By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Jarrett Brown had thrown interceptions before. He’d fumbled before, too.
What he hadn’t done was lost a game before, and if there was any lesson to come of that rainy Saturday night in Alabama when Auburn beat the Mountaineers, 41-30, that was it.
“I learned how to take a loss,” Brown said.
As he spoke, there was still a lingering effect. His left shoulder, which was both bruised and battered, driving him from the game after a particularly difficult tackle, throbbed, but the pain was an Advil or two away from subsiding.
The pain from the defeat would not go away that easily.
“I don’t really want to put the whole thing behind me,” Brown said. “I need something for motivation, so I’ve still got a little bit in me from Saturday.”
If, as they say, you learn more from mistakes than from successes, Brown got a semester worth of Football 101 in one dreary evening.
There were four interceptions and a fumble lost.
He got no argument, although it takes two to complete a pass — actually quite a few more — and everything was not Jarrett Brown’s fault. There was a pass route that Wes Lyons broke off prematurely, surprising Brown, who threw to the right spot at the wrong time.
And there was a matter of him running for his life for much of the night, Auburn’s quick defense giving West Virginia’s young offensive line so many fits that Brown wound up with 19 rushes, even though plays on which he was supposed to run the ball were called no more than six times.
“There were breakdowns all over the place,” offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen confirmed. “There was a case of wide receiver play. There was a case of offensive line play. And clearly, two major cases of quarterback play.”
Brown can’t control anything about his wide receiver or offensive line play, other than to work on the timing and technical aspects of the passing game with them.
He can work on the quarterback play, which must include more caution.
Brown is in possession of a powerful throwing arm, so powerful that it can become a liability rather than an asset. He believes he can work almost any pass in, given an opening, but that often can be fool’s gold.
And his arm is strong enough to allow him to throw off his back foot, which is a technical problem that should have been corrected by the coaching staff long ago, for you can’t get the same zip when your weight is leaning backward as you can when you body leans into a pass.
The result of it all was a long, hard night against Auburn.
“I did an awful job of taking care of the ball,” Brown admitted. “They switched up a little bit and were giving us a different look. I wasn’t prepared for it. If we see it again, I’ll be prepared.”
The loss has played on Brown’s mind as he readies for Thursday night’s home game against Colorado.
The quarterback’s ride home from Alabama was without event, sleeping away on the plane due to physical exhaustion and, no doubt, from whatever pain medicine he would have received for his shoulder.
By the time he got home, there wasn’t much night left and he could not spend it sleeping. Instead, he and his roommate, wide receiver Alric Arnett, talked about the game and ways to improve.
“We were just replaying it over and over,” he admitted.
And this week he has spent putting his attitude and his game back into overdrive.
“I see it as a blessing. I think that humbled me. It made me a better player,” he said. “I don’t think those mistakes will happen again. It’s still early in the season. We’ve still got plenty of ball to play. Like I’ve always said, experience is the best teacher.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
