Neal's deal: Five key items from West Virginia football
WVSports.com looks at the weekly press conference from West Virginia head coach Neal Brown and determines the five most interesting topics of discussion.
We examine what was said as well as what it means for the football team both this week and moving ahead as the Mountaineers navigate the 2023 schedule.
Next up is a critical road game at UCF (3-4).
1—West Virginia in for a fight. Central Florida is sitting at 3-4 on the season but is coming off a strong performance on the road at Oklahoma falling 31-29 after a two-point play to tie it was unsuccessful. The Knights have welcomed back starting quarterback John Rhys Plumlee and are going to be able to effectively run the football and spread the field when they choose to throw it.
Both of these teams need a win on the season and Brown believes that a trademark of Gus Malzahn’s teams is running the football and playing physical defense. This is a run first team, but they are more than capable of spreading the ball out and throwing it with Plumlee engineering the attack as a dual-threat option. He can throw the ball from a lot of different arm angles and has a very quick release.
The Knights are creative and will force defenses to guard the whole field while using a lot of different motions and window dressing to get receivers involved and present challenges. Central Florida is going to use tempo on offense and the defense is coming off their best game of the season with some quality defensive linemen and two cornerbacks that can play man coverage on the outside.
This game is about getting better, and West Virginia needs to show the ability not only to put themselves in position to win but to close things out late in the game as well.
2— Personnel. West Virginia is getting healthier overall after welcoming back both safety Aubrey Burks and left tackle Wyatt Milum against Oklahoma State and that should continue against Central Florida. The Mountaineers should get back starting left guard Tomas Rimac, although how he practices this week will determine whether or not he is inserted back into the first five on the field. Kicker Michael Hayes also avoided a major injury and will be good to go after getting contacted with toward the end of the game against the Cowboys. The one player to watch for in terms of injury is wide receiver Hudson Clement, who got rolled up during a touchdown and appears doubtful although it’s too early in the week to determine his status although Brown did confirm that it isn’t any sort of season-ending injury if he would miss
Also, when it comes to personnel, Brown confirmed that spear Lance Dixon was suspended for the matchup against Oklahoma State and his status with the team moving forward has yet to be decided. The offense also should see more snaps for both running back Justin Johnson and wide receiver EJ Horton after their impressive performances against the Cowboys. The Mountaineers also plan to get some snaps for Caden Biser in order to help get some rest for the linebacker group.
However, the rest of the group appears to be healthy heading into a critical conference matchup.
3—Moving forward. West Virginia wanted to get that Oklahoma State game out of their system and practiced Sunday night instead of the normal routine of Monday morning in order to get started. The Mountaineers then used Monday as the off day which is something that they have not done this year. The head coach simply wasn’t pleased with how the Mountaineers finished the game against the Cowboys and didn’t want to put much dead time between it and the first practice.
It’s something that Brown has done in the past when his teams have struggled and are looking for a spark, so it’s not a completely foreign concept. But it did help to put what occurred behind them and now set up for the rest of the practice week on Tuesday and Wednesday to lead them into Saturday.
Brown didn’t feel there was a hangover from the Houston game in the way they overcame falling behind 10-0 but the way they finished left a bad taste in everybody in the program’s mouth. The Mountaineers have to go back to playing well in all three phases of the game in order to have success.
4—Back to the basics on defense. West Virginia has allowed 48 and 41 points in back-to-back games after allowing 40 points against Pittsburgh, Texas Tech and TCU. Quite simply the unit hasn’t played good enough for the Mountaineers to win football games. It hasn’t been for the entire contest, but for stretches in both contests it proved costly in the eventual outcome due to lapses on that side of the ball. The defensive line played better against Oklahoma State than they did at Houston, but the Mountaineers didn’t get the job done at either of the linebacker spots or safety against the Cowboys. Those are the leverage points on defense, and they didn’t do a good job fitting the run and got out of gaps. It also didn’t help matters that the defense had a number of critical penalties to extend drives as well.
West Virginia had 16 missed tackles in the game, while the run defense was nowhere close to where it needs to be for this football team to have success against quality opponents. The Mountaineers need to be better fundamentally on that side and it is something that will be a focus this week in practiced. It was an element that was apparent early in the season but has fallen apart of late when it comes to leveraging the football, keeping their edges and using their hands while also running their feet through contact. It's things that this team has done this year, but in practice this week it will be a focus and do some things that they don’t typically do this time of the year.
5—Offense must start faster. West Virginia struggled both at the beginning of games and out of halftime to get the offense going and put points on the board. In the first quarter, Brown admitted that it has been a head scratching deal, and he plans to attack that in practice.
To combat that the Mountaineers want to work the opening drive from Tuesday on throughout the week to give them every look they can see. Brown admits that there is a little bit of a feeling out process with how teams have played them in the run game to identify where they seventh hat is going to be and other items which leads to a back and forth as the teams adjust. Teams have muddied things up and mixed things up against West Virginia especially in the run compared to how they have shown things on tape so that has required some figuring things out and coming up with answers.
Then there also is a process of simply executing better than they have in those situations. It is going to be a focus for this team and the hope is that this topic isn’t going to be on the docket next week.
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