West Virginia has four principles that this team is built around.
Those are: discipline, strain, toughness and simply being smart.
Boiling each of them down isn’t a complicated process. Playing with discipline is a team that doesn’t beat themselves with penalties or turnovers.
The strain aspect comes from the effort and how the team plays on each and every snap that somebody is on the field.
Toughness comes in two parts both physical and mental. There are fundamental aspects to that such as hand leverage and pad leverage, but the mental side is more difficult. Overcoming adversity is something that must be worked on over the winter and summer to achieve that.
The final aspect is just avoiding dumb mistakes that can cost football teams a game.
That isn’t new as head coach Neal Brown has highlighted each of those since the spring and how the Mountaineers must do each of those in order to be successful. And through eight games that has largely checked out as the football team has lost when struggling in one of those key pillars.
Related: Game Preview: West Virginia football vs. BYU
Which makes this weekend’s matchup with BYU interesting because the Cougars are essentially a proven blueprint of having success over time by doing those same things.
That has always been apparent to Brown from afar, but in preparation for this game he was able to get a in-depth look at the Cougars and they are who he thought they were coming into it.
“A group that’s really physical on both sides of the ball. They get lined up. They don’t get silly penalties and they play really smart football so it’s going to be a challenge,” Brown said. “I told our team when we turned the page to BYU, everything we preach about wanting to be they’ve proved that they are.”
BYU currently is ranked 20th nationally in penalties per game and 8th in terms of turnover margin. The Cougars are 39th and 13th nationally in terms of red zone offense and defense, while also sitting strong in a number of other categories that backs up that they don’t often beat themselves.
And it’s a group that has evolved, especially offensively, with different quarterbacks over the years as BYU is doing more drop back this year when the past several seasons it’s been motions and run game to highlight the strengths of their option under center.
“They were what I expected them to be from watching them on TV,” Brown said.
Now, the Mountaineers will have the opportunity to see just where they sit against a team that has long had success doing many of the same things that this program wants to be known for on the field.
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