All preliminary evidence points to one thing: Right now, the UNM football team is as malleable as soft-serve.

It’s too bad the Lobos don’t play on Sunday, because they would go well with hot fudge.

If that was the Lobos’ Homecoming, I’d rather they stay on the road. End result: 34-17, UNLV.

Without head coach Goldi-Locks(ley) — away on Saturday as part of a 10-day suspension for his involvement in an altercation with wide receivers coach J.B. Gerald — the Lobos were still the Bad News Bears, this time the simplicity of a punt-return exchange in the fourth quarter damaging UNM’s come-from-behind surge.
Fair catch, anyone?

“Really, that was just a lack of communication between the two,” said interim head coach George Barlow. “We always talk to those guys about how we can’t let the ball hit the ground.”

Best believe bad things happen to bad teams.

“I wouldn’t say we’re a bad team,” said wide receiver Daryl Jones. “But we have to find a way to get everything rolling and get everything right.”
Yeah, and I would venture to say nobody has a clue what’s wrong with the Lobos — not the coaches, nor the players.

But I have a hunch.

Good luck getting them to admit this, but Saturday the Lobos looked like a team that’s conceded the season. Naturally, as a coping mechanism alone, teams that lose in bunches by bunches become desensitized to the agony of defeat. It becomes an accepted fate.

And the lack of effort on Saturday, especially on defense, was a testament to this.
At one point during the game, UNM allowed the Rebels — a now 3-5 team, whose head coach, Mike Sanford, has less job security than a journalist after his teams have consistently underperformed for years — to gain an average of almost 7 yards a pop.
The Rebels ran an eclectic mix of misdirection plays and oddball formations, specifically the “Pistol,” where the quarterback lined up in a shortened shotgun with the running back 2 or 3 yards behind him.

That — and the constant over-pursuit on the part of the Lobo linemen and backers — enabled quarterbacks Omar Clayton and Mike Clausen to scurry around for 78 combined yards rushing, with Clayton averaging 15.3 per dash.

UNM made Clayton, an able-bodied, but by no means overly athletic QB, look bedazzling, like the second coming of Michael Vick. Worse, collectively, UNLV gained 210 via the ground, a marked 103-yard improvement on its season average.

Barlow insisted the Lobos weren’t duped by the unusual formations the Rebels operated in, and he openly refused to blame UNM’s gutless performance on genuine indifference, saying the players had a “good look in their eyes.”

Look, don’t believe it for a second.

Case in point: Had it not been for UNLV choosing to take a knee on the Lobos’ 5-yard line, the game already decided, UNM would have let up a touchdown in the waning seconds.

If I were Sanford, I would’ve given the Bill Belichick go-ahead and proceeded to score on the Lobos. My philosophy has always been: Don’t respect those who don’t respect themselves. If you’re the Lobos, in that type of situation, you have to have the self dignity to stop the opposing team from marching it down, especially when said team isn’t making an effort to score, yet reels off 17 yards to get into scoring position.

Nope, things down in Loboland are bad.

Somewhere former head coach Rocky Long is laughing hysterically. I hate to say this, because I wasn’t a staunch Long supporter, but I highly doubt a Long-coached team would flat-out quit like this.

Those who know Long best tell me that one glare from the barrel-chested former head man was enough to make you cringe. His point was made without an utterance. The same cannot be said of Locksley, obviously, or he wouldn’t have to throw a punch to make a statement.