During the New Mexico Lobos’ COVID-shortened 2020 football season, sophomore offensive right guard Isaak Gutierrez lined up shoe to shoe with senior right tackle Teton Saltes.
Gutierrez learned a lot from Saltes, and not just about footwork and pad level.
“He was awesome,” Gutierrez, now a senior, said of Saltes in an interview this week. “He took me under his wing.”
It’s highly appropriate, then, that Gutierrez was this year’s UNM candidate for the Wuerffel Trophy — an award given annually since 2005 to an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision player who “best combines exemplary community service with leadership achievement on and off the field.