By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — A year ago, when Bill Stewart began planning for his West Virginia University team’s trip to Colorado, he was introduced to a side of himself that he really didn’t like that much.
This was the conservative Bill Stewart, a football coach whose plan was to try and control the football and, with it, the game.
“Last year I tried to keep the ball on the ground to keep their quarterback, Cody Hawkins, off the field,” Stewart said.
The result was that both Patrick White and Noel Devine ran for more than 100 yards. The result was that Devine had a career-high 26 carries.
There was another result. West Virginia finished with just 14 points, including overtime, and a 17-14 loss.
So, despite six turnovers in the passing game last week against Auburn, Stewart plans to unleash the full fury of the WVU offense when Colorado comes into Milan Puskar Stadium at 7:45 p.m. today for a nationally televised game (ESPN).
“We’re going to let it go,” Stewart said. “We’re going to do what we do best.”
That means WVU will again be a team of a thousand faces, from spread to pistol, from I to Wildcat. It means it will run Devine and use Jock Sanders on reverses. It will throw deep; it will throw short.
“We are going to try to keep them off balance and get them out of rhythm,” Stewart continued. “I don’t want them to be able to hone in on us, and I don’t want them to bend and not break.”
Stewart said this Colorado defense that gave up 54 points in a loss to Toledo bent but did not break in authoring a shutout against Wyoming last week.
“They stayed very base and played their 4-3 base plan with a lot of two deep, like the pros do,” Stewart said. “They were soft with the corners. They blitzed when they had to, and they played Colorado football. They bent at times, but they never broke.”
Simple and safe, it seems.
Well, Stewart is going to answer that with a full-out assault.
“We are going to try to keep them off balance and get them out of rhythm,” Stewart promised. “I don’t want them to be able to hone in on us, and I don’t want them to bend and not break. I want to see if we can break them and break them early.”
This is going to be an interesting approach to playing against a team from the Big 12, where offenses are always wide open.
Who plays in the Big 12? Texas, Texas Tech, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas.
It’s one Wild West shootout after another, and now WVU, a team that has been known over the years to play a different brand of football, is in the shoot first, ask questions later mode.
That is one of the things that has always made college football interesting. It seems that each part of the country has a traditional brand of ball. In the Southeast it’s speed oriented. In the Midwest and East it’s more black and blue. Out west it’s usually an aerial circus.
“I believe (the different styles) develop from the styles of play and the coaches. I can’t imagine myself out at Cal-Berkley. I would be honored, but they probably wouldn’t know what I was saying,” Stewart said. “I don’t mean that bad, but I can’t imagine those guys in here, either. They have tremendous coaches out there.
“I think it’s a regional thing, how they play the game. Weather and where you recruit has a lot to do with it,” Stewart said. “Years ago, coaches couldn’t go out and recruit. They taught classes, so it was a regional thing.”
Like everything else, times change, and in these times the regional boundaries are breaking down. Urban Meyer can coach at Utah or Florida. Rich Rodriguez’s spread can work in the East or Midwest.
And Stewart believes that his offense that has more of a cowboy, Wild West approach so it can survive in the Big East and even take on teams out of the Big 12, where the gunslingers really sling.
That will put a big load on Jarrett Brown’s shoulders again this week, right after he had his lowest moments in the game, but if you don’t jump back on that bucking bronco that threw you right away, you may never be able to do it again.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
