West Virginia has four principles that this team is built around.
Those are: discipline, strain, toughness and simply being smart.
It was something that head coach Neal Brown introduced his team to in the winter and has continuously shown them since. In fact, players on the team can recite each of the principles by heart because well Brown doesn’t really give them a choice in the matter.
“Because I show a slide that has those things every single day. Every day in front of them I show them the same slide,” Brown said.
This edition of the West Virginia football team is self-aware, and the coaching staff has been up front about the type of team they need to be and since practice began.
Boiling each of them down isn’t a complicated process. Playing with discipline is a team that doesn’t beat themselves with penalties or turnovers. The strain aspect comes from the effort and how the team plays on each and every snap that somebody is on the field.
Toughness comes in two parts both physical and mental. There are fundamental aspects to that such as hand leverage and pad leverage, but the mental side is more difficult. Overcoming adversity is something that must be worked on over the winter and summer to achieve that.
“You don’t just become a mentally tough team. You have to work that,” he said.
The final aspect is just avoiding dumb mistakes that can cost football teams a game. The areas of strain and toughness have been checked thoroughly through five games, while the other two are works in progress especially when it comes to playing smart.
The end of the game situation after the field goal block is a testament to that despite the fact that the Mountaineers had gone over that same situation at least five times in meetings.
“Sometimes it shows and on Saturday sometimes it didn’t show,” Brown said.
One area that has been radically improved is with toughness and Brown believes that has been accomplished with how the team has practiced since the spring. The Mountaineers have heavily invested in physical practices that have paid off during the season.
That was something Brown wanted to do because he realized the strength of this team was across the lines on both sides and there was depth at those spots. That’s been on display all year on defense with how the Mountaineers have rotated bodies, but the depth up front on offense came into play in the win over TCU as two starting linemen went out and the offense still did some good things overall.
“So, we have some depth so we’re able to go a little harder. Sometimes when you don’t have depth on the o-line or d-line you can’t practice as hard as you want to. Only answer for this team but you look at it and evaluate each team differently,” Brown said.
West Virginia is proving those four pillars correct through five games, but there’s a lot of season left. Now, the Mountaineers must continue to improve across the board.
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