"When you perform that bad, it's not on the players, it's on the coaches"
The opportunity for New Mexico head coach Danny Gonzales to return to his alma mater as a head coach was a special one. He had led highly regarded defenses at San Diego State and Arizona State before taking on his first head coaching job the Lobos.
With the challenges presented by COVID, 2020 has been a difficult year to take over a program thirsty for new direction. Four games in and sitting at 0-4, Gonzales' squad has had to face just one team with a losing record (Hawaii, who is 2-3) The rest of their schedule consisted of opening with San Jose State (currently 4-0), then Hawaii, then Nevada (5-0), and this past weekend they took on Air Force (currently 2-2).
After the 28-0 loss to the Falcons on Saturday, Gonzales wasted no time in letting folks know where to direct their criticism.
"I said this in my opening press conference when I took this job, 'Players win games, and coaches lose games.'"
"I apologized to our team in there because we did a terrible job of coaching them. We are not that bad of a football team, but when you perform that bad, it's not on them. It's on the coaches. I have to do a better job of getting our staff to prepare them better."
Throughout the rest of the presser, as he notes how having a triple option team rushing for 7 yards a carry is a "recipe for disaster" and how they had major issues from the box identifying what was going on and how a number of their offensive drives ended up going backwards, Gonzales continually points the blame at himself and the coaching staff.
"You can make the excuse that it's just not our night. That's a loser's excuse. That's not who we are going to be."
See more of Gonzales' comments in the clip.
https://youtu.be/IO7srcbNlZY
