jose State?), get to four wins and kick start everything. Walden will have been right all along; it’s within his reach to prove that.
That’s the gauntlet in front of Walden and UTEP. This doesn’t look promising right now, but there isn’t much people who want the best for UTEP can do right now other than hope their eyes are lying to them.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Hope or illusion? UTEP football reaches crossroads after Nevada loss
