For today's paper, we had a piece on promising young Idaho tight end Taylor Elmo. He's becoming a bigger part of an Idaho offense that's been hard to figure this season.

We've got more below from quarterback Nate Enderle and offensive coordinator Steve Axman.

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The Vandals will play their toughest two home games of the season in the next two weeks -- Saturday vs. 25th-ranked Nevada and Nov. 12 vs. No. 2 Boise State. Last year, they gave up 70 to the Wolf Pack and 63 to BSU in lopsided road losses. Clearly, the Idaho defense hopes to rebound from those low points. But facing the Nos. 7 and 2 scoring offenses in the nation, respectively, the Vandals are going to have to match UNR and Boise to some degree by scoring in bunches -- and putting up points consistently.

That last point has been UI's biggest issue this season. The Vandals have yet to win (or lose) consecutive games, and their offense -- while still being the strongest link -- has been more erratic than in 2009.

Fifth-year senior quarterback Nate Enderle is well aware of this, and he knows how frustrating the past few weeks have been. Against New Mexico State, the Vandals were unstoppable for a half, rolling up 31 points. Then they came out after halftime and mustered only two field goals. "We were as flat as could be in the second half," said offensive coordinator Steve Axman.

"You know, that’s one thing that our offense hasn’t been doing," Axman noted. "They’ve been playing and playing hard right to the very end. I don’t think they weren’t playing hard, but I think it just seemed to get to them and they were very, very flat. We come out right away and the quarterback throws two bad passes on some easy completions, and it just seemed just to disintegrate from there."

Then last week at Hawaii, the Vandals clicked along in the first quarter. But they settled for a field goal in their first possesion -- UI has scored one TD in its eight games on opening series -- and then penalties and turnovers became the theme after that.

"Right now it feels like we’re not overcoming adversity," Enderle said. "When something bad happens, it feels like it kind of snowballs instead of cranking through and having somebody come up with a big play and kind of shock us back into life."

The difference between playing on the road and at the Kibbie Dome has been glaring -- both for the Vandals and Enderle. In five away games, albeit against tougher competition like Hawaii and Nebraska, Enderle has 10 interceptions. In three home games, he has two picks.

The Vandals are 1-4 on the road and 3-0 at home, with all their wins at the Dome coming easily.

"I don’t know. Maybe we just don’t play with as much life (or) we’re not as focused, myself included," Enderle said of playing outside Moscow. "But that’s not acceptable. The statistics are kind of skewed when you have Hawaii and Nebraska."

Since the second half of the NMSU game, Enderle is 28-of-56 passing and has forced a few throws, as Axman pointed out. The longtime assistant said he hasn't seen anything different in Enderle's mechanics. But he does see a lot that can be improved from the offense in general.

"You know a lot of the inability of performing well against Hawaii stemmed from our actions on offense in three consecutive series," Axman said, referring to two INTs and a fumble. "You can’t let that happen. We’ve got to fix that. We’ve got to fix throwing an interception when we’re kind of forcing the ball, which we kind of did. And we need to make sure we have good ball security after the catch."

 

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