UPDATED AT 11:54 A.M.: Eck leaving Vandals to become coach at New Mexico

After three successful seasons as football coach at the University of Idaho, Jason Eck will depart Moscow and take over as head coach at New Mexico of the FBS ranks and the Mountain West Conference.

New Mexico made the announcement that it had hired Eck on Saturday morning, just hours after the Vandals lost at Montana State on Friday night in the quarterfinals of the FCS playoffs.

Eck arrived in Moscow in 2022 and turned a Vandal football program that had two winning seasons in the 22 years prior to his arrival and had recently made the switch from the Football Bowl Subdivision back to a Football Championship Subdivision into a program on the rise.

Under Eck, Idaho was 26-13 over three seasons, making the FCS playoffs in all three years and making it to the quarterfinals in each of the past two years.

“I am truly humbled to be selected as the head coach of the New Mexico Lobos," Eck said in a news release issued by New Mexico. "I know that the university community, students, alumni, Lobo Nation and greater Albuquerque and New Mexico communities are eager for success and I cannot wait to give that to them. We will have tremendous coaches and support staff and develop our student-athletes into elite athletes, UNM graduates and people. My wife, Kimberly, and our five children are thrilled to be a part of Albuquerque and we are ready to go!”

Idaho’s 2024 season ended with a 52-19 loss to No. 1 Montana State on Friday night.

Fifteen Vandals earned All-Big Sky Conference honors, including nine defensive players.

Despite injuries to significant staters, the Vandals won 10 games for the first time since 1993 and were perfect at home (6-0) for the first time since 1996.

Eck navigated a third year on the Palouse that saw Idaho lose a slew of starters to the transfer portal/NFL, including quarterback Gevani McCoy and wide receiver Hayden Hatten.

Third-year Vandal Jack Layne won the starting QB job out of camp but broke his collarbone in Idaho’s 24-14 season-opening loss to Oregon, now the No. 1 team in the FBS College Football Playoff.

The Vandals started three quarterbacks this season with Layne returning to start five of Idaho’s last six games, including a 34-13 second-round FCS playoff win over Lehigh at the P1FCU Kibbie Dome on Dec. 7.

Eck played college football at Wisconsin in the 1990s and began his coaching career as a graduate assistant in Madison. His first tenure in Moscow was as Idaho’s offensive line coach from 2004–06.

He takes over a UNM football program that lost coach Bronco Mendenhall to future Pac-12 school Utah State after just one year in Albuquerque, N.M.

The Lobos of the Mountain West Conference are coming off a 5-7 season, but upset Washington State 38-35 in November.