MORGANTOWN — Now that West Virginia University has its defensive unit together and healthy, safety Sidney Glover and defensive tackle Scooter Berry playing and middle linebacker Reed Williams feeling no pain in his shoulders, the unit is playing its best football of the season.
The goal now is to get the offense back on track in time for West Virginia’s regular-season ending road date at Rutgers Saturday, a game coach Bill Stewart simply says is “colossal” in importance.
And, despite appearances, he feels he’s getting closer to getting the offense clicking.
The Mountaineers have not scored 30 points in a game since winning at Syracuse, 34-13, on Oct. 10. They scored only 19 at South Florida, 17 at home against a weak Louisville team, 21 at Cincinnati and 19 against Pitt.
They rank fifth in scoring in the Big East Conference averaging 26.8 points a game, barely ahead of South Florida’s 26.4 points a game. Total offense is fourth and that vaunted passing attack that came into the season is fifth, averaging 205.5 yards a game.
Most of that just won’t crack it in the big time and Stewart knows it.
“Up to the Auburn game, even Colorado, we were clicking, we were freewheeling, our quarterback was exciting,” Stewart said. “Once he got whacked at Marshall, it changed. Did you see Oklahoma shut out Oklahoma State? What did that quarterback come back from? Same thing.”
The same thing was a concussion. Jarrett Brown’s was diagnosed as a mild concussion, but something did happen with him.
“The medical people played Jarrett Brown when it was right to play him, when it was safe to play, but there was something about it that it wasn’t clicking,” Stewart said. “It’s not all on Jarrett. There were some other guys.
“I thought we really strained on offense,” Stewart continued. “To play Louisville and get one touchdown, we’ve not really clicked since the Marshall game. We started to get it back against Cincinnati. I thought we got it back the other night. We were just a play here, a play there.
“Honest to gosh, we got that 88-yard trap that Noel Devine ran but there were three other times when one block and we’ve got it — No. 7 to the house.”
Stewart refuses to sugarcoat it though.
“We hit a wall in the middle of the season and we pressed. I don’t think we’re playing very well (on offense),” he said.
Certainly the offense isn’t what he had pictured.
If you recall, he came in talking about throwing the football all over the lot, stretching the field deep.
But as the season went on, as Brown went into his brief funk, there was less of that and more a run mentality, more emphasis on an I-formation, more Ryan Clarke in the offense, a big fullback.
Believe it or not, WVU leads the Big East not in passing but in rushing, averaging 185.5 yards a game. It has run the ball 426 times, thrown it 308.
In a way, what has happened is that the Mountaineers have not been able to establish any kind of offensive identity. They have stumbled around trying to find a personality and that hinders the development of an offense.
Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt talked about the philosophy of offensive football on Monday’s Big East coaches’ conference call. He has gone steadily with a pro-set, power offense that features play action passes and a big fullback.
When asked why he felt that was the right way to go, he answered it this way:
“It’s not the best way, obviously, for everyone. I remember an analogy when we first went to the Dallas Cowboys from the University of Miami. The Giants had won the Super Bowl with a 3-4 defense and Lawrence Taylor. San Francisco used a 4-3 and won a Super Bowl. We won one at Dallas with our college 4-3.
“The point is there are a lot of ways to win. The key is to have some philosophy. The coaches who have a little bit of everything and are not good at anything are the ones who have problems.”
And that is what West Virginia has to avoid. It has to have a system, a philosophy, recruit to it and win with it. To think that you can be a running team one week and passing team the next isn’t where it’s at.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
WVU’s goal to get offense started
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: This ‘Maniac’ makes music with Kilicli
Mike Martin wasn’t long removed from his New York roots, a somewhat rare import in these parts compared to the migration of New Jerseyites who matriculate at West Virginia University.
-
Van Zant fired as WVU baseball coach
West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck believes with a new coach and a new stadium the Mountaineers can compete with the likes of Texas and Oklahoma for the Big 12 baseball championship but understands it will not come easily or quickly.
-
SEC, Big 12 team up for bowl
Even before the full impact of West Virginia University’s 2014 season-opening meeting with Alabama in Atlanta has been grasped, the opportunity presented itself for the two to meet again later in that season or future ones in a bowl agreement between the Big 12 and SEC that is much like the Rose Bowl agreement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
