West Virginia resets, invests in program identity
West Virginia head coach Neal Brown felt his football program needed a reset.
After a disappointing 5-7 campaign in 2022 where Brown believed his team underachieved in almost all areas on the field, the head coach felt that it was best to go about making changes.
There were a lot of things done off the field, but on it the focus was clear. If West Virginia was going to be successful on the field they needed to become a team that followed several strict guidelines. The Mountaineers were going to be disciplined, play with maximum effort and toughness and be smart.
“All of those traits take absolutely no talent,” Brown said.
It sounds easy enough on the outside, but the process of getting there required an investment in all areas of the program. That started with changing things in the winter program that will carry all the way over through the summer to fall camp and eventually the season.
The goal was to cultivate an identity and that played out on the field this past season as the Mountaineers were a much more physical football team on the way to a 9-4 record, the best mark since Brown took over the program. That wasn’t by accident as West Virginia was intentional with tackling and being physical in practice until it eventually spilled over into the games.
Now, in the second off-season since Brown hit the reset button some of the fruits of those labors have been showing in new areas. This spring, the Mountaineers are tackling much better than they were at any point the previous year and again that’s a testament to the work done there.
“A total revamp of how we taught tackling, how we worked it. It’s a year-round approach even going back into the winter how Mike (Joseph) and strength and conditioning worked angles and deceleration,” Brown said.
That plays into the physical toughness that Brown has been working to instil and the Mountaineers also worked in other areas such as striking with their hands on strike pads and with grip training.
It’s far from a finished product and the coaches understand that but things continue to improve.
“We’re in progress of that identity of where we need to be. I’m pleased with where we’re at 16 months into it, but we’ve not arrived,” Brown said.
But that reset also extends into the future of the program.
West Virginia also has made adjustments to how they recruit and the sixth-year head coach admitted that it’s easier without the narrative that the program was dealing with a year ago hanging over their heads. The program hasn’t been afraid to play freshmen which has helped attract prospects in an era where they want to get on the field as fast as possible given the rise of the transfer portal.
And with how expedited things have become, Brown also has placed a greater emphasis on getting players both in the current and future classes to campus to take in a spring practice.
That is important because it provides something that a typical recruiting visit can’t in many ways.
“They see what the depth looks like, they see the schematics we’re running. They see the coach-to-player interactions, the player-to-player interactions and those are critical. They get a feel for what the environment is like at practice, and we’ve really been pushing guys to come,” he said.
West Virginia has placed an emphasis on adjusting and while the long term results aren’t yet known there is no denying that things seem to be trending far away from where the program was.
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