It might be time to say farewell to another WVU player here at the Liberty Bowl. Karl Joseph sent his paperwork to the NFL’s draft advisory board and says he’ll wait until after the bowl to decide whether he’ll skip his senior season and enter the spring’s draft.

I’ve been told the agreement is simple. First or second round: Go. Everything else: Come back to school. Not exactly riveting, I know, but that’s the baseline for the final game of this season. And if Joseph returns, WVU is loaded on defense for 2015.

If this is the end, or if it’s merely his 38th straight start, let’s review a play that contributed to the arc of his season.

From that week’s G&B:

Bad: Knoblauch
(I did not expect that to catch on.) Daryl Worley and Karl Joseph have done this three times now: Stephon Diggs’ touchdown at Maryland, Devin Lauderdale’s touchdown at Texas Tech and Kolby Listenbee’s 40-yard catch at the worst time imaginable. Boykin was 0-for-7 on throws beyond 15 yards before this. Now, credit him for noting the clear confusion. He saw it coming. K.J. Dillon swats Joseph out of his spot. Joseph is looking so hard at the sideline for the signal that he bumps into the referee. Tony Gibson said he didn’t see it, and I have to believe that. But Joseph knew it was doomed and a few of his teammates did, too. I wonder how much time was spent Sunday talking about why one of the players didn’t call a timeout. I think the choice to kick into the wind mattered. I think the timeouting was weird. I think the play calls could have been better. You can’t debate this: None of those things matter if WVU just communicates and executes a play it communicates and executes all the time.

Joseph got the blame for that play because he’s the safety and you figure in cover 3 the safety is one of the three covering a deep third of the field.

Not true, and multiple people confirmed this to me before I asked Joseph about it two weeks ago.

“It was a miscommunication,” Joseph said. “It was Cover 3 and I was supposed to be down and the cornerback was supposed to be in that deep third. There was a miscommunication and I guess the corner thought I was supposed to be over top, but I was down. He stayed down when he was supposed to be back. It was just a miscommunication.”

Joseph carefully never mentioned the cornerback was Daryl Worley, who tried desperately to get back into the play to cover for the mistake. Joseph knew he was being blamed instead, but he never really cared about that. He was just mad it happened and conspired to cost his team the game and maybe more beyond that night.

TCU trailed by two points on its final drive and was trying to get into field-goal range with only one timeout remaining. After a 3-yard run on first down, the Horned Frogs hurried into their second down play without a huddle at their 27-yard line. The Mountaineers took a look at the formation and spur safety K.J. Dillon identified the strong side of the play, which is where he’s supposed to stand. Joseph is then supposed to go to the other side.

All the action before the snap happened in 11 seconds, and no player or coach thought to use one of the three available timeouts.

“They were tempoing us and we tried to switch at the last minute, and the communication between me and the corner, we couldn’t get it right,” Joseph said. “We were trying to switch with the tempo and get the call and I got the call at the last minute. When they snapped the ball, I was down and the corner thought I was supposed to be up. It was just a bad play.”