West Virginia is going back to the basics on the defensive side.
After playing their best football of the season during a three-game stretch against Pittsburgh, Texas Tech and TCU holding those teams to a combined 40 points, the Mountaineers have struggled mightily over the past two games allowing 89 points to Houston and Oklahoma State.
The struggles against the Cowboys were especially glaring as the defense struggled with the basics as they didn’t maintain leverage, use their hands, fit the run or simply wrap up and tackle.
In fact, head coach Neal Brown charted the defense as missing at least 16 tackles in that contest.
Never was that more apparent than the fourth quarter where the Mountaineers allowed 28 points and seemed to completely fall apart on that side of the ball despite entering into it with a lead.
“We didn’t play anywhere close to good enough,” he said.
Brown isn’t wrong.
Playing with fundamentals was a key component to the success of the unit through the early portion of the season but has been lost over the past two. It’s directly correlated in the overall struggles of the group and left the coaching staff looking for answers.
Especially because all of the struggles stem from things that this unit has already put on tape throughout the course of the season.
“We’re not leveraging the football and we’re not keeping our edges. We’re not using our hands and the last thing is we have to run our feet through contact,” he said. “It’s pretty elementary stuff and things that we’ve done well and that’s why it’s very frustrating.”
And to address it, the Mountaineers treated things a little differently in practice by going back to the basics and working some things that typically they wouldn’t at this point of the year. Those issues must get corrected in a hurry because UCF isn’t going to make things any easier from a tackling standpoint with their speed and ability to make plays in the open field.
Coordinator Jordan Lesley is encouraged and hopeful that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel in large part because he has already seen this unit play their best. Now, it’s about bottling that up and making sure it occurs over the course of an entire game.
“That’s for 60-minutes. Not 53:48, not for 59:00 and not for 59:59. That’s the margin of error in our league. It’s exactly what I told them we have to be at our best for the entire time,” he said.
As the leader of the unit, Lesley isn’t fishing for any excuses for the play of his defense. And there certainly could be some there due to injuries and depth, but instead he is placing the focus on what needs to improve for this group to turn things around starting this week.
Which won’t be an easy task considering what UCF presents offensively.
“They’re good. Running quarterback and everything that comes with that. They can split the defense in half, throw it over your head. They’re really good, do a lot of things, dress things up, move things around and we have to be ready for it. Be ready for all of it,” Lesley said.
One of the easy fixes for those on the outside is to dial up pressure, but it isn’t that simple. But the defense is going to need to figure things out this week because another massive challenge is on tap.
“That’s something you want to do and there’s time and places for that. You have to see the pieces in the game and make sure it's best for the 11 out there,” he said.
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