As a new feature this season, Sons of Montezuma offers this quick Red & Black Report. Think of it as a bit like an accounting ledger – RED are areas to address and BLACK are those areas contributing positively to the bottom line.
In this case, black means areas that help win football games. Let’s start with red.
SDSU’s Week 11 Red & Black Report following a 21-16 loss to New Mexico at home.
Red: Home Field Advantage
When Snapdragon Stadium opened in the fall of 2022, hope reigned supreme for Aztecs Nation. We finally had a brand-new home to call our very own.
A more intimate, 32,000+ seat stadium seemed ideal for a team that rarely drew much more than that for a football game that didn’t also include a fireworks show afterward.
Now, a full three years in, San Diego State doesn’t appear to be enjoying much of a home field advantage in its new home. This season, the Aztecs’ have played to a 1-3 record against FBS teams at Snapdragon.
For its more recent game against New Mexico, SDSU drew the smallest crowd in the stadium’s brief history with only 12,745 people making their way through the turnstiles. Playing on Friday night with high school playoffs starting certainly didn’t help, nor did one of the coldest nights for an Aztecs football game in recent memory.
Sitting in the field level behind the New Mexico bench, you could hear all the conversations going on nearby. The student section saw its lowest turnout of the season and all those empty seats made very little noise in support of the Red & Black.
To make things worse, the playing field looked horrible. The middle of the field had seen better days with chunks of grass coming up as the game wore on. One could see players regularly slipping on the mix of grass and sand.
For a stadium that opened to lots of positive energy, that spirit is slipping away for many who long for a better product on the field. Heck, at this point, we’d settle for simply a better field.
With the team on the road the next two weeks Snapdragon’s field is now being re-sodded with a more favorable type of grass. All indications point towards the previous kind not rooting properly on the playing surface, combined with weather changes, as the culprit for the sandlot looking field.
If by the final game of the season vs Air Force the grass is still full of patches, perhaps the entrance song of the team shouldn’t be Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle, but rather Metallica’s Enter Sandman.
The Black: Kicking Game
With the exception of the crushing loss to Central Michigan when missed field goals sealed SDSU’s fate, this year’s kicking game has been spot on.
Prior to the season, the Red & Black Report, like many Aztecs football fans, wasn’t confident the Aztecs’ roster contained guys capable of adequately filling the shoes of graduated kicker Jack Browning. Before heading off to the NFL, Browning, a local kid from West Hills High School, earned second team All-Mountain West honors in his final season on the Mesa as both the kicker and punter for SDSU.
But 2024 punter Tyler Pastula and kicker Gabe Plascenica have stepped up to successfully man these important places on special teams.
For the season, Plascencia has connected on 11 of his 12 field goal attempts with a long of 50 yards. After losing the number one place kicking job early in the season, the junior from Oakland has yet to miss since returning to the field.
Pastula, a senior transfer from the University of Albany, might be even more impressive than his kicking counterpart. All Pastula has done is rack up an impressive 45.7 punting average on 45 punts, with a long of 79 yards. On the season, SDSU stats credit Pastula with 12 punts of more than 50 yards. Now, that’s booming the football!
While Head Coach Sean Lewis continues to try and get his offense in gear, it’s comforting to know that when drives stall, the team has two highly capable kickers who will each put his best foot forward when called upon.
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San Diego State football takes to the road and the bright lights of Las Vegas this week for a game against UNLV. Saturday’s kickoff is set for 7:30pm on November 16. Television coverage will be provided by CBS Sports Network with San Diego Sports 760 airing the radio broadcast.
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