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 2024 schedule.
Next up is a match-up with Albany.
Offense and defense simply weren’t good enough. This doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody who either watched the game or listened to Brown’s post-game comments but after film review the head coach simply wasn’t pleased with either of those phases. On offense, West Virginia simply played well below their standards and dealt with ball-handling issues, turnovers and things that the group simply didn’t experience at the end of last season. For an experienced unit, that was simply bad fundamental football and struggled mightily in the red zone scoring just one touchdown on four trips.
Perimeter blocking was an issue with the wide receivers and the Mountaineers simply didn’t run guys off in man coverage while also dropping four different passes. Brown also felt that quarterback Garrett Greene did not play his best and made some bad decisions in both the run and pass game. There were some positives such as zero penalties on that side of the ball and good use of tempo, but the failures of the unit loomed large, especially with their timing in pre-snap shifts, motions and execution.
Brown believes that the story was told in the stats when it came to the defense and the rushing defense was simply not good enough to win the game with both some explosive runs and allowing some quarterback scrambles. The Mountaineers were unable to generate pressure despite Drew Allar struggling with that come into the game and the Nittany Lions also had success with unbalanced looks and when they went to tempo against the defensive unit.
Overall, it just wasn’t good enough but again there were some positives such as allowing zero points off turnovers and playing physically. The Mountaineers tackled them and Brown felt that they didn’t get pushed around at the line of scrimmage but it has to get better.
Brown would do it again. There were several instances in the game where the Mountaineers rolled the dice by going for it on fourth down and a two-point conversion down 27-12. Some of the decisions were successful going 3-4 in those fourth-down opportunities, but the one stop was in the red zone while the two-point play also didn’t work. But the head coach reiterated that if given the opportunity to redo those decisions that he would do each of those the same.
On the failed fourth down quarterback sneak, Brown felt that they needed to score touchdowns and while the Mountaineers didn’t get low enough on that play he was confident in the decision.
As for the two-point play, it came down to chances for Brown and he felt that by playing the game in advance he was trying to get ahead to try to put his team in position to potentially win the game. Now, each of those are decisions that are made prior to going into the game. The head coach feels good about his process when it comes to sorting those things out and despite it not all working the Mountaineers did have some success in those situations as well.
First-game miscues. West Virginia did not have their coach-to-player communication working on the first series which changed the process of going into a huddle and using signals instead. The first turnover was caused when after Jaden Bray motioned, Greene asked for the ball late which hit him and the next play after the defense got a stop it was a run to Jahiem White but the ball was snapped hard and it led to a massive loss on first down. So, after that Brown went off the opening script and went to some standard plays and motions that weren’t affected by the snap. The Mountaineers were motioning to get sort of a three-back look and those are all timing-based based so the coaching staff moved away from those until later in the game when the offense was able to settle into things.
Essentially anything that could be affected by timing where a player could get hit with the ball the coaching staff went away from until later in the game when Greene was able to settle down. The offense from a schematic standpoint wants to be simple but give a lot of different looks. But given the fact that West Virginia works on ball handling drills daily and there had not been any signs of this being an issue hedging into the game, it came as a surprise to Brown and the coaches.
Moving forward. Brown understands that Saturday is not the way that anybody associated with the program wanted things to go. The Mountaineers didn’t play well and certainly nowhere close to well enough to beat a top-ten football team even at home. It’s deflating for all involved, but West Virginia doesn’t have time to feel sorry for themselves. It’s just one of 12 guaranteed games and the focus has to quickly shift to what comes next on the schedule. And for West Virginia, that’s another home contest against Albany so the Mountaineers must move forward.
The focus has to now be on flushing what unfolded against the Nittany Lions and preparing for what comes next. That means using that experience as a teaching moment in order to avoid repeating those mistakes and fixing the execution in every phase. The Mountaineers still have a very difficult schedule ahead of them and that starts with correcting the mistakes and getting them ready to go.
Brown made it a point to say that he has no issues replacing a player on the depth chart if they aren’t ready to play to the level required and the focus is on being a considerably better football team this week than the one that simply didn’t make things competitive against Penn State. Brown implored the fan base not to lose faith in this team over one game and he expects them to bounce back because even with the deflating performance all of their goals remain ahead of them.
The team is healthy. The Penn State game was a physical match-up that saw multiple players leaving with injuries including left tackle Wyatt Milum, safety Aubrey Burks and running back Jahiem White. Now, some of those players returned but when I asked about the health of his team Brown first joked that hurt feelings don’t count do they? But then proceeded to say that the Mountaineers held a light practice Monday and everybody was out there so that bodes well moving forward on that front.
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