West Virginia is coming off a 9-4 season on the field and West Virginia head coach Neal Brown believes that the football program is in a good place heading into the 2024 campaign.

The Mountaineers turned the corner in 2023 winning the most games of the Brown era while finishing the season with a convincing 30-10 win over North Carolina to finish the year ranked with momentum.

Now, with plenty of returning pieces on both sides of the ball the expectations are higher for West Virginia heading into this coming season and the sixth-year head coach is confident in where his program is at.

That begins with the systems that are in place in all of the support areas as well as what the Mountaineers are doing schematically between the three phases of the game.

“I have a lot of confidence in it,” he said.

From a program-wide standpoint Brown is comfortable with all of the decision-making processes whether that’s selection in recruiting, roster management decisions, and thought processes behind in-game decisions.

And when it comes to the 2024 edition of the Mountaineers, Brown believes that the overall quality of individuals within the program is strong and the culture that has been developed has been key.

“We have quality leadership and if you look at most of the leaders on our team they’ve been guys we’ve grown up through the program,” he said.

From a pure football standpoint, Brown likes where his football team is at on the line of scrimmages on both sides of the ball, but they’ve now got to work on the depth at those spots.

West Virginia also returns redshirt senior quarterback Garrett Greene who displayed significant improvement last season and has continued on that path.

At linebacker, the Mountaineers have some quality depth and talent and the same can be said for the offensive skill positions at this stage of the summer.

Still, there are areas that need to improve with special teams play in the areas of kickoff return and the kickoff team being right at the top of that list. Those two areas remain a primary focus.

“We’ve got to be able to kick the ball into the end zone so that’s a point of concern,” he said.

Defensively there is better overall talent and more depth in the secondary with the Mountaineers bringing in a lot of new faces, many from the transfer portal. But the key now will be to find the right mix and spots for each of those pieces in order to best fit the defense.

“A lot of them have positional flexibility but we’ve got to figure out the right pieces to put in and put them in the right spots,” Brown said.

On offense, Brown obviously has confidence in Greene, but the Mountaineers must improve in converting both third downs and in the red zone. That boils down one area.

“Throwing the ball and we’ve got to be more efficient doing it,” he said.

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