New Mexico football is continuing its search for a new head coach. The school is reportedly vetting several candidates as finalists including: Bronco Mendenhall, Matt Wells, and Rocky Long, per The Athletic. All three men have ties to the school.

New Mexico's next coach will have a tough job to do to turn around the program. The Lobos finished a disappointing 4-8 in 2023, including a 2-6 record in the Mountain West Conference. The school parted ways with Danny Gonzales after the season. Gonzales only won 11 games in 4 seasons as head coach of the Lobos.

The school certainly has candidates. Mendenhall is a former assistant coach at New Mexico, who also served as the school's associate head coach in 2002. He more recently served as head coach at BYU and Virginia before stepping down from his job with the Cavaliers after the 2021 season.

Wells is an offensive analyst at Oklahoma. He also was an assistant on the New Mexico staff at one time, coaching wide receivers and acting as a recruiting coordinator for the school in 2007-8. Wells also served as head coach at Utah State and Texas Tech before joining Oklahoma in 2022.

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Long is the defensive coordinator at Syracuse. He's an interesting candidate because Long played at New Mexico and actually served as the head coach already at the school from 1998-2008. It's not often that a school brings back a former head coach, but that has happened before like Greg Schiano at Rutgers. Long also served as an assistant at New Mexico before becoming the head coach.

New Mexico hasn't played in a bowl game since 2016.