West Virginia couldn’t get the run game going so Neal Brown and company had to get creative.

The Mountaineers came into the game against North Carolina State with only 1.14 yards per carry on the first 54 totes of the season. That meant dressing up some things and trying something new.

Needless to say there was some frustration on multiple levels, but the program made some changes to the personnel up front and then got back to the drawing board.

“It was just trying to get everybody on the same page and continue to build each other up,” he said. “Obviously nobody was happy with the results so we just tried to stay positive.”

For the offense that meant getting the ball to the edge with either touch passes or motion in order to loosen up the linebackers and safeties from getting downhill and fitting the run. The trick was to be able to introduce some new things that prevented the defense from keying into what the Mountaineers were doing without doing too much to try to confuse the players.

“All of that stuff affects the inside run game. That helped us to be able to come back and run the outside zone for a touchdown there,” co-offensive coordinator Matt Moore said.

The offense used a combination of touch-passes and outside zone to accomplish that as well as tempo as the program was able to rush for 173 yards and pick up a nice chunk on essentially some extended handoffs on those short pass plays in the backfield.

“Once we got them spread out then the inside run game was open there. Did a really good job in the box as far as communicating what we were in,” Moore said.

Even simply the threat of the motion with the wide receivers across the formation was enough to help generate some success by opening up running lanes and getting the defense to flinch. The Mountaineers used motion on roughly half of their snaps in the first half and that element of handing the ball off or tossing it to the wide receivers was a threat that the defense had to account for.

“If we go in motion they’re going to think we’re going to get a touch pass when it’s going to shift their defense and we can hand the ball off and open up the running game,” redshirt freshman Sam James said. “I think coach Brown started that to open up the running game more.”

James took one of those passes for 51 yards to help set up a scoring drive in the second quarter that was capped by an outside zone run to Kennedy McKoy. Both were part of a plan to stretch out the defense in order to get things kick started on the ground.

The end result is something that the Mountaineers will take but now the question will be how does the program plan to attack Kansas this week after showing a heavy dose of motion the week before?

The goal is to create running lanes by any way possible.

WATCH: Musings from the Mountains - Kansas Preview Episode 23

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