Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has its eyes on a prize this weekend. Your over/under for total points Sunday is 55. I find that interesting. In the previous coach’s three seasons, the final scores against Marshall were 27-3, 24-7 and 24-21. With The Product? Try 42-10 and 48-23. Certainly Dana Holgorsen is going to move the needle, but to what extreme?
Consider this: In his first game at Houston in 2008 and his first game at Oklahoma State, Holgorsen’s offenses averaged 60 points, to say nothing of plenty of yards and a slew of superlatives for players, teams and first games. So you can believe WVU will score some points Sunday. Holgorsen has proved that through the years.
“The advantage in that style of play was the players had so many reps prior to the first game that they felt like they’d been in the system a year or two already,” said Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy, who hired Holgorsen from the Cougars to invigorate his offense.
From the beginning, when he was introduced in December as the offensive coordinator, Holgorsen surprised audiences with how simple he made his offense sound. The installation, he said, would take three days. Subsequent days would be spent revisiting the lessons from those first three and refining what was learned.
The playbook was thin and contained a small number of plays. He and his coaches would add almost nothing during the season and instead take the things they felt comfortable with and practiced most during game week.
That was the background for all of the time spent preparing for the first game. The players were prepared and Holgorsen feels the same now.
“I think our guys understand what to do,” he said. “We should know what to do, which means we’ll play fast. If you accomplish that, you should be moving forward.”
The Mountaineers are just half of the equation, though. Marshall’s offense is going to offer some unknowns and surprises and that will test and bend a defense that will be susceptible to those unknowns and surprises. There are new starters and new players on defense and you can’t ask them, or expect them, to be perfect from the outset. So the Thundering Herd will score, too.
Can they hold hands and get past 55? Or does Vegas know something we don’t know?
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, don’t bare too much.
(P.S. I changed the Twitter avatar for the weekend. I’ll try to make the avatar appropriate for every game. Quick question: If you’re familiar with “icing,” can people “Mike” other people? Or did CSC cover that in the alcohol management training?)
Gordo said:
Can someone explain to me why Shawne Alston is not even being mentioned in the running backs competition among tailbacks or fullbacks?
I can now: He had an injury we never knew about and it kept him out of practice for three weeks. Prior to that revelation, I remember Holgorsen saying highly complimentary things and vowing to find ways to use the big back in the running game. I could have sworn he was even mentioned in that group of seven.
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