Finding consistency is key for West Virginia moving forward
Neal Brown isn’t looking to beat around the bush when it comes to the performance of his West Virginia football team through the first five games of the season.
“We’ve yet to put a whole game together and it’s frustrating,” Brown said. “Our fans are frustrated, and I get it nobody is more frustrated than me.”
The Mountaineers have started the season 2-3 showcasing an inability to play for a full 60-minutes. Whether that has been effort, execution, mistakes, miscues or a combination of it all. The team has been close, either leading or tied in the fourth quarter of every contest but hasn’t been able to finish.
Never have the issues been more frustrating than last week against Texas Tech where the team fell behind 17-0 and played a listless first half. Eventually the Mountaineers would dig out of that hole but left almost zero margin for error down the stretch. That would prove costly in a 23-20 loss.
“Inexcusable. I can’t reason it,” Brown said.
The lack of consistency has been one of the most frustrating aspects of this team as it at times has looked very good in all three phases, while other times not so much. That’s led to this team being unable to put an entire game together against any FBS competition.
So how does it get corrected?
“We’re switching some things up we’re doing in practice, trying to emphasize finishing and finishing practices better,” Brown said. “But we’ve got to do that because the games in our league are going to come down to the fourth quarter.”
Some of that simply can be accomplished by being more detail oriented on the field and in preparation. But Brown understands that you must first acknowledge the issue and then try to correct it.
On the offensive side of the ball, everything is based off what the offensive line and quarterbacks can do, and Brown believes what they have done is indeed schematically sound. The coaches aren’t asking their players to do things that they can’t do and that is a necessity.
The Mountaineers aren’t currently built to outscore everybody in the league and while they would like to be more explosive there are limitations to overcome. The difference between the first half and the second against Texas Tech was a simple one.
“We were much more aggressive from a player standpoint meaning we had more energy, we competed harder but also we executed the fundamentals of the play better and we made some plays,” Brown said.
On the defensive side of the ball, that consistency comes down to maturity.
“No matter who you play, what time you play, when you play them if you have a mature approach then usually you don’t have things show up,” coordinator Jordan Lesley said. “At this level when you have inconsistency I think it shows that immaturity. We’ve got to grow up.”
The only way to improve is to care about it, work harder and be more efficient in doing it. That is the challenge for this West Virginia team moving forward because the current model is not working.
“I wouldn’t say content, hell we’re not winning,” Brown said. “But if you go back and look at it, we’ve got guys open, we’ve got guys in the run game, we get one-on-one with safeties. From a schematic standpoint what we’re doing is sound. Can it always get better? Yeah.”
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