West Virginia's offense struggled across the board on Saturday in their loss to Penn State, but one of the main areas was red zone execution.
"If you look at it, as bad as we played, if we just scored in the red zone, then we have a ball game. We had it in the red zone the exact same amount of times they did and we were one for four there. We don't convert a fourth and one, we kick two field goals and we get a touchdown and that's the game right there," West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said.
In total, WVU had the ball within the PSU 30-yard line five times and inside their 21-yard line four times. The first came when WVU took over off a defensive takeaway but then gave the ball right back to the Nittany Lions the very next play.
The next opportunity came later in the first quarter which the lack of execution really hurt the Mountaineers. WVU went on a drive that lasted more than seven minutes but got no points out of it as they were stuffed on a fourth down, going 1-for-2 on fourth downs that drive.
"We were three of four on fourth downs. If I had to do every one of those again, I'd done every one of them again and it's probably not asked about if we're 4-for-4," Brown said.
Brown added when game planning for Penn State, he knew his team was going to have to score a higher point total if they wanted to give themselves a chance to win, but scoring 12 points on four-to-five opportunities won't cut it.
"Just looking at what they did statistically last year, you know, I really felt like four, maybe five trips to the red zone was what it was going to be. We ended up having four, and we played poorly, so, I may have underestimated that. But just looking at all the quality offenses they played last year, that's what they were getting and so, that's a thought there. You've got to go, you've got to be able to score touchdowns. We converted the other three," Brown said.
Offensive coordinator Chad Scott felt like his team was not disciplined or focused in those areas after they were an emphasis for his group during fall camp.
"That was disappointing and surprising. We’ve been very disciplined this entire camp so that was very surprising. We’ve worked a tremendous amount of red zone throughout fall camp and had a lot of success doing it so that was surprising as well, didn’t execute that," Scott said.
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