Neal Brown summed up the offensive performance against Oklahoma State rather simply.
“They just consumed us,” he said.
He’s not wrong as the offensive totals read like an obituary of a productive two-week stretch.
The West Virginia offense struggled in every facet of the game against the Cowboys managing only a total of 133 offensive yards and 3 points, which was scored on the opening drive of the game. Both are the lowest output since Brown took over as the head coach and the yardage total was the worst since the Mountaineers managed only 89 against Nebraska during the 1994 season.
The Mountaineers mustered only a total of 17 rushing yards, the lowest output since the 2019 Baylor contest and took a total of 8 sacks. Senior quarterback Jarret Doege was under pressure on 51.5-percent of his 33 drop backs in the game and the Cowboys only blitzed a total of 3 times.
“They beat us soundly today. That was easy to see by everybody in this room,” Brown said. “The game’s hard, the league’s hard and what a difference a week makes. We played probably our best football game a week ago and it was a struggle all day.”
The Cowboys were able to get West Virginia in one-on-one matchups up front using both a bear front and a variation of stunts and twists to keep the offensive line off balance. They clearly won at the line of scrimmage and the designed shot plays that West Virginia tried to execute didn’t work.
In large part, that was because the Cowboys used man coverage on the outside and were able to affect Doege before he could release the ball on several occasions. Other times, the senior simply missed.
Doege didn’t complete a pass over 10+ yards in the game and the offense has a total had only five drives that didn’t end in a three and out across the entire day.
“We just needed to get first downs. If we could get a first down we could get some tempo going and get into some deep shot plays or tempo plays but three and out didn’t help us,” Doege said.
The Mountaineers were behind the sticks the entire contest averaging only 2.6 yards per play on 21 first downs and facing an average of over 10+ yards per attempt on 14 third down tries. West Virginia only converted on a total of 2 of those as the offense never was able to establish any rhythm.
“We went in knowing, it’s not a great matchup for us offense/defense. It’s just not, where they’re strong. We knew going into the game that matchups weren’t very great,” Brown said. “We felt like we were going to have to take some shot plays because it’s going to be tough to really drive the field against these guys.”
Oklahoma State is a difficult, experienced defense but West Virginia didn’t give themselves a shot offensively with struggles across the board. Now, at 4-5 with three games remaining the only thing that the Mountaineers can do is pick up the pieces and move forward.
Nothing can be done about what has already happened but finding a way to bounce back is going to be critical for this team to have any hopes of reaching a bowl game.
“Not good enough. They out played us and we’ve got to rebound and get it together for the final three weeks,” Brown said.
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