I’m thinking this is going to become a Tuesday feature, if that’s OK with you. Did you know it takes time to get back from Texas? Just looking at my travel schedule, it’s not going to be possible for me to do this, and to do it right, which is to say to do it in depth, and have it out on a Monday.

Plus, it evens out the features here. Just need a gimmick for Wednesdays, though maybe “Gimmick-Free Wednesdays” will catch on now. We used to have a wonderful, fabulous thing on Wednesday, though I feel it would be sacrilege to bring that around again. Maybe Wednesday is my safety net for this if travel back from, say, Lubbock is hard and the following Monday is packed like the rest of them.

Anyhow, I watched the game again and have arrived at this conclusion: Maryland played pretty well. Protected well, tackled well, blitzed well, returned well. Not perfectly, or the Terrapins would have won, but better than many of us were probably expecting — myself included. Put that next to a WVU performance that lacked the traits common to the most recent ones.

It happens. It happened. Be happy it turned out how it did and you didn’t get, say, Louisville 2011 or something similar. You were instead left with a win that sends you into the Big 12 competition ranked No. 9 with a 3-0 record.

Let’s see how by examining the good and the bad.

Good: Those guys
O Fence! I was under the impression this, as a banner or sign, was prohibited. I hope I’m wrong because it only makes things better, and if Dana Holgorsen is going to pop off about lackluster atmospheres, it is then disingenuous to treat harmless things like that as contraband. But if it is prohibited, how in the world did they get that inside? So proud of those people.

Bad: Tackling
WVU missed 26 tackles against Marshall — and I want to spell that out for emphasis because twenty-six looks better in italics. That was a first game and it was to be followed by an open week. Tackling was supposed to get better and WVU missed just/just 17 tackles against James Madison.

I don’t have the official number for the third game. I’ll get that tonight. I’m very confident it was more than 17 and relatively sure it was at least 26. That’s not going to work against Baylor, which does a number of clever and unique things to create and exploit open space.

That’s Ickey Banks, who WVU decided to take for a spin against Marshall to see what he had. He appeared a little earlier on the first Stephon Diggs touchdown when he got pinned inside and let Diggs get up the rail. Maryland, previously a three-and-out team that really struggled on third down, hit a pair of home runs against WVU. Take those away and simply make a tackle and the numbers suggest the Terrapins are not constructed to complete both drives. It’s the difference between 31-21 and, say 31-13.

Good: Darwin Cook
So Joe DeForest puts in a blitz for Cook last week and Cook goes to the film and studies Maryland quarterback Perry Hills to get familiar with his pre-snap tendencies because freshmen tend to show a lot of those.

He was mad on the sideline after that, but he was confident in his keys. “He’d look to the sideline, come back, lift his foot and go.” Damn if that didn’t happen the next time Cook blitzed.

Cook’s constant proximity to the ball and knack for making plays is not an accident. He’s WVU’s best at that since … Mortty Ivy? Since Mortty Ivy. Also, Doug Rigg is similarly opportune. This is not a bad thing if you’re going to rely on maximizing and capitalizing on turnovers as WVU DeForest’s defense does.

Bad: Breakdown = touchdown
Credit Maryland here. This followed a timeout and it put WVU’s back end in conflict. And it worked. The Terps sent their slot on the left and their running back out to the left, where WVU had just one player. That’s an option on the play, especially if the slot can block for the back, but that wasn’t going to work here. The Mountaineers had that somewhat covered. This is not to say it didn’t work, though, because it did.

It opened the middle. Cook, the safety at the top of the screen, jumped in and went to the left sideline. That gave Hills a nice window for the touchdown, which was open even more than WVU would have liked because Travis Bell , the safety at the bottom of the screen, was shallow on the play, too. The slot and the outside receiver on the right come inside and Bell has to respect them and the first down marker. Maryland won this one.

Good: Pat Miller
Allow me to explain: Love him or loathe him, he’s going to be out there. And if you’re out there defending Big 12 teams, you’re going to have bad moments and bad games. You better have a short memory. Nowhere is this more apparent and necessary than at cornerback. What Miller does here is, at the least, promising — and don’t discount WVU sending him on the blitz on the second play.

Bad: Luck
Poor Wes Tonkery. He gets skewered for his first career interception, which should be a proud moment for every player. He was instead told he should have knocked the ball down on the final fourth down of the game and given his team the field position, which, at the end of a game his team won by 10 points, seems harsh.

But maybe we missed something. The way things went for Tonkery, maybe he volleyball spikes the ball, but it hits someone’s foot and Immaculate Conception bounces into the grasp of a Maryland player, who races for the end zone. Witness Tonkery hit a spike strip on this perfectly called blitz. Joe DeForest shrugged after the game (and this is the aforementioned Banks play).

Bad: Return of the Benny Hillifier
Seven WVU players hit the turf on Maryland’s third touchdown. The sax of life!

Bad: Randy Edsall
Maryland had a pretty good game plan and hid weaknesses on offense and flexed strengths on defense. The Terrapins had some nice stuff on display that likely bodes well for the future — even the immediate future. Afterward, though, Edsall seemed to bemoan a missed call by the officials — and this is presumably the second turnover Cook caused … which was clearly a turnover.

“I don’t know why anybody challenges anything. We have a system in place in college football that every play is reviewed, so why challenge anything? They are up there reviewing it, so to me, why should a coach even have a challenge? Every play is reviewable, and if it wasn’t a fumble, why should I challenge it? I just don’t see any reason to do it.

“They have a job to do, so if they don’t reverse it or stop the clock to review it, then I’m putting it on the officials because it is their job. That is why we are paying those people money to be up there, so I don’t even know why we have a review for the coaches when every play is reviewed.”

So lazy. Referees screw up all the time and this is a fact supported by red-faced coaches everywhere. A coach who falls back on this “They review every play!” excuse has failed his team. He wasn’t going to win that challenge, but if he felt like he might, either then or in some past or future game, he has to do something. If not, don’t revert to this explanation, which is flawed at best and irresponsible at worst. Also, in the future, Edsall is not allowed to critique the infallible officials, OK? Never. Not even when he’s barking about a hit to his quarterback after the whistle for a false start. They are beyond reproach.

Good: Three turnovers
That’s WVU’s goal every game and WVU got it Saturday. The Mountaineers improved to 65-4 since 2002 when they win the turnover battle.

Good: Linebackers
WVU started Josh Francis, Doug Rigg, Isaiah Bruce and Terence Garvin. The combined for 23 tackles, three sacks, 5.5 tackles for a loss, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery and a touchdown — which is the second score for that group this season and Rigg was a yard short of a third after his return against Marshall came close. Bruce and Rigg, the latter without the services of Jared Barber as a backup Saturday, look like they can play the middle. Garvin and Francis give WVU separate skill sets on the outside … and Francis (two sacks), even as he platoons with the bigger Tyler Anderson (no tackles?), continues to surge. I kind of thought WVU was going to be fine here at the start of the season. The personnel afforded a lot of options and flexibility. But this is better than I anticipated this soon.

Good: Shaq can dig it
He’s a linebacker, too, so this is a good spot for Mr. Petteway, who is turning into a really nice little player for WVU. He’s great on special teams and he fills a role nicely on defense. He’s in the middle here, behind the two-man defensive line. Watch him make this play twice. SLightly better than the last time we saw Shaq.

Bad: Offensive line
Not a step forward because they took too many steps backward. Geno Smith was sacked twice and hit many, many other times and the longest run was eight yards early in the fourth quarter. WVU had been averaging 7.4 yards per carry, which was No. 2 nationally. The 25 yards on 25 carries was the lowest rushing total in 16 years.

WVU had 68 snaps Saturday and 12 went for a loss or gained no yards — including six runs. That kills WVU’s schedule.

This was a factor in the game, too, and Dana knew it. WVU’s average third down was with 9.4 yards to go, which means first and second downs generally stunk. WVU had been running effectively on all three downs and converting most of its third downs, but not against Maryland. Only once did WVU need fewer than four yards to convert a third down and only once did WVU run on third down — and that was the 15th and final third down of the day, a seven-yard gain by Andrew Buie on third-and-6 that, I can only assume, must have caught Maryland off guard.

I wonder if changes are coming now. WVU looked all right when Jenkins was out and Spain was inside at guard with Nick Kindler at left tackle — and Bill Bedenbaugh has been consistently supportive of Kindler.

Good: Defensive linemen
Mostly handled themselves well against the run and the Clarke-Rowell-Wright group can be a handful.

Good: Tavon was awesome
Here’s one touchdown and he doesn’t get much help. He actually gets hindered. He did a lot with and without the ball to make plays and this is a pretty good example. That’s what special players do and that’s vital on a day when the offense has difficulties. And he was double teamed or schemed against throughout the game, but he did very well to get open on a number of plays, which is something his coaches said in the past that he needed to improve.

Good: Wrinkles!
Here’s an ordinary screen pass that WVU dressed up a little bit. Maryland is tracking Tavon, of course, so the fake goes left and the screen goes right. Neat to see. Watch it again, though. Ryan Clarke is the fullback. He slips out the left side. This play is on tape now. A defense will expect it to go right. If it goes left to Tavon after a fake to him, he’s got Clarke blocking. Hmm.

Bad: Bolivia
Didn’t see a lot of under center stuff, which makes sense. For starters, WVU couldn’t run very well … and Buie doesn’t seem to be as adept at the under center stuff like Alston is. But passing from under center means a shorter path to the quarterback on a day when Maryland was getting there quick. Fades are timing plays and the Terps really disrupted this play and seemed like they suspected it was coming.

Good: Little fakes
I’m a fan of Jordan Thompson taking this play very seriously. Watch him carry out his motion like it means something!

Bad: Syracuse flashbacks!
More than a few texts in TFGD about a tight end terrorizing WVU, and Maryland’s Matt Furstenburg is good one. The Terps used him early to unplug some of WVU’s pressure — bootlegs, that sweet middle screen — but he also ran some nice routes. There are tight ends in the Big 12 and they’re going to have some fun with the Mountaineers. WVU will get the better on occasion, like here.

Maryland used an unbalanced formation a few times with two tackles and a guard left of center and just one guard and a tight end to the right. In fact, on the play before this one, they ran to the heavy side for a good enough gain. The formation was the same on the next snap, but Furstenburg, sort of an H-back here in a stance behind the tight end/right tackle, slipped out on playaction. The defense didn’t jump the run and instead paid attention to the tight end and made a nice play when a big gain was the goal.

Good: Sarcasm (Also, Corey Smith)
Loved the reaction on his first kick. Was also a proponent of Smith’s seven punts that averaged 44.6 yards. He is what he is, which is a little worrisome, but he can affect a game the way he did Saturday. And he’s your best option, honest.

Bad: Ichabod Crane
I may have missed this play completely as it happened. I don’t think it was intended to be a pass. I think it was supposed to be a draw to Buie. Either that or Geno should be highly annoyed that Robert Gillespie put a statue in a 13 jersey in the backfield. But watch it develop. Buie is standing there and looks like he’s meaning to take a handoff — and we know he’s a willing and able blocker, so if it was a pass, he steps forward and hits that blitzer.

Josh Jenkins is then out in the middle of the field run blocking, but the pressure gets to Geno and he throws it. That puts Jenkins in a bad spot for an ineligible receiver penalty. Geno, in retrospect, should have taken a knee and walked off the penalty for ripping off his helmet, but you can’t blame him for the decision he made there.

Funny thing is, I think Buie could have scored if he gets the handoff. Jenkins has his guy blocked. The pressure is coming from the left. Center Joe Madsen and right tackle Pat Eger have their guys blocked, on the right, which leaves right guard Jeff Braun as a bodyguard for Buie. Maryland won there, too.

Bad: Cushion
I’ll never understand it and every time I ask the explanation is never sufficient, but the tone is as though I should get it. Still, why, on third-and-10, do you back off the receiver and let him get to the marker? Not only that, but Brodrick Jenkins starts off right across from Kevin Dorsey, then backs off and keeps backing off. There’s a blitz coming from his side. Quarterbacks tend to throw to the blitz side because they should hae numbers. Receivers tend to break routes when they see a blitz and on third down tend to break routes at the marker. One would think the corner would be on top of this — and Jenkins is a smart player, too.

Good: My goodness, Geno
I thought this was his best play of the day. He hangs in during one of the first big hits of the season and makes a big-time throw across the field. Seriously, 29 yards in the air, 33 1/3 yards across the field. That’s a 44-yard throw, as he gets crunched, for a 12-yard gain. Consider this: Put together J.D.’s five catches. They total 44 yards.

There’s a bad on this play, though. Not sure what Dustin Garrison is doing. Ryan Clarke disposed of his man but Garrison jumped in while two others came through a lane Garrison needed to somehow occupy.

Bad: Let’s stay here
Glad to see Dustin back, but he needs to tighten up a few things, namely blocking. He vanished there and let a very big, very fast Demetrius Hartsfield pounce. That’s how guys get hurt — and Geno was tender after the game. You can be physically ready, but mentally ready matters, too. He’s got a game under his belt, though.

Bad: This looks painful
Ryan Clarke is a more-than-serviceable pass protector. He left the game because of this play — and that looks like the high ankle region. Sub-good to Stedman for stiff-arming a 6-foot, 185 pound cornerback to the ground.

Good: Souvenirs
Stedman’s cheeky tackle to prevent a big(ger ) return at the end of the first half was something to witness. It was an impressive effort play coaches spotlight, and it was by a star receiver, no less. I prefer what John DePalma did here. Watch the long snapper. Hope he holds onto that forever.