The Wheels Fall Off for the 2014 UTSA Roadrunners Against the New Mexico Lobos

After three ugly consecutive losses, it's time to admit that UTSA's football team has been a major disappointment in 2014. With 35 seniors and more returning starters than anyone in college football, most publications expected UTSA to finish 2014 with the Conference USA Western division title, hitting eight or nine wins along the way. While these goals are still in place for the Roadrunners, to say they have an uphill battle facing them is a major understatement.

It sure is hard to believe this is the same UTSA team that I watched in 2013. That team was effective, proud, well coached, and always seemed to catch opponents off guard. The team I've seen in 2014 looks lost, lacks leadership, fails to execute and rarely shows that chip on the shoulder that the 2013 team carried. Each week UTSA has come out of the gate looking like a worse team than in the week that preceded it.

The Roadrunners only lost a few players from the 2013 class. What happened to this team to cause them to regress despite so little roster turnover? UTSA left guard Scott Inskeep dropped an interesting little nugget in his post-game interview. When the UTSA radio crew asked Inskeep how the team can turn it around and reach a bowl game he said that the team needs to start taking practice more seriously. Are the Roadrunners loafing around in practice? We'll probably never know since the coaches lock the media out of practice for all but 15 minutes per week. Why should the veterans take practice seriously anyways? The coaches have repeatedly shown that their playing time is secured as the same upperclassmen continue to under perform each week without any type of non injury-related changes being made to the depth chart.

Clearly, this team has a laundry list of issues that it needs to sort out and I'm glad I'm not the guy in charge of fixing them. While I don't have the answers for this program I think we can all agree that the status quo sucks. It's time for the coaching staff and players to take a hard look in the mirror to find out what kind of team they are relative to the team they want to be.