You, sir, are the next defensive line coach.
He’ll reunite with Tony Gibson, who, as you recall, really admires Tall from the time they spent together at WVU and Michigan.
So much to process here, right? Let’s attempt to solve the puzzle.
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Bruh, can’t you take another day off?
We’re live at the (/turns around, cranes neck) United Supermarkets Arena for WVU v. Texas Tech. Juwan Staten is good to go today, but Elijah Macon will not play. He picked up some bruised ribs at practice yesterday.
The Red Raiders are 10-1 at home this season, and the only loss was Saturday against No. 10 Texas. That’s three losses in the past four games after a promising 9-1 start. The Mountaineers, who are now ranked No. 14, are tied for the national lead in wins away from home. They’d be alone in first place with a win tonight, and that seems very possible because some of WVU’s best moments this season have been far from the Coliseum.
The Mountaineers were outscored by 11 points in the first half against Boston College in the semifinal in Puerto Rico, but outscored the Eagles by 15 after halftime. In the final of that tournament, WVU built a 15-point lead to beat then-No 17 UConn.
Three days later, the team scored a season-high 103 points in a 31-point win against VMI in the Charleston Civic Center.
The loss to LSU was followed by three consecutive games away from home, and WVU won at Northern Kentucky by outscoring the Norse 47-25 after halftime, survived Marshall at the Civic Center and then shot a season-high 53.4 percent in Madison Square Garden to beat North Carolina State by 14 points.
On Saturday, WVU scored 48 points in the second half, the most in any half against TCU this season, and outpaced the nation’s sixth-ranked scoring defense with more points than the Horned Frogs had allowed all season.
Consequently, WVU is off to its best start since the 1981-82 team won 24 of its first 25 games.
“I don’t think we get into where we’re at, to be honest,” WVU forward Devin Williams said. “Nobody gets into where we play. We just go out and play. It doesn’t matter. The most important part when I’m playing is when if I feel like something isn’t going right, I can look at somebody on my team and see they’re ready. That gives me confidence I can go out there and play and I know my team’s going to be there with me.”
It’d behoove WVU to bank this one because what follows is just rude: home Saturday against No. 17 Iowa State, home Jan. 13 against No. 16 Oklahoma and on the road Jan. 17 against Texas. The fourth game? TCU. I don’t think WVU particularly enjoyed Saturday’s experience, so that’s not exactly a break, either.
Let’s bounce…
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Late Sunday, the picture cleared and most everyone at WVU expects today to see Shane Lyons named the next athletic director.
All things considered, hard to do better than that, and the Mountaineers honed in on Lyons with two meetings in the past three weeks, including a weekend trip to campus with the family that seemed to tip the scales.
And can you guess who’ll be on campus with Lyons? Karl Joseph!
I’m off to Lubbock. We’ll talk more there about how and why the Mountaineers have been so good away from home.
You are looking live at the cozy Wilkerson-Greines Athletic Center in Fort Worth, home this season to the unbeaten and once-ranked TCU Horned Frogs. It’s quite a story, what with one of the nation’s six remaining unbeaten teams playing 20 minutes from campus in a gym that houses 13 area high schools and has a swim meet going on today as well.
Not that TCU cares about this being its 11th home game on the road this season, or the fact the crowds are sparse. They didnt get big crowds anyways.
Any any time given to that today buries the lede: No Juwan State.
That’s Juwan Staten in the gray sweatsuit. He’s sick and not likely to play vs. 13-0 TCU. pic.twitter.com/ypQT6Im6rT
— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) January 3, 2015
That an issue, not only today, but Monday. This is WVU’s “treat” trip in which it plays two games on one road trip rather than make a pair of trips this far away from campus during the season. Can Staten get right in time to play Monday against Texas Tech?
Starting for the Mountaineers: Gary Browne, Daxter Miles, Jaysean Paige, Jon Holton and Devin Williams.
I don’t think this guy has any eligibility left.
After 4 good years, this account will be ending next week. Here’s my resignation letter. pic.twitter.com/mgphZ7XoUQ
— Not Dana Holgorsen (@FauxHolgorsen) December 23, 2014
One of the final days of 2014 was one of the sadder days of 2014 as @FauxHolgorsen, the expertly structured, timed and executed parody account that honors — honors? lampoons? captures? — West Virginia football coach Dana Holgorsen announced its retirement.
Just terrible news.
WVU has, I think, terrific parody accounts for Holgorsen and Bob Huggins, and losing one meant for lighter laughter. Faux Dana was clinical and comical and creative, and it turns out that took a toll, as explained in the letter above. It is the price if greatness, I suppose.
In a strange, strange sort of way, Fake Dana and I grew to be sort of close while maintaining perpetual distance through the years. He would lean on me in tough times and I looked to him for hilarity, but there was also this bizarre thing that happened: People thought I was him, or he was me. Probably he was me.
Confession time!
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There’s a text later in today’s edition that says in essence the score was closer than the game, and it’s hard to dismiss that. I spent some time looking for an area where West Virginia was better than Texas A&M, or where the Aggies weren’t as good as the Mountaineers. In an eight-point game, you’d expect some sort of a split. There was no such split here, and that’s got to be troubling for a WVU team that allegedly nailed its pre-bowl practices that were better than any of the ones to precede them this season. (I think this is precisely why the media is locked out of bowl practices, never mind any other practices.)
Texas A&M ran and blocked better and its front seven played better. It’s defensive backs played passes and guarded receivers better. WVU’s offensive line struggled and the defensive line was “terrible,” according to Dana Holgorsen. Receivers and defensive backs dropped passes and turnovers. Tackling wasn’t close. The quarterback play wasn’t close. The Aggies’ punter struggled less. I squinted really hard and saw WVU won 7-0 in points off turnovers and WVU being slightly better in kickoff returns, and neither mattered. I guess Josh Lambert was the better kicker, but his productivity came at a cost.
That was about it.
Overall, Texas A&M was the superior team. Better prepared, better in the red zone, better on the ground, better coached, more aggressive, more assertive, more obnoxious. Back away and it doesn’t feel that close, does it? Yet those were 7-5 teams that had similar offenses and similar seasons. Now, in the end, the score was fairly even, but WVU’s greatest sin was losing so many of the areas that create and define the differences between close teams and in close games.
The Mountaineers looked like they had a handle on things, and then let them all get away.
“You play a game you have to score 46 points to win and you can’t settle for field goals,” WVU coach Dana Holgorsen said. “I think we did a good job driving the football. The turnover battle wasn’t an issue, and it has been an issue, but the biggest thing is we didn’t score enough points. We moved the ball well, but didn’t score enough points.”
The Aggies (8-5) of the mighty SEC West answered the 17-7 deficit by outscoring WVU 38-13 over the next two-plus quarters and dominating the third quarter in particular to take firm control. Texas A&M has won a bowl in four consecutive seasons for the first time in school history. The Mountaineers have lost their past two and four out of five after winning bowls in the 2006-09 seasons.
The loss capped another weighty collapse for the Mountaineers (7-6) late in the season. In 2012, WVU lost six of its final eight games. Last season, it was six of seven. This season, it was four of five, that after a 6-2 start, a No. 20 ranking and a win against then-No. 4 Baylor.
“I guess that’s how the punches roll,” WVU junior nose guard Kyle Rose said. “I’m not sure how it happens. Maybe it’s our mentality and somehow toward the beginning the season we start off strong and maybe toward the end of the season we lack confidence and lose a game here and there, but we need to be able to keep a balanced emotional state.”
And at the end, all the flag waving you could do about Lambert’s excellent season seemed to rightly stand to say WVU kicked way more field goals than a really good team needs to be kicking. Texas A&M was 5 for 5 in the red zone with four touchdowns. WVU was 3 for 4 with two field goals. That’s your ball game. And where’s the champagne? We need champagne. Now look as hard as you can with this text in your hand. And now hold up your chain, slow-motion through the flames. Now cue the smoke machines and the simulated rain. My edits are in [brackets].
2:06:
For the record, I have zero good feelings about this competition. We’ve not done well with physical mismatches, especially up front.
2:08:
Playing the #HuggsDrinkingGame and last rule about punt returns….I’m naked already…
2:08:
Hmm I see Operation Pass to TAMU Gut failed on third down. Simply inspired play calling on that first drive.
2:11:
Followed by shoddy defense. I may set a record in turning off a game at this rate
2:14:
Give Gibbie another [fat] raise!!!
2:16:
So are we allowed to blame that blown coverage on Karl Joseph or ?
2:18:
DOES KARL KNOW?
2:18:
Karl NFL ready, so long as the Redskins draft him.
2:20:
Okay…my nerves are already shot!
2:21:
What’s with the Texas A&M nastyass attitude? #NoSouthernHospitality
2:22:
Squirt probably squirted from his butt a little
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There’s something charming about the dormant period before a bowl game and the possibilities involved with what coaches will do with their idle minds. Do they install a new offense? Do they work on trick plays? Really, what’s happening in all those closed practices? Why are their snipers atop the press box? When did they get a moat?
And when you have the circumstances preceding today’s Liberty Bowl, you have to wonder even more. Texas A&M and West Virginia have the same offense. The head coaches have worked together. Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator the past two seasons was WVU’s quarterbacks coach the two seasons before that. And that coordinator, Jake Spavital, picked up the phone when he learned of the bowl matchup and now famously called his former mentor to tell Dana Holgorsen, “I know all your signals.”
WVU already had towels and play boards and hand signals. I’m prepared for anything today. Morse Code, carrier pigeon, Hmong, flares, chimney smoke. Anything.
But then Sunday the coaches poured water on it all. Holgorsen said he knows their offense because it’s his offense, and the same is true on the other side. His counterpart, Kevin Sumlin, said signal strength doesn’t matter, either.
“Much like I told my team, you can watch all the tape you want, and we’ll have a good feel for everything, but the coaches aren’t playing this game. The players are,” he said. “Last time I checked, even if you know the signals, people can’t hear you out there if you yell them out.”
There remains a little intrigue, though, no matter how much the Aggies try to downplay it. They fired their defensive coordinator at the end of the season because, bluntly, Mark Snyder’s group had a bad year and things needed to change. Fast.
Above all else, you have to win your bowl game. You don’t prepare for next season, no matter how many developmental practices you get. The bowl exists for one team to win and one team to lose, so you better believe interim defensive coordinator Mark Hagen has spent a month trying to win this game by first trying to fix his defense.
Hagen, who has been in charge for 11 practices now, said there wasn’t enough time to make sweeping changes or to tailor a lot of things to his specifications on defense. He did, however, have time to watch every down from the season and keep the good and bad in mind as he put together a plan for WVU.
The Aggies are No. 70 in scoring defense, No. 101 in total defense. No. 62 in pass defense and No. 111 in rush defense.
“We kind of picked out some of the things every game that we liked and we tried to adapt them to what we do as a team,” he said. “I don’t want to handcuff our guys and try to do everything Monday night. I think we’ve installed a plan that our defensive staff and our guys feel comfortable with, but at the same time gives us a little buffer, a little bit of protection on the back end to contend with Kevin White.”
The Aggies may not be new, but they can be different and WVU is bound to be surprised here and there. It’s one of the most interesting subplots to game that doesn’t have too many apart from the obvious ones. Exactly what Texas A&M chooses to do is something of a mystery. A minor one, but a mystery all the same.
What WVU will do defensively is anything but sneaky, at least in conception. Presentation? It’s damn sneaky. The defense will line up in the odd stack 3-3-5 defensive coordinator Tony Gibson prefers and restored this season, his first in his position, and the one that earned a new contract and a hefty raise.
His aim is to make freshman quarterback Kyle Allen uncomfortable and prone to mistakes, and the 3-3-5 does that.
This, of course, is the defense Gibson learned during his first stay at WVU and what he mastered through the years with Jeff Casteel at WVU and later Arizona. And it’s quite a story that begins with someone else’s misguided trip to Columbia, S.C., before the 2001 season.
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As a sidebar to the chatter about the staff: JaJuan Seider has a new multi-year contract with a raise. I’m efforting more details, but that’s a start. He was going to be a name at other places, if he wasn’t already.
WVU’s practicing outside in ranging degrees of rain at Memphis University School (don’t ask) and sends its offensive delegation to interviews around the corner at 4 p.m. CST. Shannon Dawson will not be the offensive coach in the group, and the chore will instead go to … Lonnie Galloway.
(I’m sure that won’t get anyone thinking about JaJuan Seider and his future, wherever that may be.)
I don’t know what the big deal is about Dawson not talking, except that I don’t know why it would be a big deal for him to talk. Maybe it was his idea. I’d like to pick his brain about what sort of culture change he’s been responsible for here — remember, he was preceded by Jeff Mullen_, Jeff Casteel was King of the Grease Board, 20 points was all the Mountaineers needed or wanted to win a game … and everything has changed — and also what it’s like to work for Dana Holgorsen.
Because even Dana Holgorsen says Dawson’s leaving to be an offensive coordinator when he really wasn’t the offensive coordinator here. It’s a neat story.
And fortunately for us, it’s one Jake Spavital can tell.
“There are still a lot of opportunities to be a head coach having not called plays if you’ve got a lot of connections and know a lot of people,” Spavital said. “It happened with us this year. Our receivers coach, David Beatty, got the head coaching job at Kansas and he’s never called a play. But he’s respected and he’s a very good recruiter, he’s got a lot of connections and he worked at Kansas previously.
“But I think if you call plays, more people know that you’ve done it and you’ve been put in certain situations to prepare you for the main job. It’s not easy to go out there and get that exposure, but I think you get more of it as the play-caller.”
Spavital was Texas A&M’s co-coordinator last season, but had the title to himself this season and was the lone play-caller for the first time.
“I got to go with my gut feeling more often, where before a lot of it was just giving ideas for down-and-distance or helping with the personnel and throwing out ideas to Dana,” Spavital said. “If he wanted them, he took them, and if he didn’t want them, he didn’t take them. It wasn’t anything personal. If he was feeling something and liked it, he’d go ahead and roll with it.”
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.
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