MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (òòò½ÊÓƵ News) òòò½ÊÓƵ” Perhaps we've been asking the wrong question about West Virginia football since last season closed with a loud thud in a defeat by Minnesota in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.
To begin with, most everyone was thinking the bowl had the wrong and, at least from òòò½ÊÓƵU's point of view, it should have been the Guaranteed Loss Bowl.
After it ended, òòò½ÊÓƵU's third season under Neal Brown showed a 6-7 record and everyone was asking why it was so bad.
Perhaps they should have been asking how it could have been so good?
Most fans were looking toward the coaching. Even Neal Brown was looking at the coaching, for it didn't take him long to bring in Graham Harrell to conceive a way the O in offense didn't stand for zero.
But was it really coaching ... or was it a lack of talent?
That's a question that has to be asked after nary a single Mountaineer was taken in the NFL draft for the first time since 2007.
Or was it a signal of some kind that Brown might be sitting on powder keg of talent, but talent not yet eligible to enter the NFL draft.
The 2006 team was a powerhouse for Rich Rodriguez, a team with two 1,000-yard rushers in Pat White and Steve Slaton, a team that rose to No. 3 in the nation after winning its first seven games, a team that would finish 11-2 ... and then.
In 2007 there were true national championship expectations that carried into the final game of the regular season, another December day that would live in infamy as Pitt stunned the Mountaineers at home as 28.5-point underdogs, costing them a shot at Ohio State for the title.
So, the fact that no player is drafted may be a good sign, at least coming off as good a season as òòò½ÊÓƵU had in 2006.
Was last year really more a sign that Dana Holgorsen had cleaned out the cupboard to the point that, combined with the Covid season of 2020, finding and developing talent became something more than just filling in the blanks but more like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with a third of the pieces missing.
Without a NFL ready senior or junior, with a quarterback who simply was not near championship level, finishing 6-7 well may be looked upon as a sign that progress was being made but that the Mountaineers simply weren't physically about to match the better teams in its league.
Of course, it could be argued that this came in a down year of Big 12 football, a year in which a conference that was the string of Heisman Trophy candidate quarterbacks it produced year after year not only had no such creature anywhere in sight but had not a single player selected in the first round of the draft.
In fact, as the draft came to an end on Saturday with the selection of Mr. Irrelevant, a rub in for West Virginia in that it was Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy, what showed up was that the power structure of football boiled down to the SEC and the Four Dwarfs, of which the Big 12 was the runt of the litter.
In the draft, the SEC had 68 players selected and the Big Ten 46 while the Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC combined to have 75 players drafted.
Make no doubt that the power structure in college football is totally out of whack and with Oklahoma, which had six of the Big 12's 24 players picked, it certainly figures to be more off kilter.
What we're saying is, this isn't about Leddie Brown, the only Mountaineer off last year's team that had a possibility of being drafted. We're saying this is all about the NCAA fixing itself before in self-destructs.
But, if we could return to just the Mountaineers and their future for a moment coming out of a year with a losing record and not so much as a sniff in the NFL draft, the indications from all of this are that things may be on the upswing ... the quarterback situation seemingly to be fixed with some depth, the offense with a talented young driver at the controls in Harrell and certain NFL prospects in center Zach Frazier and Dante Stills along with some receivers who may fit the NFL mold and will be shown off far better in the new offense than they had been.
Is this the Pat White/Steve Slaton team all over again in the making. No one would be so bold as to see that in this, but with Oklahoma and Texas looking to flee the conference, with Gary Patterson and Lincoln Riley already of it coaching ranks, the artillery being thrown at the in the near future may not be lethal as they have been facing.
So, rather than bemoan yesterday, note that is gone, as is this year's NFL draft, and there are reasons to believe that òòò½ÊÓƵU football may be ready to rise again.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (òòò½ÊÓƵ News) òòò½ÊÓƵ” Don't say I didn't tell you yesterday.
Don't say I didn't say they weren't doing this West Virginia vs. Iowa State justice by putting into that vast wasteland that is ESPN+.
This one would have won an Emmy if they'd put it on a real network. Viewers would have been switching over from other games to see the Mountaineers and Cyclones laying their guys all over Mountaineer Field for 60 minutes.
It went to the final play before West Virginia's defense knocked away a last second Hail Mary attempt from ISU quarterback Brock Purdy into the back of the end zone, where he had a group of 6-foot-6 or so receivers who towered over the smaller òòò½ÊÓƵU defenders.
But this was a day the defense stood taller than anyone in the stadium.
Yes, it gave up big plays. Yes, it gave up 24 of the 31 points Iowa State scored, but when it was over, it was òòò½ÊÓƵU clinging to 38 points.
It was signature win for Neal Brown, and it should quiet his critics at least until next week. Yeah, there were disagreements with some of the things he did, but in the final analysis, his game plan was perfect for the moment and his faith in quarterback Jarret Doege was rewarded.
Doege outplayed Brock Purdy. You know him. He beat òòò½ÊÓƵU three straight years, and in the month of October he was 16-2 going into the game. In Ames, they call it "Brocktober."
In Morgantown, it just was a scary Halloween for Purdy.
Look at the numbers: Purdy completed 16 of 27 passes for 185 yards and one touchdown, but Doege completed 30 of 46 for 370 yards and three touchdowns. He did throw two interceptions, but one of them went into and out of the hands of Bryce Ford-Wheaton.
"That's never really something you want to happen. But coach wants us to realize you have to bounce back," Ford-Wheaton said.
Doege wouldn't let Ford-Wheaton stay down.
"I told him when he dropped it he was going to come back and make a huge play to win the game," Doege recalled.
And he did. In fact, he made two of them, one of them among the most spectacular catches the 41-year-old stadium has ever had the pleasure to present to the fans. Ford-Wheaton went up high at the back of the end zone with a defender on him, falling backwards and making the catch while managing somehow to get a foot down as he fell.
"I saw single coverage. It's like Coach Brown says, you got to make them pay when they man up. It was a foot race, and he undercut me," Ford-Wheaton remembered. "I saw the ball in the air and said, 'Oh, my God. I got to do something.' I knew I could make the catch but was worried about getting my foot down. I mushed it into the ground, then looked at the ref and he puts his hands up."
This was a game against a team known for its physicality, and the Cyclones knocked the Mountaineers around at times like rag dolls.
It was team known for working hard ... but òòò½ÊÓƵU not only had the blue jerseys on for the game, those jerseys had blue collars.
òòò½ÊÓƵU was without two starters, but it didn't matter. It was angry, angry at 42-6 last year, angry at losing close games, angry at the attitude that has been over Morgantown.
The Mountaineers set out to change it ... and did.
They were Rocky to Iowa State's Apollo Creed. ISU scored easily, with Breece Hall going 60 yards on this team's second play for a touchdown, Tarique Milton going 68 yards with a pass from Purdy and Jake Hummel running an interception in for 24 yards. òòò½ÊÓƵU patiently but ferociously went up and down the field, making third downs and fourth downs, key play after key play.
Who made big plays? Everyone.
"It comes down to guys making plays, and we made plays," Neal Brown said. "We made throws, Leddie broke tackles, Wheaton went up and made plays. This was one we circled and have really been preparing for."
And they did it all while overcoming one of the worst calls in the stadium's history, an offensive pass interference penalty that wiped out a 46-yard gain by Ford-Wheaton and led to the interception TD.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (òòò½ÊÓƵ News) òòò½ÊÓƵ” It is a game that deserves far more respect than to be cast before the nation in the vast broadcast emptiness that is ESPN+ at 2 p.m. òòò½ÊÓƵ” Saturday's meeting between No. 22/23 Iowa State and unranked West Virginia.
Iowa State is in the process of chasing Oklahoma for the Big 12 championship while the Mountaineers are hoping that last week's road victory over TCU can ignite them on a second-half run that can salvage a season that was rapidly slipping away from them.
It is, in many ways, a game that has everything òòò½ÊÓƵ” the Big 12's leading rusher and a Heisman Trophy candidate in ISU running back Breece Hall vs. òòò½ÊÓƵU's stingy rush defense which has turned the word negative into a positive, at least defensively as it ranks in the nation by averaging seven tackles for lost yardage per game.
But Iowa State is not your everyday opponent. It is a team that has had òòò½ÊÓƵU's number the last three years, outscoring the Mountaineers, 110-34, including an embarrassing 42-6 whipping last season.
Iowa State is a veteran team, so much so that Coach Neal Brown jokingly offered this up this week during his Tuesday press conference:
"I was laughing the other day telling my staff, 'There are some guys on their defense playing longer than some of our coaches have been coaching.'"
But, as good as Iowa State is defensively, it is the offense that is the main concern of òòò½ÊÓƵU for they are unique in their approach to the game, playing the bully on the block by often utilizing two tight ends of great skill in Charlie Kolar and Chase Allen, but sometimes three of them.
The scheme is challenging and they make it work with Hall running the ball and the crafty quarterback Brock Purdy directing the show, especially good when òòò½ÊÓƵU's defense is on the other side of the line scrimmage. Tough, mobile and accurate, Purdy engineered ISU's three victories over òòò½ÊÓƵU while completing 47 of 78 passes for 730 yards and seven touchdowns.
Last year he was good on 20 of 23 throws.
"He's probably one of the most competitive quarterbacks I've seen. You know you have to stop Hall, but what Purdy does and how he moves around in the intermediate passing game brings a whole other element to the game," defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said.
"You've got to find a way to be good against both."
That mix, with Breece Hall, offers a full menu of items for Coach Matt Campbell to pick from, knowing it all begins with Hall and the running game.
"He's patient," òòò½ÊÓƵU defensive tackle Dante Stills said. "He's downhill, he's strong and tough; he's athletic, and he knows how to make plays, and we have to limit those."
"Breece Hall, he's real patient. He holds, holds and when he accelerates through a seam or a gap he has, he's as good as anybody. He does that fast and breaks tackles, keeps his shoulders square to get downhill," Lesley said.
"Normally a guy that's good at that is a power guy, but Breece is good in space, too. If you hang on blocks, he makes it really hard. They stay on their blocks and when he finds a crease he accelerates through as good as I've seen."
It is the running game that is the No. 1 priority for òòò½ÊÓƵU to stop, as it is in all games. òòò½ÊÓƵked to list his approach to defense, òòò½ÊÓƵU coordinator Jordan Lesley offered this up:
a. Rush defense
b. Scoring defense
c. Turnover margin
Why stop the run first?
"You are always looking at the next down," Lesley began. "If I can play second and eight on defense, I kind of understand what your playbook is going to be from that point. A lot of teams have a first-down run tendency to try and get that drive or that series going.
"That's obviously not 100%. Playing the next down after a pass you're playing a chess match but there's a lot more things you can against the pass in coverage than you can do to stop the run.
The run is block recognition, block defeat, tackling. Everything is basic fundamentals of the game, which we work very hard on."
But Iowa State makes it tougher on you by having an All-American running back, a running threat at quarterback and extra blockers via the tight ends.
Then they really mess with your brain by what they do pre-snap.
"The motions and shifts change the picture they show you. That's unique. It's almost triple 'option-esque'," Lesley said.
"I think it's more unique what their tight ends are," Lesley said. "When you are 6-6 or 6-7 and weigh whatever, you don't really have to be very unique with what you do. You just have to be unique with where you put the ball so they create a huge challenge with just their body presence."
And just to make the challenge complete, Iowa State has first-class wide receiver in 6-foot-3, 210-pound Xavier Hutchinson. His size, with the tight ends, is a major challenge to òòò½ÊÓƵU D-backs who mostly are 5-10 or 5-11.
òòò½ÊÓƵU comes into the game an underdog but doing so off a win and knowing they played Oklahoma even until the last play of the game this year gives them something to latch onto as they scramble for bowl eligibility.