New Mexico Football: Derek Warehime Out As Offensive Coordinator
The Lobos make a change on their coaching staff, looking to provide a spark for a long-struggling offense.
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Another Mountain West coordinator change.
The New Mexico Lobos lost their third straight game on Saturday after letting a 14-point first quarter lead slip away against Wyoming, prompting head coach Danny Gonzales to make a change.
In a release put out on Sunday afternoon, offensive coordinator Derek Warehime has been relieved of his duties, to be replaced by quarterbacks coach Heath Ridenour. Gonzales expressed his appreciation for Warehime’s efforts in his two-plus seasons on staff, but acknowledged that “this is the right time to make a change.”
Warehime, who’d previously coached for the Lobos from 2012 to 2014, returned to Albuquerque before the 2020 season from the Texas Longhorns staff, where he’d served as offensive line coach, tight ends coach, and special teams coordinator between 2017 and 2019. After a promising first campaign in which New Mexico finished fifth in the Mountain West by averaging 5.47 yards per play and scored 24.3 points per game, the Lobos never got things going again at that same level of effectiveness, sinking to 12.2 points per game in 2021 and averaging just 19.3 in the first six games of the 2022 season.
Ridenour, a former quarterback at Division II Eastern New Mexico, who joined the Lobos coaching staff back in January, previously won multiple New Mexico high school championships at Cleveland, including a 2021 title run in which his team’s offense averaged 46.2 points per game.
