The 2nd Season Begins

We've experienced preliminary portion of the season that allow teams to position themselves for the national championship. Now we begin the games that determine who gets to play for the rest of the BCS bowls. The bad news for WVU is that they still need to improve in order to have a chance at the Big East title. The good news is that the schedule sets up nicely for them to do so. Rutgers this week and Syracuse next week should not be significant challenges.

The defense of Rutgers may still be quite physical, but they have not been a threat to anyone on the offensive side of the ball. The past few years, I thought maybe Syracuse was trying to establish themselves as an academic school. However, with the upsurge of Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Duke, they can't even claim to be in the same class as them anymore. Those games follow with Auburn which is meaningless, except for a possible return to the top 25. That would put our first big challenge in the Big East in November when we play at UConn. That gives the team a whole month to improve.

And despite some success against Marshall, there are areas in need of improvement. Penalties continue to be a major problem for this team. All year they have contributed to WVU not being able to convert on 3rd down on offense and in keeping opponents' drives alive on Defense. Given that those two things appear to be our biggest problems, decreasing penalties would go a long way to alleviate those issues.

Though there were impressive offensive yardage stats against Marshall, I'm still not confident in the abilities of Coach Stew and Coach Mullen to run the offense. Many out there are excited about the infusion of Jarrett Brown in the offense. Count me as one against. The wrinkle appeared to work on third and short which was a huge problem against Colorado. Maybe it will be effective in 3rd and short in the future, but Marshall was already being manhandled routinely and 3rd and short would possibly not have continued to be a problem against them anyway. On the other two times Brown was in the game, neither was successful. On 1st and 10, Brown hands to White and White's flip to the receiver is mishandled and WVU recovers for a loss. WVU punts two plays later. On 1st and 17 after a penalty, Brown takes the snap and runs for 2 yards. WVU punts two plays later. Of course, neither of those stalled drives are Brown's fault and the demise of the second was also a result of a penalty. My point is, other than the drive at the end of the half, those are the only two drives we didn't score on in the first half. So instead of being ahead 28/35 - 3 in the first half, we were up by 11. We drove the ball at will with our base offense, but when we got cute, we got stopped. And what's the reasoning? You have the most dynamic player in college football and you want to limit his touches on 1st down?

We have already improved in some areas though. We did get better on 3rd down and the offensive line and especially the wide receivers were blocking a lot better. The defense seems to be coming together a little bit as a unit, however I am hearing that Reed Williams is still hurting and considering a medical redshirt. I still think WVU has a chance to come together even more and because the way their schedule sets up, still has a shot to win the Big East. I wouldn't necessarily bet on them to do it right now, but I'm not counting them out either. The thing I would like to see most from this team however, is Pat White's run to glory. Pat should easily break the all time QB NCAA rushing record this year and the sooner he does it, the happier I'll be. I think he still needs a little more than 400 yards to get there. I think it's time for someone to get working on a statue of Pat White or a bust or something that we can put in the tunnel immediately after the South Florida game to commemorate the greatest student athlete to ever wear the Mountaineer football uniform.