West Virginia placed an emphasis on improving in the red zone in the off-season on both sides of the ball and through three games that has certainly been the case.

After being one of the worst teams in the nation in that department offensively in 2019, things have gone much better so far this fall. The Mountaineers have scored 13 times in 14 trips or at a 93-percent clip. Even more impressive, is that 11 of those have resulted in touchdowns. That’s a rate of 79-percent of converting those opportunities into six-points on the scoreboard.

The only misfire to date was a missed field goal by the Mountaineers from keeping it at 100-percent. Still, the focus as turning those possessions into touchdowns and so far that has occurred.

Last season? The Mountaineers only scored 25 times on the 34 attempts between the 20’s. That paced the program at 118th nationally and the Mountaineers were only able to score 16 touchdowns. A total of five of those touchdowns came against N.C. State, meaning that only 11 were scored in 11 other games.

Defensively, things have improved significantly as well. The Mountaineers have allowed only five trips into the red zone and only three of those have resulted in scoring. That’s a rate of 60-percent, significantly lower than the 89.36 percent that the Mountaineers permitted in 2019.

It’s a small sample size, but only a pair of those three trips have resulted in touchdowns. That was at 72-percent last season when the Mountaineers allowed 30 touchdowns in 42 trips.

As a team the Mountaineers were 114th in red zone efficiency on the defensive side and it didn’t help that the defense didn’t force a single deep turnover in those instances. The Mountaineers have already had a goal line stand in 2020 and have been close to forcing several other mistakes.

“We’ve had a lot of focus on red zone defense and we were special in the red zone,” Brown said.

The task is going to be keeping up these totals over the course of the seven remaining games. But it’s night and day from where the Mountaineers found themselves in year one under Brown.

An off-season of emphasis has paid off, at least for now.

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