Neal Brown has some pet peeves about the way certain statistics are recorded.
And there’s two such items in particular that have drew his ire.
“I don’t even know who I’d complain to about this,” he admitted.
One of those was on display this past weekend against Oklahoma State when West Virginia rushed for 115 yards in the backfield but due to losing 38 yards on sack yardage the final total was only 68. It wasn’t a clear reflection of what the Mountaineers were able to do in that department and it’s something that Brown would like to see changed.
For Brown, the sticking point is that the lost sack yardage is deducted from the rushing total, despite the fact that it occurs on a passing play. That should mean that while those lost yards should come off the overall total, it shouldn’t come at the expense of the rushing totals.
“It’s misleading. Same thing as if it’s a pass play and the quarterback takes off and runs down on a pass play and he gets tackled behind the line of scrimmage. You know what they call that? A sack. In my opinion the sack yards shouldn’t come out,” he said.
The other item comes in the passing game too but an entirely different concept. Brown would like to see in those instances where a ball is caught and then tipped up and picked off or when it happens to go through a receiver’s hands into a defensive back to be scored differently.
Currently that is recorded as an interception even if it is a perfect pass, but Brown would like to see that altered because it reflects back on the quarterback’s personal numbers when it isn’t his fault.
“It shouldn’t show up on his individual stats,” Brown said.
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The Mountaineers offensive line’s performance was a mixed bag against Oklahoma State.
That’s because while the interior of the unit did some nice things at times and created movement, the young tackles struggled against the Cowboys pass rush. Now some of that can be directly attributed to the fact that a lot of those players haven’t been in those situations before, but it has to improve.
The tackles lost one-on-one battles on the edge, but overall Brown thought the unit was improved over the product that was put on the field last season.
Now the goal is to get better and help put quarterback Jarret Doege in the position not to get hit. That will come with better play on the offensive line as well as an understanding of when and where to get rid of the ball to his collection of pass catchers.
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Brown isn’t the type to let losses on the football field, even ones as frustrating as the Oklahoma State game, spill over into his family time.
No, instead Brown tends to focus on moving forward and flipping the page to the next one. The head coach simply believes that it isn’t fair to his loved ones to dwell on it outside of work. He even got in a joke with his children included.
“Dax didn’t miss any blocks. Anslee didn’t make any bad play calls, so I’m not taking it home,” he said. “My 12-year old critiques everything so Adalyn has some good advice. But you can’t take it home.”
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