Dana Holgorsen thought his offense was pretty good Sunday, despite all that stood in its way. There were some nervous reactions throughout the stadium in the first quarter, but what the head coach was left feeling Monday was that he, too, would have liked to have played a bit longer.

“We had some things break down early on, but I think that had more to do with what the scheme was and us trying to figure out some first-game stuff – you don’t know what to expect and they did some things schematically that we didn’t know they were going to do,” Mountaineers Coach Dana Holgorsen said.

“Sometimes it takes four quarters to figure it out, but I really felt if we had another quarter we’d get to a point where we could do some more things.”

Can you get down with that? Do you, too, respect Marshall’s defensive front? Did you see those zone blitzes?

Consider this: First quarters are sometimes throwaway quarters for the first game of the season. Make it a first quarter of a head coach’s first game and you can perhaps take things a little less seriously.

WVU had the ball for 8:43 in the first quarter, despite starting with a three-and-out. WVU then had the ball for 9:28 in the second quarter and was 5-for-6 on third down, including 4-for-4 on one touchdown drive. On four straight scoring drives — FG, TD, TD, FG — WVU had 10 plays, 71 yards and 4:38 of possession, 10-62-3:32, 13-62-6:05 and 7-23-2:14.

The came halftime and a three-and-0ut and then a failed fourth-down conversion, which happens, and then a kickoff return touchdown, which also happens. Then came the ridiculous break in the weather — and that’s a whole other conversation — before play resumed and WVU had an 11-54-3:46  touchdown drive that ended the game.

In the end, WVU was looking at snapping the ball about 80 times, gaining 390 or so yards and scoring 45 points.