When the schedule for the 2025 Wyoming football season was released in February, it felt like the minimum requirement heading into Mountain West conference play would be a 2-2 record.
Mission accomplished.
The Cowboys were able to do just that, taking care of business against a lowly Akron squad on the road and handling FCS Northern Iowa, but have limped across the finish line in wrapping up the non-conference portion of their schedule.
Sure, the Pokes were competitive against both their Big 12 opponents, Utah and Colorado. However, it never felt like the Pokes were truly going to win those games–having trailed both opponents throughout the entirety of both of those games, only being tied when the games opened at zero points a piece. All in all, the Cowboys trailed for a whopping 98 minutes and 34 seconds in both contests.
That statistic, however, is much less dire than it seems when you dig a little bit deeper.
The Cowboys’ defense and special teams remained stout against the Utes, as their efforts allowed the Cowboys to trail by just a field goal heading into halftime and it was just a 10 point game in the dying seconds of the third quarter.
Quarterback Kaden Anderson had strung together one of his best drives of the season in the second half against Colorado to make it just a 10 point game with a little over four minutes to go, despite the Cowboys trailing by 25 at the beginning of the third quarter.
“The rhythm that we got into there, I thought from a play call rhythm, I thought from a quarterback rhythm, that was the best that we were all season in a rhythm offensively.
“I think if we could build on what we did at the second half of that game the other night offensively, then I think that–we have a potential offensively that we haven’t reached, and we haven’t been close to reaching yet,” Sawvel said of his offense’s second half performance against Colorado.
Still, it wasn’t enough to seal a comeback victory against the Buffaloes–and that right there is what is making it so difficult to gauge the progress of this Cowboys’ team under the direction of Jay Sawvel in his second season of being a head coach in any capacity.
“What we’ve got to do right now is we’ve got to learn ourselves even more and more. That’s what these last two games have been really good for,” Sawvel said. “We’ve had good moments, we’ve also had bad moments.”
Defensively, the good moments include a shutout victory against Akron on the road and only allowing a single touchdown to Northern Iowa at home. After those opening two wins, the defense ranked amongst some of the best in the nation in many metrics.
The bad? The Cowboys have given up a combined 1,038 yards of total offense against their Big 12 opponents. That number was just 398 in their opening pair of wins–granted, against much inferior opponents.
Both offensively and defensively, the Cowboys have struck it mostly down the middle in the national statistics. They rank 73rd (tied with Colorado State, interestingly enough) in total defense and 100th in total offense, with both rankings leaving much room for improvement.
An identity crisis has seemingly befell both sides of the ball this season, one that will only be solved in the heat of Mountain West conference play. Will the Cowboys’ losses against Power Four competition ultimately drive them to a fruitful conference slate, or will they become lost in a flurry of losses?
A date with the only undefeated team in the conference, UNLV, will likely begin to tell much of that story.
