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Hi. I can’t stay long. I’m in Richmond as I type this for my nephew’s baptism, and then I’m heading back home. And then tomorrow I have class early end a flight to K.C. for Big 12 basketball media day on Tuesday. And then Wednesday — I don’t want to jinx in.
But none of that means we should eschew what happened Saturday. WVU took apart another really good offense — Uh, Texas Tech? That game had 49 possessions! — and, once again, never departed or was made to leave its comfort zone. That, to me, is the theme of this half-a-season. The Mountaineers have never not played their game.
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You are looking live at the today’s head coaches following last season’s game in Fort Worth, Texas. Dana Holgorsen, of course, low-fived Trevone Boykin during the game and then said afterward that Boykin was the best player in college football. That was interesting, because after the prior game, Holgorsen said Baylor receiver Corey Coleman was the best player in college football.
His opinion must carry weight, because it was on the field after the game when the two coaches shook hands and TCU’s Gary Patterson asked Holgorsen what TCU’s chances were against Baylor. The Horned Frogs were No. 5 at that time. Baylor was No. 2. Holgorsen replied, “You’ll win. You’re a more complete team.”
I don’t remember the occasion or the reason why we were talking, but I do remember it was 2012. Holgorsen and I were talking about the Big 12 and the coaches, and he raved about Patterson. Not just for his coaching or his defense, either. You could tell he liked him, and that’s probably another reason Holgorsen enjoys playing the Horned Frogs.
Well, we’ve learned the feeling is mutual. Patterson was carrying on this week about how impressed he is by West Virginia and what the Mountaineers do on offense and defense and even special teams. The point was WVU didn’t always possess that balance or cohesion. “He’s really matured in all facets,” Patterson said. “He’s one of my favorite guys in our league, because he calls it how it is, he coaches hard and he goes about his business.”
Business could not have been easy this week. WVU got a lot of publicity and approval beyond the jumps in the polls. There were national stories and interviews, and everything was positive, which is mostly new to these players. They sort of operate on negativity and doubt.
“What’s 5-0?” running backs coach JaJuan Seider said. “We go out and lose the rest of these games, then we’re below .500. We haven’t done anything yet. It’s good to be 5-0, but we don’t take it for granted. It doesn’t mean anything if we stumble in the next seven games and don’t do what we need to do. We’re still coaching for something bigger than what we’ve got right now.”
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which met Josh Carraway over the summer. Nice guy. I enjoyed our conversation very much. I felt obligated to let him know I cover West Virginia and that I suspected he’d be, shall we say, identified on Oct. 22.
“I already know,” he said.
“You do? Any why’s that?”
“I think I facemasked a guy the last time I was there,” Carraway said.
I think that was one of the most hostile moments I’ve witnessed at Mountaineer Field. I haven’t seen them all, like the Syracuse melee you all reset this week, but I’ve seen many. That one was way up there. And Carraway, whose feelings on quarterbacks are simple — “I don’t really like them.” — already knew that.
“I didn’t know I grabbed the facemask at the time,” Carraway said. “When I went back and watched the film, I saw that I did.”
I know you folks remember that. Some would argue it served as a turning point. Others would argue it served as turning points.
Let’s remember just the game. WVU was ahead 10-0 when this happened. TCU made a mess out of a sky kick following a Josh Lambert field goal, and the Mountaineers recovered at the TCU 30-yard line. Trickett runs and gains 2 yards, but there should also be a half-the-distance penalty for the personal foul. First-and-10 at the 14!
Except, no, that didn’t happen, and Lambert kicked a second field goal. TCU won 31-30. I think a 17-0 deficit would have been very hard for TCU to erase and for WVU to squander. Felt like the Mountaineers were gripping it a little tighter after two field goals.
The way that game ended cost WVU a week later when, I’m sorry, one loss turned into two at Texas — remember, we weren’t allowed to ask players about the TCU game on Tuesday of the following week. After the loss to the Longhorns, Dana Holgorsen couldn’t deny the obvious. “Whether it was a little bit of a hangover, so to speak, from last week, I don’t know, but we weren’t ready to play. I take responsibility for that.”
Clint Trickett played his final snaps a game later in a loss against Kansas State, and suddenly 6-2 WVU was 6-5 WVU, and a junior college transfer first designated for a redshirt was the starting quarterback.
What we sometimes forget about Clint Trickett is that he was having a very good season in 2014. What we easily remember is he could not finish the season. Hits accumulated on his thinning frame, and ultimately concussions ended his career early. He did play in two games after this, but there’s an argument to be made he was not the same after this play.
Trickett was 7-for-9 for 77 yards and a touchdown in the first two drives, and the Mountaineers led 10-0 against a team that was boat racing opponents in the first quarter to the tune of a 104-44 scoring advantage. The deficit was the largest of the season.
After that tackle, which is what we have to call it, Trickett went 8-for-17 for 85 yards and two interceptions. For the entire season, he was 225-for-328 for 2,840 yards, 18 touchdowns and five interceptions before the play and 56-for-91 for 445 yards, no touchdowns and five interceptions after the play.
But that, of course, ushered in Skyler Howard, who arched brows with a cameo late in the win against Kansas in the middle of the season. He played well in relief against Kansas State, went 1-1 as starter to end the schedule and is now 14-6 in charge of the offense, including 9-1 at home.
It feels boorish to put it all on Carraway, but we can agree the 2014 game was a star-crossed occasion. If that’s a penalty, and if WVU scores a touchdown to go up 17-0, maybe the Mountaineers win. If they win, maybe they’re not flat against Texas. If Trickett lasts the entire season, maybe the offense beats Kansas State. If they’re 9-3 — or 10-2? — at the end of the regular season, maybe they’re in a better bowl. If they have a nine- or 10-win season — 11 with a bowl?!?! — maybe the offseason and the preamble to 2015 is different. If the preamble is different, maybe October is, too. If 2014 enjoyed an alternate finish, maybe The Administration has a different perspective for last October or December or February.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, make sure it all fits.
Wayne said:
Let’s gig some Horned Frogs
Their Carraway, one bad seed
Plant him on the field
Nice!
Mack said:
I forgot about Holgorsen’s meltdown on the sideline when he called the timeout. That was the highlight of the game. And, I can’t explain it, but every time he chugs a Red Bull it’s electric television.
I’d pay $4.99 a month (during the season only) to get a feed of him during games. The Red Bull thing really is thrilling, and I think we’re naive to think the tantrums and the wild hair and the visor antics are unrelated. The best part about the Red Bull is how he’s made it into a theatrical act. His posture is to behold. You’ve had a significant other pull out a camera during a dinner or at a bar and say, “Hey, smile!” when you’re about to sip an IPA or a Malbec. And you always try to do something dignified. That’s Dana and the Red Bull. We’re really only two or three games away from Extended Pinky.
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West Virginia’s offense has some accolades and some issues. It ranks No. 7 in yards per game. Only five other teams average 500 yards of offense with 300 passing and 200 rushing. (Ohio State deserves a mention for averaging 200 passing and 300 rushing.) But in 2016, the year Dana Holgorsen wanted to see the Mountaineers jump from last season’s 34 points per game to 42, the scoring offense has not matched that success.
Of the top 25 teams in total offense, only East Carolina is lower than WVU in points per game. The Mountaineers average 32.8 points per game, which ranks No. 46. ECU, No. 13 in yards per game, averages 28 points per game, which ranks No. 74.
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Everything, um, tastes better when you’re winning, and Dana Holgorsen has been sipping on victories for a while now.
We’re witnessing a run that’s spanned just shy of a calendar year now, and it’s always useful to evaluate coaches on the course of a 12- or 13-game stretch, which in the case of a Big 12 team ought to include three non-conference games and nine conference games and, if you’re willing, a bowl. The Mountaineers are one Saturday away from a 12-game segment, and they enter this weekend’s game against TCU with a 10-1 record — four non-conference wins (one in a bowl, one in a second neutral site) and seven Big 12 games (4-0 at home, 2-1 on the road).
This has been good football, and this has been good Holgorsen. Let’s call it Good: Holgorsen.
I come at it from a different angle and with different interests, but Winning Dana is always the best Dana. The other versions are good — I like Salty Dana and Brutally Honest Dana when things aren’t going this well — and I think a lot of beat writers and columnists would tell you that it’s easier and, I’m sorry, more fun to cover a team that’s not as successful as this one. But this is fun. WVU football and, dare I say, college football are better, more palatable, when Holgorsen is winning and acting like this.
“This?”
Yeah. Akimbo visor. Messy hair. Touchdowns. Formations. Celebrations. Tantrums. Red Bull. There were some Mad Scientist moments Saturday and moments like the one from Monday.
On the Big 12 teleconference, someone told Holgorsen the television cameras showed him slugging Red Bull on the sideline and then asked whether he’s ever been offered an endorsement deal.
“I’m really happy with Coca-Cola,” he said. “They do a great job.”
Coca-Cola, you probably suspect, has a campus-wide sponsorship deal with West Virginia University.
“They caught me in a weak moment,” Holgorsen said. “I like variety. I slammed one of those and then got back to drinking Coca-Cola and Dasani water, like I normally do.”
Good! (Aside: Another subtle dig at “The Administration” Tuesday, and we’re this close to crafting a post in which Dana’s a WWE face and The Administration is constantly holding him back and keeping him from a title shot.)
Before and after that Red Bull, we saw some throwback WVU, which at the beginning of the season is what we thought we might see during the season. This is as close to 2012 as we’ve seen since then.
The four-wide looks are common now, to the point it’s virtually a base set, but it’s still something the offense didn’t do this often last year or the year before. There were weird formations I’ve never seen in practice, never mind a game. The Mountaineers hadn’t used an empty set since, I think, the bowl game. If it happened this season, it was probably a running back motioning out of the backfield as opposed to starting out empty.
But we saw some resets, too. Skyler Howard is running the ball again after taking and needing time to heal his ribs. Two running backs were on the field at the same time, which is starting to happen more and more as Kennedy McKoy gets familiar, because you need there backs if you’re going to use two.
And WVU has a tight end. This could be a big deal.
WVU tried and failed to incorporate Stone Wolfley and/or Rob Dowdy in the first two games of the season. Every other heavy package the offense used after that featured Eli Wellman and Mike Ferns, who are physical presences but not tight ends. But Trevon Wesco is. He’s a 6-foot-5, 260-pound wild card. He’s a big, strong body to put out there at the end of the line, and though he’s still sort of raw — he was a high school basketball star who was injured short of passing and rushing for 1,000 yards as a senior — and he didn’t play at all last season at Lackawanna College because of a knee injury, there’s still promise here.
He played special teams against Kansas State, and he was on the kickoff team Saturday, but here’s his first snap against the Red Raiders. He’s on the left end of the line.
That’ll work. Holgorsen hasn’t used a tight end as feature of the passing game here. Cody Clay succeeded by surprising teams and by being left uncovered. But he helped the run game so much. That was Wesco’s role Saturday. He only got on the field when WVU got close to the end zone. This was inside-the-30 stuff, and the Mountaineers weren’t afraid to use him.
Third-and-5, run a read play to Wesco’s side. He doesn’t do a lot, but he does enough. He’s been practicing for a few weeks now, and the Mountaineers went to the medicine cabinet against a team that wanted to stop WVU’s running game. That did not work, and the Mountaineers had some healthy gains when Wesco was in the game on the way to 332 yards rushing.
WVU has too many skill players to do a lot of stuff with a tight end, especially between the 20s, but Wesco is not Clay. Wesco will give a quarterback a big area to throw to. He can jump and he has big hands. He’ll go to a height linebackers can’t reach. He’ll box defensive backs out of his catching radius. This is definitely worth tracking because of a play that didn’t happen or work.
This is something WVU runs or at least threatens to run quite often. You have to prepare for it. It also calls back to the Howard touchdown run, because the formation is the same and because Howard will run. So when he’s on the edge with the ball in a similar spot on the field, you have to shift your focus to him. That diversion allows Wellman to slip open in the flat and catch passes. Credit the defender here for stopping it, and I’m not sure Wellman would have scored had he caught it, but watch Wesco. He’s trying, without much success, to sell a block and get to the second level so he can angle toward the back corner of the end zone.
Overall, he’s not where he needs to be or where he will be, but he’s not going to be out there unless he has a chance to help the offense. If nothing else, he returned heavy sets to the repertoire and helped for a day, but given all the additions and alterations Holgorsen is making, you sort of believe there can be more to this. It’s the hallmark of a good team and a fun time.
How did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look at the Good and the Bad of WVU v. Texas Tech.
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None of us, not even Mack, can be sure about what’s yet to come for West Virginia. We’ve seen a 5-0 ranked team fall apart, and we’ve seen a team crawl out of the ashes of a winless October and piece together something that’s now produced 10 wins in 11 games. I think what we do know is that on Saturday we saw the Mountaineers improve before our very eyes, and that’s a good sign for whatever follows.
There are a few things that impress. The defense was great, and it’s markedly improved from what we witnessed earlier in the season. But when you have a bunch of players who either haven’t played this defense or who haven’t played this much, those same players are bound to improve. Tony Gibson’s 3-3-5 is bizarre and a good deal of its success comes from how weird it is and how three days isn’t enough time to get ready for it. That said, he’d tell you he doesn’t do a lot, which means players repeat a lot of the same coverages and blitzes and run fits and the like over and over and over. They catch on and they get better.
It’s sort of the same on offense, and this is where I point out the red zone offense, which had not been great, was 8-for-8 Saturday. Dana Holgorsen’s playbook is famously thin on game day, but we’re witnessing new formations that work and old formations that had been absent. I think it’s worth noting that WVU basically didn’t use tight ends at all the previous two — basically three — games and then did pretty well whenever it had Trevon Wesco on the field Saturday. Texas Tech wanted to stop the run, and those big sets WVU used didn’t let that happen.
To me, that’s part of the hallmark of Saturday. WVU wanted to play a very specific game, and it did. WVU wanted to avoid a very specific game, and it did. The offense and the defense pretty much did what they wanted to do, although we do have to point out that Texas Tech’s defense is horrendous and its offense doesn’t have many layers. But this wasn’t about luck or unexpected events or ideas. It was a Hannibal Smith game. That’s a really good sign.
And again, the Mountaineers never left their comfort zone. I really thought Texas Tech would be the team to do that. I wasn’t sure the Red Raiders could win, but I thought they could get a 14-0 lead or a 13-3 lead and make WVU re-evaluate things. We’re five games in and that panic button is dusty. I know Kansas State had a 13-point lead in the third quarter, but did Holgorsen scrap the plan, act desperate and get lucky? I would not say that.
I would say that through the 5-0 start and with 10 wins in 11 games the Mountaineers and their head coach have figured out how to find and secure success. The challenge now is to sustain it the rest of the way.
I’m Iron Man. No cheap cash metal, I’m steel alloy. True identity hidden inside secret tabloids. Breathe oxygen, both sides of my jaw carry oxes. The texts hit like the bangers in 100-watt boxes.
9:43:
Driving from Pittsburgh to NC, saw Rte. 19 closed for Bridge Day, let’s hope WVU fans don’t have that “I wanna jump off a bridge” feeling around 330pm…
12:12
Like the use of the stacks to get White free for 6. Btw, BYU used the double stack formation last night… copycougars
12:12:
Away game Skyler is here
12:12:
Two weeks to script that opening series?! #weregonnarunalloverthem
12:19:
Please run the football here.
12:20:
Overruled.
12:20:
Never mind. Coming back. But still … let’s not abandon the run today.
12:22:
I will say this … I want a healthy Crawford when WVU plays Oklahoma.
12:22:
Hell of a run.
12:24:
If Mahomes is mediocre today, WVU has no excuse.
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Ten wins in 11 games, and in the 10th, there were 650 yards of offense. That’s the seventh-best total in school history. His quarterback, who has grown and who has been developed into a pretty reliable part of this attack, passed Major Harris and is now fifth in school history with 42 touchdown passes. The offense topped 300 yards rushing and passing and averaged more than 7 yards per rush and 15 yards per completion. Four players ran for at least 42 yards while four had at least 47 yards receiving.
Eleven possessions. One punt. Six touchdowns. Three field-goal attempts. One end-of-half drive.
