NM State Aggies vs. Florida State
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WHO: NM State Aggies (0-0, 0-0 CUSA) at Florida State (0-0, 0-0 ACC)
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WHEN: Saturday, 5 p.m. MDT
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WHERE: Tallahassee (Doak S. Campbell Stadium)
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SPREAD: Florida State by 31.5
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HOW TO WATCH: The CW
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KEEP AN EYE ON (NMSU): QB Trey Hedden, a transfer from FCS Furman;
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KEEP AN EYE ON (FSU): WR Duce Robinson, First Team All-ACC in 2025
Three notes
1.
NM State gets $1.4 million to play the game.
2.
The Aggies roster has 215 past FBS starts, second most entering the season among C-USA teams.
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NM State’s last non-conference road win was also a money-game — a 20-17 victory at Auburn on Nov. 18, 2023.
Call Saturday night in Doak Campbell Stadium a seminal moment, of sorts.
While the heavily favored home coach of the Florida State Seminoles, Mike Norvell, seems to be the country’s consensus No. 1 coach on the hot seat entering this college football season, the chair under New Mexico State’s Tony Sanchez is pretty warm right now, too.
Sanchez, the third-year NM State head coach has just a 7-17 mark in his first two years as head coach of the Aggies — just five of those wins coming against FBS opponents — and that following a 20-40 showing at UNLV over five seasons coaching in the Mountain West.
Sanchez has said, he’s confident in a Year 3 improvement after taking over after NMSU’s 10-win, Jerry Kill-coached 2023 season — an offseason that saw not just an exodus of most coaches, but most of the players on the two-deep depth chart at the time.
Now, the Aggies feel they finally have some depth to compete.
“It’s not like our best 22 have to go in there and knuckle up for 88 plays,” Sanchez said. “We’ve got some depth that we didn’t have in the past.”
That said, as 31.5-point underdogs heading into a payday game — the Aggies are set to make $1.4 million to play the game — it’s hard to imagine much expectation of Sanchez and the Aggies in the opener, even with a first-year Athletic Director at the helm who has shown a propensity for starting anew with most things in Las Cruces and making as many clean breaks from the old regime as possible.
Still, even with opening-game expectations tempered, a complete flop by the Aggies certainly wouldn’t do much to help drum up the ticket sales, even if it is in a game that will likely be the largest point spread deficit they face all season.
“I think anytime you get to the first game of the season, I don’t know if it matters who you play,” Sanchez said earlier this week at NM State’s weekly football news conference previewing the game. “You’re going to be frothing at the mouth. You’re going to be ready to go. But having it be against a Florida state team at Doak Campbell — a lot of history and tradition — it’s going to be an exciting environment, it’s going to be an exciting atmosphere.
“But the biggest thing I always tell our guys is the team that comes to balance the fastest has the greatest chance of winning. So, after all the hoopla, the entrance, and all that stuff that goes on, we’ve got to settle down and we’ve got to focus. … That’s where you really find out about the DNA of your football team.”
The Aggies are starting a new transfer quarterback to start the season for the third time in as many seasons under Sanchez. Getting a steady, even if not spectacular, start out of FCS Furman transfer Trey Hedden under center — and preferably not picking himself off the turf all night in Tallahassee — would go a long ways toward settling the jitters of the entire program, in and outside the locker room.
Hedden last year at Furman threw for 2,967 yards.
On defense, the Aggies return more experience than in recent seasons and have hope for an improved season after allowing just north of 400 yards per game last season.
Arguably their biggest challenge will be containing senior wide receiver Duce Robinson, the 6-foot-6, 230-pound future NFL draft pick who was a first team All-ACC player in 2025 after a 56-catch, 1,081 receiving yard campaign that came despite a losing season.
“You’ve got to know where Duce is — that big ol’ receiver,” Sanchez said. “He’s a stud, so you’ve got to know where he is on the field.”
Geoff Grammer is the Sports Editor and a podcaster for the Albuquerque Journal. He primarily covers UNM Lobos basketball, among other things. Reach him at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.
