West Virginia football looks to improve in the red zone

West Virginia wants to get better in the red zone – on all fronts.

Offensively, the Mountaineers were one of the worst teams in the nation in that department scoring only 25 times on the 34 attempts between the 20’s. That put the program at 118th nationally as West Virginia only was able to score 16 touchdowns on those 25 scores. A total of five of those touchdowns came against N.C. State.

Those struggles aren’t lost on head coach Neal Brown either.

“The focus is making sure we score touchdowns. We have to do a better job of that,” Brown said.

Those missed opportunities were a combination of turnovers and missed field goals, as the Mountaineers struggled to find consistency on the offensive side of the ball.

Things weren’t much better on the defensive side either as the Mountaineers allowed 42 scores in a total of 47 trips, putting the program at 114th in red zone efficiency. Of those scores, the Mountaineers allowed 30 touchdowns and 12 field goals resulting in opponents scoring 89.36-percent of the time.

That means almost 72-percent of those scores resulted in touchdowns bolstered by the fact that according to Brown the Mountaineers did not force a single deep red zone turnover.

“We’ve got to force more takeaways. We have to try to make them kick,” he said.

The good news for West Virginia is that it's a new year and so far so good as the Mountaineers converted seven of their eight red zone attempts into touchdowns. The only misfire was a missed field goal. Still, the program can't leave points on the field.

It was going to be one of the focuses of the spring before things were canceled with a priority on all three sides of the ball to become a better team in that department. It remained that way once fall camp resumed and the results are showing.

If West Virginia is going to become more consistent in 2020, it’s going to have to get better where it matters the most and that is in the red zone. That isn’t lost on the coaches and is one of the primary goals of the club.

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