West Virginia is clearly a work in progress.
Even head coach Neal Brown hasn’t sugarcoated that fact since taking the job. Some of that work that needs to be completed was readily on display in the 38-7 loss to Missouri.
“I’m very disappointed in our performance but I’m not discouraged. And I want that to be heard loud and clear,” the first-year Mountaineers coach said.
If the James Madison game showed some of the chinks in the armor of the West Virginia offensive unit, the Tigers blew up the entire suit. After managing only 34 yards in 24 carries against the FCS foe, the Mountaineers carried the ball 32 times for 30 against Missouri.
Do the math, that’s 64 yards on 54 carries or a total of 1.14 yards per rush. That isn’t going to get it done in many situations and certainly won’t against a power five opponent. The Mountaineers have yet to record a run over 10-yards on the season and outside two wide receivers going for 9 and 8 respectively, the longest run by a running back has been six through two games.
Perhaps the most discouraging part is it could be easily explained. The Tigers, like the Dukes the week before, played a front which forced the Mountaineers to block one-on-one with an extra man in the box and then played man coverage in the back end. West Virginia couldn’t win at either level.
Even using motion and other window dressings didn’t open things up because the battles up front simply weren’t being won which forced the offense into difficult second and third down situations. The average distance on third down was 7.8 yards per attempt in large part because West Virginia could only generate 1.5 yards per play on 23 total first-down attempts.
The Mountaineers switched bodies up front, moving Josh Sills back to his natural position at right guard while shifting Chase Behrndt back to center but the results were much of the same.
“Got to go back to the drawing board. That’s two weeks in a row we’ve had piss, poor run game and if we want to win games and be as good as we want to we can’t play like that,” Sills said.
There’s some things that can be done schematically, but ultimately it comes down to the basics of football if West Virginia wants to have success.
“We’ve got to win one-on-ones,” Brown said. “It was exposed in a bad way today.”
Offensive line coach and co-coordinator Matt Moore understands the frustration with the performance and also realizes that his group is the most bothered of all by what has unfolded. The unit has shown improvement throughout the course of the week but then fell flat in the game whether due to miscommunication issues, guys trying to hard or anything else it can be pinpointed on.
Improvement will eventually come but it won’t be overnight.
“It’s never fun no matter how many times you’ve done it,” Moore said.
With the loss in the books, Brown understands that this is truly the first adversity that his team has endured since he assumed the head coaching role. There were tricky times against James Madison, but the Mountaineers pulled that game out and weren’t at the end of a 38-7 convincing defeat.
There were signs of life in the second half, albeit after the game had been well decided, but what happens next for West Virginia? That’s the question.
“It doesn’t get any easier, nobody is going to feel sorry for us,” Brown said. “We’ve got to get back to work, get these young guys better and it will start next week against a really good N.C. State team.”
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