Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which opens with a question from the audience.

@mikecasazza If WVU could get off to a 3-0 start, could we see them crack the rankings?

— Jonah Stackpole (@JonahWvu247) September 15, 2016

OK, we’re still not clear on how the Facebook Live thing works, but rather than dismiss this out of principle, let’s take it for a spin.

It’s too hard to answer the question today. The top 25 figures to be volatile this weekend. BYU plays Saturday against UCLA, and though UCLA isn’t a world-beater, it’s still a good squad that’s merely next in line for the Cougars to start this season.

But say enough things happen in and just outside the top 25 to make next week accommodating. Say BYU loses to UCLA. WVU’s then playing a 1-2 team at FedEx Field, and I’m not sure there’s a margin of victory emphatic enough to put the 3-0 Mountaineers in the top 25. If BYU wins and then WVU beats a 2-1 opponent, I’m still not sure.

And I’m not sure it matters, either. I think you could argue that, win or lose at FedEx, the season really begins at home the following week against Kansas State. We’ve been over this before, but I’m not aware of a plausible scenario in which the Mountaineers have a good season and don’t beat Kansas State. And beyond that, don’t you feel like the Big 12 is open to interpretation?

Now, a 4-0/1-0 WVU? That’s when you can begin to take stock, because the Mountaineers are off again the following weekend and then start the stretch of eight games on eight Saturdays in which they alternate home and away every week. But the road games are … well, Texas Tech has to play defense, Oklahoma State lost at home to Central Michigan, Texas is potentially problematic and Iowa State is 0-1 against the FCS and 0-1 against the FBS. WVU’s toughest opponents visit Mountaineer Field, beginning with K-State and then followed by TCU, exception to the rule Kansas, Oklahoma (which I think beats Ohio State, if you’re wondering) and Baylor.

I don’t know, but I feel like WVU doesn’t even know a lot about WVU right now, so I don’t think an outcome against BYU, be it positive or negative, really shapes one’s thinking. Obviously, a win throws dirt on whatever it was that happened in a win last week and a loss probably brings issues and ire to the surface, but the season was always going be defined by what happens in the Big 12, and fates begin to take form at home against Bill Snyder.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, practice carefully.

netbros said:

If ever there was a year to make some hay in the Big 12, this may be it with only three teams remaining unbeaten after two weeks, including West Virginia. What have always been tough games in the league for the Mountaineers may be out there for the taking this year. Hopefully the upperclassmen on this team will take notice and overachieve.

Hey, it worked last season, when a bunch of seniors saw, even at 3-4, they could still get to eight wins and win a bowl game. 

I love you, Doug! said:

Gibby might note that Mizzou’s inept offense put up 61 yesterday.

He might, but I bet he didn’t share that with anyone. Eastern Michigan is barely an FBS team, but Drew Locked looked terrific.

CC Team said: 

Gibby better find a pass rush somehow, somewhere, someway. Couldn’t get to YSU all day and if I remember correctly, only once against Missouri.

Jury’s out on this one, but the past serves as precedent. Christian Brown is not a pass rusher. Noble Nwachukwu is, but teams plan for him. Darrien Howard is nimble but also a nose guard. Pressure doesn’t come from the defensive line, but you’ll take it if you get it. Adam Schuler can help on third down or passing downs as an end with Nwachukwu, but maybe that’s asking a lot of the redshirt freshman. Maybe Reese Donahue, a true freshman, grows into it. The point, though, it’s going to have to come from the second level, and we’ve not seen much from Sean Walters, who’s coming out on passing downs for David Long, and we’ve seen one memorable play from Justin Arndt. Actually, what’s struck me is how often middle linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton has blitzed. He, too, is not in the nickel package, which means he’s blitzing from the base. I can’t remember Nick Kwiatkoski and Jared Barber doing that too frequently. The good news is Kyzir White seems like he can grow into blitzing from the spur spot, and K.J. Dillon was pretty good at that last season.

Rdecker said:

Definitely wasn’t a good look that WVU had such a slow start. The good thing was that players seemed to understand that and with the bye week, hopefully a lot of the mistakes can be fixed. Not a good sign at all, though, that the defense has given up consecutive 400+ yard games.

The defense allowed 400 yards five times total last season and not once in non-conference play against … I don’t know. Was it better competition? Georgia Southern rang up huge numbers, Liberty was a nice FCS program that wasn’t offensively gifted (five 400-yard games). Maryland also had five 400-yard games and somehow put 656 up against Rutgers in the final game of the season. BYU hasn’t been great this season — but Utah’s got a solid defense — and I think if the offense struggles Saturday, WVU might be made to wonder about who starts at quarterback for the Cougars. Believe it or not, BYU, led by offensive coordinator Ty Detmer, is the only team in the country that doesn’t have a pass of 20 or more yards this season. It has three runs that have gone 20 or more yards. That’s three snaps out of of 144 that gained 20 yards. That’s abysmal. Not surprisingly, the Cougars are No. 95 nationally with 5.16 yards per play. Not surprisingly, they haven’t reached 20 points yet. But Tanner Mangum is on the sideline. That might be a surprise. Taysom Hill, who has been a very good player in the past, won the job in the preseason. His 5.6 yards per attempt isn’t even in the top 100 nationally. Mangum was an air show at times last season. I can’t find where I read it, but he averaged four 20-plus pass plays and one 40-plus pass play per game.

I love you, Doug! said:

Meanwhile what is wrong with Durante, aside from everything? He looks terrible running, blocking, catching (or not).

Doesn’t look comfortable whatsoever (and he’s still a small guy trying to block big guys). Missing the spring didn’t help, either. But I’m with Dana. Get Durante going and he probably pushes past this stuff. That’s why I thought the reverse against the Penguins was a smart play. Once he succeeds, it’s a different story, but success in this offense with this personnel might not come organically. You probably need to manufacture it. 

ffejbboc said:

If I were in charge of scheduling, I would make an all-out concerted effort to make sure these FCS games were the first contest of the year.

I know that TV often (always) dictates where these games fall, but if I were the AD I would be pushing HARD for these to games to open the season.

It’s easy to get up for the inaugural game of the year, no matter who it’s against. When it falls on the second or third weekend of September? You are asking for trouble.

I predicted 33-16 on the BGN pick-em…and I was not far off.

Interesting. The counterpoint would be that many FBS coaches want to open against a Group of 5/Power 5 team. They can’t all be Alabama for WVU, but Missouri certainly had the team’s attention throughout the summer. I think there’s an inspirational value in that for the winter-spring-summer cycle. That might not exist for an FCS team, though that FCS team would have the inspiration for the winter-spring-summer cycle. I don’t know what’s right. Like I said, interesting. I’d debate it over a Nestea.

Loopy Hoopy said:

A simple solution to Red Zone Efficiency? Score from 50+ yards out.

Incontrovertible. 

PeterB said:

“Mr. End Zone, Daikiel Shorts, caught one on the outskirts of Quillacollo and a dusty cantina where Mack was alone and miserable at the end of the bar,” may be one of my favorite sentences ever written by Mr. Casazza.

… and he’s seen way too many of my sentences.

Clarence Oveur said:

Here in Northeast Ohio
Back in twenty-sixteen
Bo Pelini lost his [shirt]
And got flagged for a solid 15

I used to really like Pelini. I’m not intimately familiar with his behind-the-scenes work at Nebraska, which was his apparent undoing, but for a while he was really cool. (Shirt!) Pelini seems so out of place on that sideline now, though. He seems upset, though perhaps it’s the … sour … grapes of wrath?

Dann White said:

Sorry to post late, I’ve been ill. Did you know that WV literally is tilted to the West, that Petersburg is at a higher altitude than say….Parkersburg? Do you know why?

No.

Dann White said: 

Because OHIO SUCKS!!!!

Dann

Nope. Nope.

SheikYbuti said:

It really doesn’t help matters any that Virginia blows.

Hi, I’m Mike. Born in Ohio. Schooled in Virginia. 

tls62pa said:

Soooo… the woman in the WWII photo ironically just died yesterday…http://www.aol.com/article/2016/09/11/woman-kissed-by-sailor-in-famed-photo-at-world-war-twos-end-die/21469709/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000058&amp

Ooooookkkkkk. This is not my fault.

Mack said:

Here’s a hot take to start your Tuesday. The untimed down for Central Michigan against Oklahoma State is one of the worst officiating errors ever . . . in a sport that regularly has egregious officiating errors.

I didn’t watch the game, but it is my understanding that Oklahoma State had the ball and it was fourth down. Oklahoma State ran all of the time off the clock and committed intentional grounding. As most know, essentially the penalty for intentional grounding is the ball is placed at the spot where the quarterback would have been sacked had he not thrown the ball away (and a loss of down). So how in the world does a group of officials think that the other team is entitled to an untimed down after that happens?

Also, I assume there is generally an appeal/protest policy in college football. Under what scenario does it make sense to keep that as a win for Central Michigan when the correct call would have ended the game?

Don’t get me wrong…I don’t care if Oklahoma State gets a win or not, but incompetence is incompetence. And I would be morally remiss if I didn’t mentioned that WVU received the benefit of a more obscure blown call when it beat Louisville in 2005, which gave it a Big East title and the Sugar Bowl win against Georgia.

… cripes. I don’t disagree with any of this. I think Fifth Down is more egregious, because that only required the ability to count to four, whereas this required a certain depth of knowledge of the rule book. But it’s close. (I didn’t know about the no-untimed-down thing, but I figured the game was over. It’s a turnover on downs, and you can’t start a series with 0:00 on the clock … though I guess that’s the same thing.) It’s bold and, I think, unprecedented, and that’s why no one had the nerve to do it, but I would have been OK with the outcome being reversed. Apart from the audacity needed to do it, there’s nothing standing in the way. And just so we’re clear, the difference between this and WVU v. Louisville is this about a clear rule and that was about failing to see and enforce a penalty. This is about a decisive play never even happening. That is about a bunch of football remaining after the missed call. 

Down South said:

The whole OSU/CMU thing has bugged me since it ended. I’ve listened to the way officials said the last OSU play should have been called by the officials. My problem with it is that the rules would have essentially allowed OSU to gain a benefit (and end the game) by committing a penalty/running an illegal play. OSU takes the snap on fourth down and intentionally grounds the football. If CMU accepts the penalty, it’s spot of foul and loss of down. Game over. If CMU declines the penalty, the pass is simply incomplete and the game is over. Either way, OSU gets the benefit of an illegal play. I can’t imagine the people who write rule books intended such a result.

I read an interview where Gundy said they practice that specific play. My question is how did an entire college coaching staff make that play a part of their playbook, practice it and never consider that it might be called intentional grounding when it very obviously is intentional grounding. All OSU had to do was sprint their QB outside the tackle box and let it fly and the game ends on a legal play. The officiating error was bad, but I’m not sure the coaching by OSU was any better.

I’ve got a lot of problems with it, too. I feel badly for the players, and especially CMU’s. They’ll never have that win without the “… yeah, but …” attached to it. The players (and coaches) can tell that story and act out that last play for the rest of their lives, and people will always say, “… yeah, but …” and that sucks, man. I don’t have a problem with that rule existing as it does and being exploited. Coaches seek out that stuff all the time. All the time. In fact, there’s a Mike Gundy Rule now because he found and exploited something last season. The rules people can fix this, too. Near as I can tell, Gundy wasn’t aware his play was going to be intentional grounding, right? He just thought it was going to run the final few seconds off the clock. I would have done something different, like a normal shotgun snap to the QB, or a running back, who has orders to turn around and run toward the other end zone. The same coaches who spend time looking or loopholes oftentimes overthink things, but you can forgive Gundy for not wanting to punt and trust that the punter would have rocketed one out of bounds.

Mack said:

“Gundy said they practice that specific play. ”

There is no way this is true.

” All OSU had to do was sprint their QB outside the tackle box and let it fly and the game ends on a legal play.”

If they actually practiced a play for that scenario, this would be the play they practiced.

But in that scenario, Oklahoma State clearly is in a rare spot where they can benefit from an illegal play. they could commit holding to keep anyone from tackling the ball carrier until four seconds elapse. They could do a million different things that wouldn’t give the other team an untimed down.

I kind of disagree that the Oklahoma State coaching was bad because the play they ran was safe (everyone blocked and the quarterback let it fly deep so there’s no real chance of the ball carrier taking a hit . . . and the clock would clearly run out). If they punt, for example, then everyone is going after the ball, plus your punter is going to be 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage so if there is a screwup then Central Michigan is all the more closer to the end zone… and it only needed a field goal (I think) to tie it.

Running the ball likely wouldn’t have run the clock out.

If the quarterback had punted the ball out of bounds instead of throwing it. . . then there would have been no penalty and no officiating screwup… but it would be riskier.

From what I’ve heard, Oklahoma State received the benefit of a huge blown call – and wouldn’t have otherwise scored – on its drive where it took the lead . . . so karma?

I asked Dana in his press conference Tuesday. He said he never practiced that when he was at Oklahoma State. Again, I’d do something totally different. Say you do have the QB roll AND you have the 10 other people commit blatant holding penalties just so the QB doesn’t get touched. Extreme, I know, but the point is CMU is finished. Accept the penalty, and there’s no time left. Replay the down, and there’s still no time left and Oklahoma State gets the untimed down, when it can just take a knee. 

Drew said:

I would say they weren’t being rewarded for an illegal play. The penalty simply doesn’t change the outcome in this instance, which is perfectly logical and reasonable. The penalty makes it the same as if a normal play had occurred with what would typically be a negative play for the offense as the result. It’s a bit of a loophole, in a way, but it’s not some unfair exploitation. The point of the penalty is to assume that the sack (loss of yardage, negative result of the play in regard to the typical goal of the offense) actually occurred. The assumptions the penalty takes into account aren’t exactly in accordance with the true goal of the offense in this scenario, but that’s not the fault of the penalty/rule. It’s a situation created by the game itself. Inherent in a sport ruled by a clock are situations in which the clock itself dictates how the game is played. It’s not a flaw that needs corrected. It’s the very nature of the game.

That’s fine, but here’s something else that bothers me. Oklahoma State rushed five on the Hail Mary. Why? Cowboys never practiced that?

Bobby Heenan said:

Not a real in depth analysis there for what Dana looks for in a QB.

As best as I can tell, great hair and the ability to transfer credit hours seems like the foundation.

It was, in essence, “Guys who are good.” I doubt that was what Hertz was going for. Also, here’s a discussion we’ll have to begin considering: Clint’s hair v. Grier’s beard.

hoot said:

Having a hot girlfriend would be a plus, as well.

So you probably know this, but I have friends who work in recruiting and who work in NFL scouting. We talk sometimes about work, and before the last draft, we were talking about Goff and Wentz and went down the road about what you look for in a quarterback apart from tangible things like arm strength, height, mobility, etc. They are on the lookout for some vain things, but hot girlfriend wasn’t one of those. Not inherently, at least. But the group of friends was. If someone had a group of friends who weren’t on the football team, that was a good sign for the quarterback. He’s well-rounded, he has various interests, he has a life outside of football. But if that was the quarterback’s lone group of friends, if he didn’t hang with his teammates, that was a problem. If the quarterback wasn’t the, I guess, leader of that non-football group, if he blended in or sat in the background, that was worth exploring. It wasn’t necessarily a negative, but you had to wonder how the person in charge of the offense or the huddle could do that if he wasn’t the most compelling person in his clique. 

MontanaEer said:

According to ESPN’s Big 12 Blog, there’s not 3 sides of the ball: “TCU has flashed its potential on both sides of the ball, but the consistency has not been the

Hey, how do you feel about TCU right now? I feel like that’s another swing game on WVU’s schedule. Woudn’t be surprised if TCU went 7-2 or 4-5.

reems said:

mine has four panels

Noted.

Sid Brockman said:

I think this was Skyler’s best game. And if I squint real hard, I can see this offense being special with a solid run game and deep pass ability.

Still need to see Howard put up numbers against a K-State or Oklahoma or TCU, though. We’ve seen Good Skyler in non-conference play.

I love you, Doug! said:

Any insight into why WVU ran the double stack on what seemed like each of the last several plays to end the game?

To put it on film.

ffejbboc said:

Given the time consuming nature of helmet stickers, pretty sure Alabama has a grad position on their coaching staff titled “Adhesive Application Assistant.”

And he was probably a Sun Belt head coach two years ago.

Diddybops said:

I would like to see more of the run/pass option out of the stack look, like ASU was doing to against in the bowl game last year. The play that I really like is essentially triple option play with an extremely long lateral, but it puts so much pressure on the denfense to play fundamentally sound. It makes gap integrity basically the whole field, with the QB and RB running the zone read and a set up WR screen on the outside, which could be done on both side of the field. Any one of those options (or gaps) could be utilized by the offense to punish the defense. The only challenge is, this puts a lot of pressure on the QB to make the right decisions quickly in space and see the whole field, but it is also putting tremendous pressure on the D. We already run the WR screen out of the stack, I’ve just not seen it combined with the zone read with run/pass option, but I think Skyler could do it. Love the stacks and how it can be employed though! Why don’t you gently nudge Holgs in this direction Mike, I won’t be upset you guys stole my favorite play?

This intrigues me. I think Dana trusts Skyler enough to make the decisions. The throws? I think he could make it to the boundary as long as the blocker is capable. A throw to the field side is long in length and the time in the air. But this play might also take some heat off the tackles, with whom Dana doesn’t seem too pleased right now. But if the defensive end is a read the offensive line springs, that gives the tackle a break and a different assignment. The dive should be able to chunk up yards, as long as the defense isn’t stubborn and does fan out a little wider than normal. 

netbros said:

Thanks for all the time and effort on G&B Mike. Always primo.

My biggest fear with the stacks is an astute CB who quick jumps the WR screen, intercepts and takes it to the house.

Valid concern, but it should never happen. If that’s an impediment, it’s one they can work out in practice or personnel.

Sid Brockman said:

And then, Diddy, throw in the play to McCoy on that with the run/pass option. What is a defense to do?

Yeah, this should cool off the astute CB. Getting the touchdown was good for style and good for McKoy last week, but BYU’s cornerbacks coach is going to show his players that play next week as many times as he’ll show the YSU cornerback bulldozing Durante.

pknocker40 said:

*adjusts glasses* Well, actually, an FCS team can’t have its own Super Bowl given that it’s not in the Bowl Subdivision *puffs inhaler*

Enjoy the weekend!