I feel like this senseless play was sort of significant Saturday. It shouldn’t happen, and Edward Muldrow III should be happy to be in on a play and resist the need to taunt his fallen foe. I get that. I don’t need to tell you that.

But … but West Virginia’s defense needed to have an attitude if West Virginia’s defense was to have a chance. The Mountaineers were critically timid against a bunch of teams last season, but as far as they’re concerned it was nowhere near as apparent and important as it was against Baylor. It was horrible and it left a mark they weren’t going to be able to scrub away until they got over against the Bears.

So the coaches pumped the players up all week and more or less told them to put their toes on the edge and also take a step over that line every now and then. A hard hit on a guy out who’s out of the play, and then a stare downward just to let him know who was there and that he would be there all day, was a little bit of bullying bravado.

WVU had seven personal foul penalties. Seven! And Tony Gibson was mostly OK with that because he was willing to take the blame, which in another way is to say he took the credit on a day he gave all the credit to his players. “Some of those penalties you can put on me,” the defensive coordinator said. “Those guys don’t do that stuff. They did some stupid stuff after the whistle, but we’re not coaching that. We don’t ever want to do anything cheap. That’s not what we coach. But what we did want was our kids to play hard. Play smart but play hard.” 

The Mountaineers were wound up and they had some swagger on a side of the ball that not only hasn’t had that swagger in recent times, but hasn’t had any business having that swagger. It was their buoy up to and including the point in the game when they believed they were good enough to win the game for the offense.

It was a necessary evil that WVU believed in and that WVU was coached to believe in, believe it or not.

 “The mentality this game was to play their game,” WVU running backs coach JaJuan Seider said. “We were not going to be intimidated by anybody. They were not going to come in here and run over us again. They embarrassed us last year. Call it like you see it. They kicked our butts up and down the field.

“But as a man, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘That is not going to happen. Not on our field. Not in front of our crowd.’ ”

How did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look at the Good and the Bad of freshly ranked WVU v. Baylor.

Bad: But seriously …
… 14 penalties at home against the No. 4 team in the country is a losing effort. Three turnovers is a losing effort. A minus-three in the turnover  margin is a losing effort. A svelte 2.7 yards per carry is a losing effort. WVU did a whole hell of a lot right, but on other days, it might not have been enough.

Good: The crowded wall
Look, if you’re going to wear the black hat into the game and you’re going to play physical on offense and attack on defense and a little maniacal during and after plays, you’re going to need something and someone extra. WVU knows it can count on a handful of players every game. Every game. There are the usual suspects on offense and defense and now even special teams because Josh Lambert is shooting into a really big basket right now. To do what the Mountaineers did Saturday and to do it the jagged way they did required an extra handful of guys to roll with and to call upon as reinforcements. Andrew Buie was one such guy and he was terrific from this moment forward. Buie begat Shaq Riddick begat Icky Banks begat Ricky Rumph begat Cody Clay …

Bad: Land mines
And there’s Buie being Buie. He’s having a nice season relative to his role, and he’s writing warm chapters in his comeback story, but, man, he still gets blown up, doesn’t he? This was one of those plays you could see coming from above the field and I was sort of shocked Buie didn’t lose this one when he took a big shot up top. Growth!

Good: Zoom, zoom, zoom
When you stand him next to WVU’s defensive backs and across from Baylor’s receivers, Rumph doesn’t necessarily look like he belongs. Nobody had more fun that this guy Saturday (including a weird decision to ssh his crowd?), and that’s certainly connected to his performance. He was confident when left alone and he was competent when he had to be. This is a great effort play because Baylor has the numerical advantage established on the edge, which is what the Bears do and are quite dangerous at. They even make it happen because Rumph is on the ground and the receiver has two blockers, but Rumph grabs a leg and stops the play.

Good: Diesel
I think he got the message, no?

On if Shaquille Riddick has come along quicker than anticipated

I’m not prepared to say that he’s got things figured out by any stretch of the imagination. He’s got one sack in six games. He came here to sack the quarterback, and we’ve put in into a role to where he needs to play more because of our lack of depth on the defensive line. We’ll continue to coach him up. He’ll continue to get better with more snaps. He’s going to get better. To say he’s got things figured out is a stretch. He needs to get to the quarterback more, and he knows that. He needs to work hard on his technique and the motor that he needs to play with in order to get to the quarterback more often, which is going to help us win games.

He made two really noisy plays on third downs — just demolished Bryce Petty in the third quarter and then forced the final failed fourth-down conversion later with sacks — be he was virtually, and perhaps even literally, unblocked on both, which I cannot understand because he’s a defensive lineman and not a safety or a linebacker or a 14th defender. We can’t take those plays from him, but this play blows away those plays. This is a motor play. (I did not track his 40 time, though.)

Bad: Mack
We know he’ll argue with this, but I did the math, and when Mario Alford opens up here, he’s doing 21.9 mph across the final 30 yards. Faaaaaast.

Good: Scissors
That’s a whale of a play call. I’m not sure it was a do-or-die spot because the defense was humming, but given how well the defense was playing and how much the offense had done right and gotten into a winning rhythm, WVU did not want Baylor getting the ball back there. A scissors route against man-to-man cuts up the defense and Alford is the closer here who takes it the rest of the way and ends this game. (Aside: I guess this would make Clint Trickett the set-up man? His fourth quarter, with his dad on his mind and a nasty bug in his system: 8-for-10 for 128 yards and two touchdowns.)

Bad: Update!
This did happen, and Kevin White is somewhat to blame for not coming back on the ball more than he did, and Trickett made a similar play from his own end zone on WVU’s penultimate job that would have really worried the 60,758 in attendance. Those were both MTEP plays. For the day: 0-for-2 with an interception and a pass interference penalty. Season MTEP stats: 12-for-28 for 173 yards and two interceptions, a sack, a lost fumble and a pass interference penalty, plus four runs for 32 yards. Bending, bending, bending …

Good: In the pocket
Trickett does so much with the quick game and the deep ball that we don’t get to see him go through reads and step into big throws like this one, which converts third-and-long and extends the half-ending field goal drive. The design is clever and properly placed in this situation because the motion shows Trickett and Daikiel Shorts it’s zone coverage. The running back keeps a defender under the route and the second inside receiver pulls the linebacker away so he can’t affect the play, either. They’re both pulled away from Shorts, and that opens a window for the throw and catch.

Bad: Bust
Here’s the fifth touchdown of 60 yards or more against WVU this season, which is a lot, but here also is one of only two times Gibson was made to pay for the heavy pressure and the light secondary. (Aside: I’m assuming this is Cover Zero and Dravon Henry just went late … but if it’s Cover 1 and Henry lost his head, it wouldn’t completely surprise me.) This is worth some examination. WVU lost Daryl Worley and circumstance brought Cullen Christian on the field, and he’s outside with the widest receiver up top. Terrell Chestnut is in the slot and Karl Joseph scrambles over to cover the other inside receiver. I can’t imagine they’ve worked live together very often, but Petty makes a very good throw given the pressure that was coming his way and that he flicked this one off his back foot. And if that was bad and ominous because of the Worley absence, this was, of course, Chestnut’s last play, too.

Bad: Worley
This is just a bad play. You can’t leave your feet on a punt return. It’s not worth it. You especially don’t want to speed up into the play and then leap forward when people named gunners are running at you. That’s dangerous, never mind reckless, but reckless matters, too, because Worley ends up clipping Shelton Gibson’s feet as Gibson gets run up the field and probably doesn’t suspect Worley has come up that far to field the short kick. That slight contact complicates Worley’s ill-advised leap. But the worst part of this was that Worley lined up 50 yards away from the punt, that after Nick O’Toole, whose nickname is Boomstache, averaged 36.5 yards on a pair of kicks going the same way into the same wind in the first quarter. You can see how deep he is and how far he has to run forward to get it. That’s what invites all the trouble. (Aside: Worley getting hurt underscores this concern: Guys don’t like to do this.)

Good: No punt returner
It was comical and intelligent and ridiculous and telling all in one. I’ll just say I enjoyed the moment and was honored so many of you were thinking of me. That’s why it gets a Good. I have a hard time embracing or pushing away here. I get that the wind was considerable and it was somewhat shrewd to take that out of the equation. I think the first one caught Baylor off guard. I don’t really get the second one. Baylor knew it was coming and hit a lower liner into the wind and worked the bounce nicely to pin WVU deep on what was a key possession. Really, if Trickett and Shorts don’t connect on that pass we just went over, WVU punts and the Bears get the ball with a chance to score at the end of the half and then get the ball to start the second half. And then I don’t get not doing the same on the punts in the third quarter. But what I take away from it is this was all a pretty clear admission WVU has a problem and knows it and is willing to try things to make it work. Also, Alford is not part of the solution. (Side bad: Thompson did not drape himself in glory on a pair of nervy returns in the fourth quarter.) (Side good: Shelton Gibson? Is he the new kickoff returner? Might he get a look at punt returns?)

Good: Day to day
Chestnut, Worley and Rushel Shell are all day to day with an upper body, a rib and a foot, respectively. What’s notable here is Shell hurt himself (and was later on crutches) by running over this linebacker. WVU ran the ball really hard and with a purpose all game. The Mountaineers handed the ball off 47 times against Texas Tech and had one negative-yardage run. WVU handed the ball off 46 times against Baylor and had one negative-yardage run, and that was an jet sweep to Jordan Thompson.

Good: Breaks
Baylor connected twice, but had a bunch of looks at deep balls that are normally completed and the fuel for the frightening offensive attack. WVU gambled a lot, got bit twice and witnessed at least twice as many flat out misses by the Bears, including certain touchdowns to Antwan Goodley on that key fourth down after Worley’s turnover and Jay Lee in the fourth quarter. That said, I think you create your luck, and the way WVU pestered Petty had him hurrying and the Mountaineers gave him a good reason to be so out of whack. We’ve been over this before, but the Mountaineers were long past due to have a few things go their way this season.

Good: Cats and mice
The games within the game that the coordinators and the head coaches were playing was fun to track, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you are, you know that Baylor creates and manipulates space better than anyone. The wide receiver up top is extraordinarily far from the play, but Baylor will make that throw. The design here is for the stacked slot receivers. Baylor wants you to put two defenders on the two receivers. If it’s a safety, the wide receiver is available for a deep pass. If it’s a linebacker, there’s going to be space for a quick pass inside or room for a run play. The Bears are really, really good at this. The Mountaineers countered it. You don’t know who the second defender is on the stack, so Baylor gave the ball to the back a bunch in this look and like looks. The safety had the receiver and the linebacker had the run here, but it changed throughout. Almost always, though, WVU gave the cornerback a cushion to work with so he wouldn’t get beat over the top, but also so that he had time to recover and run up if the receiver ran a short route and had to wait for the long throw to get there. This is safe and very sound by Gibson.

Good: …what the?
I warned you yesterday there’d be a lot of Gibson here. He had Petty flustered. He was throwing short when receivers were vertical and he was going deep when receivers broke off routes. He hastened throws because of pressure and for no real reason, and by the fourth quarter he and Goodley were barking and gesturing at one another after completely crossing their signals on third- and fourth-down plays that set up the punt that preceded Alford’s clinching score. Here’s a pretty vivid illustration of his frustrations. This is second-and-6 … not third-and-20 … and WVU is in, like, quarters coverage with five defensive backs. What the hell is that? Cover Pentagon? Petty is perplexed and checks. Then the defensive linemen stand up, which offensive linemen don’t like because they know those guys can be going anywhere now because there are six people standing up and five people blocking. Then the linebackers just drop into coverage at the snap and Kyle Rose sashays into the backfield to push Petty outside. He runs and gets rumphed up by Ricky and has to leave the game briefly. That was really peculiar and really effective.

Good: Hidden truth
I’m going to call the preceding play (heretofore Cover Pentagon) Cover 3 with two purposefully deep cornerbacks because this play looks a lot like it, except the corners are more shallow and the front six aren’t trying to confound Petty. That there is so much variation between what are essentially identical plays tells you what the Mountaineer were trying to do. (Side good: Golson cinches this sack with both hands, but he starts closing the deal with one arm again. That’s two one-armed plays this season, and this one was pretty important because WVU had saved up enough money for a trip to Bolivia.)

Good: Chuck Knoblauch
The other reason I say it’s Cover 3 is because WVU plays a lot of Cover 3 and Cover 2, but didn’t do it nearly as much against Baylor. Gibson was spooked a little bit by the Worley/Joseph gaffe against Texas Tech where Worley was supposed to jostle the receiver to disrupt the timing and Joseph was supposed to play defense over the top. Joseph instead got caught lurching forward and was out of position for a 76-yard touchdown. Gibson didn’t want to risk a repeat and give Petty time to either diagnose or dismantle a defense, and he didn’t want Baylor’s fleet receivers breaking things open. So WVU attacked a lot, which may seem counterintuitive, but instead makes sense because of Chuck Knoblauch. Huh? Remember when he got the yips and completely forgot how to throw the ball to first base? What we forget is that he was actually a pretty decent fielder and thrower when he was diving and ranging one way or the other and had to expedite actions to make plays. When it was a simple roller with a lazy throw, he was toast. His instincts restored the ability that at times seemed lost. Well, Gibson didn’t want his defenders fielding simple rollers and sailing and bouncing throws. He wanted them diving and ranging and expediting actions to make plays. Athletes are instinctual beings who typically react better than they act. Gibson set his guys up to react a whole lot Saturday and they responded very nicely.

Good: Winning moments
Two critical third downs, one after a poor O’Toole punt (into weighty wind) and one after a the aforepictured Trickett interception. Baylor led 13-7 and it could have been 17-7 or 21-7 and who knows what happens to the bravado? Getting the field goals, and getting Baylor to kick them by getting Baylor to mangle these third downs under pressure, pumped up the Mountaineers.

Good: Claymation
Cody Clay is in a zone, man. He’s been lights out for three straight games, and that followed a concerning performance against Oklahoma and its intense outside pressure that you suspected teams were going to mimic. I thought this was a major moment in the game, too. WVU ran five times in a row with Smith. This is a two-play clip at the end of that five-play string, and it’s classic, but on the play before this, Clay cuts the linebacker trying to track down the play from the back end. On these two plays, well, poor Orion Stewart. He’s a very nice safety, but he wanted nothing to do with Clay on the second play here because he took a bite on the first play.

Good: “Pinch hitting, Chris Brown. … Brown.”

@mikecasazza also on the TD run by #13 the left tackle reached Oakman, then went low and took him out to create the crease. Was nice

— Chris B. Brown (@smartfootball) October 20, 2014

That’s Friend of the Program @SmartFootball responding to a tweet about the Clay plays and forwarding our conversation to this clip.

Good: La Paz
You know all the stuff about the high safety and the 1-on-1 coverage. But for real: Grown Ass Heisman Moment. Why can’t I have this conversation? I’ll hang up and listen.

Bad: Baylor backs as receivers
Watch running back Shock Linwood and safety K.J. Dillon on this play. Amazing. Linwood is used a lot on the read plays where he takes a handoff or takes nothing and goes into the line. He also had to stay in the pocket in pass protection a lot Saturday. The people I talked to Tuesday and again Saturday said Baylor does not use its backs in the passing game. (They’re right, and it’s no secret, really. Linwood has three receptions this season, which puts him well ahead of last year’s pace, when he caught four balls.) It lets WVU sail a defender back into pass coverage here. Throughout the game, and even on the plays where the running back motioned out of the backfield into a receiver’s position, the Mountaineers paid little to no attention to the running back as a pass-catching option, which let them devote numbers elsewhere.

Good: Stick/Draw
We even saw the pass on the stick route to Thompson later! This was a great game.

Good: Numbers
One more nod to the defense as we near the finish: It forced nine punts and each of those ended a drive that lasted five plays or fewer. There were tackles for a loss after Baylor’s first six opponents managed 17. The Bears had one run longer than 8 yards. WVU’s third and fourth corners played more than half the game, the four-cornerback game plan was abandoned at halftime and the third-down plan was totally changed. Almost magically, Baylor was 3-for-16 on third down and needed 7 or more yards 11 times. It converted two. Wow.

Good: The end
Baylor had and wasted a shot here. Petty put a deep ball on the money against the attacking defense and Jaylon Myers (Aside: Shaky.) let K.D. Cannon, who is superbly fast, get past him. This should be a long play that puts Baylor on the doorstep. It instead brought the punt team on the field as Art Briles waved a white flag. At that point, anything was better than a yellow flag, so the Mountaineers and the stadium cheered the white one because they knew the game was over.