West Virginia head coach Neal Brown recognizes the significance of the upcoming stretch for his team.
Sitting at 4-4 overall, the Mountaineers have four games remaining in the month of November starting with a road contest against Cincinnati following the bye and then back-to-back home games against Baylor and UCF before closing on the road against Texas Tech.
It goes without saying that those four games could go a long way toward determining how this season is remembered as a whole despite the early struggles.
“A lot to play for in November,” Brown said.
Still, the head coach also isn’t ignoring the issues that this team has heading into that stretch and the focus this week is to try and address some of those prior to the meeting with the Bearcats. The first order of business is to try and get this team healthy as they’re dealing with injuries in a number of different spots.
Offensively the Mountaineers played Arizona without starting quarterback Garrett Greene, left tackle Wyatt Milum and wide receiver Jaden Bray while running back CJ Donaldson was injured during the game. It remains unclear if all of them will return after the bye, but Brown was optimistic on Milum.
The defense has been down several key pieces on the defense such as spear Aubrey Burks and cornerback Ayden Garnes. Even Burks’ backup Kekoura Tarnue was injured in the Arizona game and if those two aren’t able to play out of the bye it will be two true freshmen in Zae Jennings and Israel Boyce getting snaps.
After the health of the team the biggest concern has been the pass coverage for the Mountaineers as they continue to struggle in that department. The program is ranked 113th nationally and hasn’t been able to play consistently in the backend all season despite trying a number of different things.
The Mountaineers made a move earlier this week to relieve Jordan Lesley from his role as the coordinator and now Jeff Koonz is running the unit. But the challenge will be the same.
“I’m not avoiding that or ignorant of that. It just hasn’t been good enough all year,” Brown said. “Tried some different things but we’ve been patchwork and it hasn’t been very good.”
In the most recent matchup with Arizona, the Mountaineers allowed 308 yards through the air and struggled late to get stops. On two occasions, the Wildcats were able to get matchups with Tetairoa McMillan down the field against linebacker Trey Lathan when he was dropping into a zone look in the Tampa 2 defense.
Brown acknowledged that after the first time, the coaching staff shouldn’t have put him in that position again but when you’re struggling and trying to find answers things sometimes do not work out.
“The answer there wasn’t very good,” Brown said.
As the season has progressed, West Virginia has tried to change up some of the things they are doing and had success out of the bye week by going to a Cover 2 look. And while that worked for a bit, teams have also made adjustments and now the focus is on coaching the team better and doing some adjusting of their own.
That’s especially true with how well the teams left on the schedule are moving the football.
“We’ve got to use this bye week to figure out what the next answer is,” he said.
And offensively, the Mountaineers need to figure out the issue with bad snaps from center Brandon Yates which has been reoccurring throughout the season. While Yates has fared well in other areas, that remains a concern as it throws off the timing of the play.
“That’s an issue. The pass defense is an issue. I’m not avoiding things,” Brown said.
But the focus is now on fixing them.
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