Photo by M Angie Salazar on Unsplash

2019 in a Nutshell

Team: UTEP Miners
2019 Record: 1-11
Head Coach: Dana Dimel
Scheduled Game Day: September 5th
Location: El Paso, Texas

Best 2020 Players

RB Quardriaz Wadley: Wadley missed all of 2019 with an injury that kept him out all year, but in 2018, Wadley had 123 carries, with 627 yards, averaging 5 yards a carry, with 7 touchdowns.

DB/KR Duron Lowe: Lowe averaged about 25 yards a kickoff return, which is pretty good, and had a touchdown, while gathering 25 tackles, 6 passes defended, and a forced fumble on the defensive side of the ball.

OL Bobby DeHaro: DeHaro was all-conference honorable mention in 2018 and 2019 while playing left guard.

LB Sione Tupou: A freshman last year, he had 60 tackles, 3.5 tackles for a loss and a sack.

Scattershooting . . .

• Dimel inherited a pretty terrible team and last year the offense was terrible and the defense couldn’t stop much of anyone or anything from a passing perspective . . .
• This is Dimel’s 2nd year and he’s 1-21 against FBS teams, so he’s struggling to get the program on the right track . . .
• Dimel made changes on the staff, bringing Josh Brown from Nevada to coach the secondary and safeties, Charles Jones is in charge of offense and quality control, Barrick Nealy to coach running backs and do recruiting things, while Trevin Wade is to coach cornerbacks. When a coach overhauls his coaching staff, that’s not a good sign . . .
• Mike Canales is the offensive coordinator (a Utah state grad including a stint with Matt Wells at Utah State) and has bounced around a bunch, with stops all over the place . . .
• Mike Cox is the defensive coordinator and followed Dimel from Kansas State to El Paso (with a stop at Utah State in 1995-97) . . .
• Former Texas Tech special teams coach Joe Robinson is also the special teams coordinator for Dimel. I think Robinson is from Abilene so it sounds like he just wants to be in West Texas . . .
• UTEP signed 9 junior college players to help the defense, giving up 430 yards a game last year, so they went hard after the JUCO guys . . .
• We’ve seen that move before, going JUCO heavy and that’s sort of a hit or miss type of situation . . .
• UTEP also moved from a 3-4 to a 4-3 to maybe generate more of a pass rush . . .
• I don’t know who will be calling the shots at quarterback, there are four quarterbacks on the roster, Isaiah Bravo is a JUCO from California, TJ Goodwin is a redshirt freshman from Cypress Falls, Gavin Hardison is a redshirt sophomore from Hobbs, and Calvin Brownholtz is also a redshirt sophomore from California . . .
• Jacob Cowing is the heading returning receiver, with 31 catches, 550 yards, 17 yards a catch, and 3 touchdowns, the yards per catch is certainly impressive, the question is who is going to throw him the ball . . .