Neal Brown had a vision for what his offense would look like late last season.
With three games remaining in the 2022 campaign, the head coach made the decision to shift his offensive attack by giving quarterback Garrett Greene the controls.
That meant taking advantage of more read option in the run game, run-pass-options and a variety of other schemes that the fleet-footed Greene would allow the Mountaineers to utilize over what was in place.
It’s taken some time, but Brown now believes that his offense is becoming what he thought it would be when that decision was initially made. And for the most part the results have certainly backed that up.
The highlight was when West Virginia rolled up 634 yards against Cincinnati, an average of 9.8 per play, and rushed for a total of 424 yards the most in Brown’s tenure atop the program. The Mountaineers followed that up hitting 8.4 yards per play against Baylor.
Overall, the offense hit the 500-yard mark four times over the final seven games of the season and rushed for over 200 yards the same number of times.
Over the first five games of the season, the Mountaineers averaged just 26.4 points and 347.4 yards per game but over the past seven, that total is at 35.2 points and 503 yards per game. And that even includes the Oklahoma matchup where the offense struggled to find their footing and was significantly lower than the rest of the production.
“We’re making it difficult to defend the entire field from a run game perspective sideline to sideline. We’re splitting the defense and doing a bunch of different things off some base run plays. And we’re quickly getting the ball downfield,” Brown said.
But the biggest reason for the jump has been the play of Greene, who is putting together his best stretch of football over his career. Outside the Oklahoma contest, Greene has shown significant improvement and has been taking care of the football for the most part too with just 4 interceptions on 254 attempts.
The improvement hasn’t taken the coaching staff by surprise as Brown felt that early in the year Greene was primed for a breakout in the Pittsburgh game prior to injuring his ankle five plays into the game. That would cost him the rest of that contest and the next game against Texas Tech and meant that the Mountaineers would have to rely on backup Nicco Marchiol with no experienced options behind him.
That led to more conservative play-calling in both the run and pass game as the coaches couldn’t afford for an injury to sideline Marchiol as well and couldn’t put him at risk. But once Greene was back in the TUC game, the coaches pressed that button and were able to get a better understanding of what he can and can’t do on the field, which has helped to shape the offensive game plans.
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There’s been some trial and error with Greene as the coaches have looked to tailor things to his strength and make sure he understood what they wanted to do. But it’s coming together.
Combine that with the running backs showing improvement in their path to the line of scrimmage, setting up their blocks and breaking tackles and it is generating more explosive plays in general.
“Once I felt he’s healthy and he can run that’s when we were like ‘hey we’re going to win games because of him’,” Brown added.
West Virginia had success with longer drives earlier in the year, which was good when it came to time of possession and giving the defense rest. But those are hard to maintain against quality defenses and the coaching staff always felt that they had players that could create explosives.
Greene’s ability to run also allows the offense to not be forced to be perfect and can make up for some of their deficiencies in other areas. That’s a reason that Brown plans on making that dual-threat ability a necessity moving forward when it comes to his quarterback. On the season, Greene has rushed for 708 yards and 13 touchdowns.
In the history of the program, only Pat White (2) and Rasheed Marshall have hit that total showing the impact that Greene has had in that department.
“I think this is what is best for this team. I think that and history has proven this too here the most effective way to win is with a dual-threat quarterback,” he said.
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